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In
philosophy of science Philosophy of science is a branch of philosophy concerned with the foundations, methods, and implications of science. The central questions of this study concern what qualifies as science, the reliability of scientific theories, and the ultim ...
and in
epistemology Epistemology (; ), or the theory of knowledge, is the branch of philosophy concerned with knowledge. Epistemology is considered a major subfield of philosophy, along with other major subfields such as ethics, logic, and metaphysics. Epi ...
, instrumentalism is a methodological view that
ideas In common usage and in philosophy, ideas are the results of thought. Also in philosophy, ideas can also be mental representational images of some object. Many philosophers have considered ideas to be a fundamental ontological category of being. ...
are useful instruments, and that the worth of an idea is based on how effective it is in explaining and predicting
phenomena A phenomenon ( : phenomena) is an observable event. The term came into its modern philosophical usage through Immanuel Kant, who contrasted it with the noumenon, which ''cannot'' be directly observed. Kant was heavily influenced by Gottfried ...
. According to instrumentalists, a successful
scientific theory A scientific theory is an explanation of an aspect of the natural world and universe that has been repeatedly tested and corroborated in accordance with the scientific method, using accepted protocols of observation, measurement, and evaluati ...
reveals nothing known either true or false about nature's unobservable objects, properties or processes. Scientific theory is merely a tool whereby humans predict ''observations'' in a particular domain of nature by formulating laws, which state or summarize regularities, while theories themselves do not reveal supposedly hidden aspects of nature that somehow ''explain'' these laws. Instrumentalism is a perspective originally introduced by
Pierre Duhem Pierre Maurice Marie Duhem (; 9 June 1861 – 14 September 1916) was a French theoretical physicist who worked on thermodynamics, hydrodynamics, and the theory of elasticity. Duhem was also a historian of science, noted for his work on the Eu ...
in 1906.Roberto Torretti, ''The Philosophy of Physics'' (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999)
pp. 242–43
"Like Whewell and Mach, Duhem was a practicing scientist who devoted an important part of his adult life to the history and philosophy of physics. ... His philosophy is contained in ''La théorie physique: son objet, sa structure'' 'The Aim and Structure of Physical Theory''(1906), which may well be, to this day, the best overall book on the subject. Its main theses, although quite novel when first put forward, have in the meantime become commonplace, so I shall review them summarily without detailed argument, just to associate them with his name. But first I ought to say that neither in the first nor in the second (1914) edition of his book did Duhem take into account—or even so much as mention—the deep changes that were then taking place in physics. Still, the subsequent success and current entrenchment of Duhem's ideas are due above all to their remarkable agreement with—and the light they throw on—the practice of mathematical physics in the twentieth century. In the first part of ''La théorie physique'', Duhem contrasts two opinions concerning the aim of physical theory. For some authors, it ought to furnish 'the ''explanation'' of a set of experimentally established laws', while for others it is 'an abstract system whose aim is to ''summarize'' and ''logically classify'' a set of experimental laws, without pretending to explain these laws' (Duhem 1914, p. 3). Duhem resolutely sides with the latter. His rejection of the former rests on his understanding of 'explanation' ('explication' in French), which he expresses as follows: 'To explain, ''explicare'', is to divest ''reality'' from the ''appearances'' which enfold it like veils, in order to see the reality face to face' (pp 3–4). Authors in the first group expect from physics the true vision of
things-in-themselves In Kantian philosophy, the thing-in-itself (german: Ding an sich) is the status of objects as they are, independent of representation and observation. The concept of the thing-in-itself was introduced by the German philosopher Immanuel Kant, and ...
that religious myth and philosophical speculation have hitherto been unable to supply. Their explanation makes no sense unless (i) there is, 'beneath the sense appearances revealed to us by our perceptions, ..a reality different from these appearances' and (ii) we know 'the nature of the elements which constitute' that reality (p 7). Thus, physical theory cannot explain—in the stated sense—the laws established by experiment unless it depends on metaphysics and thus remains subject to the interminable disputes of metaphysicians. Worse still, the teachings of no metaphysical school are sufficiently detailed and precise to account for all of the elements of physical theory (p 18). Duhem instead assigns to physical theories a more modest but autonomous and readily attainable aim: 'A physical theory is not an explanation. It is a system of mathematical propositions, derived from a small number of principles, whose purpose is to represent a set of experimental laws as simply, as completely, and as exactly as possible (Duhem 1914, p. 24)".
Rejecting
scientific realism Scientific realism is the view that the universe described by science is real regardless of how it may be interpreted. Within philosophy of science, this view is often an answer to the question "how is the success of science to be explained?" T ...
's ambitions to uncover metaphysical truth about nature, instrumentalism is usually categorized as an '' antirealism'', although its mere lack of commitment to scientific theory's realism can be termed ''nonrealism''. Instrumentalism merely bypasses debate concerning whether, for example, a ''particle'' spoken about in
particle physics Particle physics or high energy physics is the study of fundamental particles and forces that constitute matter and radiation. The fundamental particles in the universe are classified in the Standard Model as fermions (matter particles) an ...
is a discrete entity enjoying individual existence, or is an ''excitation mode'' of a region of a field, or is something else altogether.P Kyle Stanford, ''Exceeding Our Grasp: Science, History, and the Problem of Unconceived Alternatives'' (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006)
p. 198
Roberto Torretti, ''The Philosophy of Physics'' (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999)
pp. 396–97
including quote: "First, quantum field theories have been the working theories at the frontline of physics for over 30 years. Second, these theories appear to do away with the familiar conception of physical systems as aggregates of substantive individual particles. This conception was already undermined by Bose–Einstein and
Fermi–Dirac statistics Fermi–Dirac statistics (F–D statistics) is a type of quantum statistics that applies to the physics of a system consisting of many non-interacting, identical particles that obey the Pauli exclusion principle. A result is the Fermi–Dirac d ...
(§6.1.4), according to which the so-called particles cannot be assigned a definite trajectory in ordinary space. But quantum field theories go a long step further and—or so it would seem—conceive 'particles' as excitation modes of the field. This, I presume, motivated Howard Stein's saying that 'the quantum theory of fields is the contemporary locus of metaphysical research' (1970, p. 285). Finally, the very fact that physicists conspicuously and fruitfully resort to unperspicacious theories can teach us something about the aim and reach of science. Here is how physicists work, dirty-handed, in their everyday practice, a far cry from what is taught at the Sunday school of the 'scientific worldview' ".
Meinard Kuhlmann
"Physicists debate whether the world is made of particles or fields—or something else entirely
''Scientific American'', 2013 Aug;309(2).
Instrumentalism holds that
theoretical term Ramsey sentences are formal logical reconstructions of theoretical propositions attempting to draw a line between science and metaphysics. A Ramsey sentence aims at rendering propositions containing non-observable theoretical terms (terms employed ...
s need only be useful to predict the phenomena, the observed outcomes. There are multiple versions of instrumentalism.


History


British empiricism

Newton's theory of motion, whereby any object instantly interacts with all other objects across the universe, motivated the founder of British empiricism,
John Locke John Locke (; 29 August 1632 – 28 October 1704) was an English philosopher and physician, widely regarded as one of the most influential of Enlightenment thinkers and commonly known as the "father of liberalism". Considered one of ...
, to speculate that matter is capable of thought. The next leading British empiricist,
George Berkeley George Berkeley (; 12 March 168514 January 1753) – known as Bishop Berkeley ( Bishop of Cloyne of the Anglican Church of Ireland) – was an Anglo-Irish philosopher whose primary achievement was the advancement of a theory he called "immate ...
, argued that an object's putative primary qualities as recognized by scientists, such as shape, extension, and impenetrability, are inconceivable without the putative secondary qualities of color, hardness, warmth, and so on. He also posed the question how or why an object could be properly conceived to exist independently of any perception of it. Berkeley did not object to everyday talk about the reality of objects, but instead took issue with philosophers' talk, who spoke as if they knew something beyond sensory impressions that ordinary folk did not.Torretti 1999 p. 102. For Berkeley, a scientific theory does not state causes or explanations, but simply identifies perceived types of objects and traces their typical regularities. Berkeley thus anticipated the basis of what
Auguste Comte Isidore Marie Auguste François Xavier Comte (; 19 January 1798 – 5 September 1857) was a French philosopher and writer who formulated the doctrine of positivism. He is often regarded as the first philosopher of science in the modern sense ...
in the 1830s called ''
positivism Positivism is an empiricist philosophical theory that holds that all genuine knowledge is either true by definition or positive—meaning ''a posteriori'' facts derived by reason and logic from sensory experience.John J. Macionis, Linda M. G ...
'', although Comtean positivism added other principles concerning the scope, method, and uses of science that Berkeley would have disavowed. Berkeley also noted the usefulness of a scientific theory having terms that merely serve to aid calculations without their having to refer to anything in particular, so long as they proved useful in practice. Berkeley thus predated the insight that
logical positivists Logical positivism, later called logical empiricism, and both of which together are also known as neopositivism, is a movement in Western philosophy whose central thesis was the verification principle (also known as the verifiability criterion of ...
—who originated in the late 1920s, but who, by the 1950s, had softened into logical empiricists—would be compelled to accept: theoretical terms in science do not always translate into
observational term Ramsey sentences are formal logical reconstructions of theoretical propositions attempting to draw a line between science and metaphysics. A Ramsey sentence aims at rendering propositions containing non-observable theoretical terms (terms employed ...
s. The last great British empiricist,
David Hume David Hume (; born David Home; 7 May 1711 NS (26 April 1711 OS) – 25 August 1776) Cranston, Maurice, and Thomas Edmund Jessop. 2020 999br>David Hume" '' Encyclopædia Britannica''. Retrieved 18 May 2020. was a Scottish Enlightenment ph ...
, posed a number of challenges to Francis Bacon's
inductivism Inductivism is the traditional and still commonplace philosophy of scientific method to develop scientific theories.James Ladyman, ''Understanding Philosophy of Science'' (London & New York: Routledge, 2002), p51��58 Inductivism aims to neutrally ...
, which had been the prevailing, or at least the professed view concerning the attainment of scientific knowledge. Regarding himself as having placed his own
theory of knowledge Epistemology (; ), or the theory of knowledge, is the branch of philosophy concerned with knowledge. Epistemology is considered a major subfield of philosophy, along with other major subfields such as ethics, logic, and metaphysics. Ep ...
on par with Newton's theory of motion, Hume supposed that he had championed inductivism over scientific realism. Upon reading Hume's work, Immanuel Kant was "awakened from dogmatic slumber", and thus sought to neutralise any threat to science posed by Humean empiricism. Kant would develop the first stark philosophy of physics.


Transcendental idealism

To save Newton's law of universal gravitation,
Immanuel Kant Immanuel Kant (, , ; 22 April 1724 – 12 February 1804) was a German philosopher and one of the central Enlightenment thinkers. Born in Königsberg, Kant's comprehensive and systematic works in epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, and ...
reasoned that the mind is the precondition of experience and so, as the bridge from the
noumena In philosophy, a noumenon (, ; ; noumena) is a posited object or an event that exists independently of human sense and/or perception. The term ''noumenon'' is generally used in contrast with, or in relation to, the term '' phenomenon'', whi ...
, which are how the world's things exist in themselves, to the
phenomena A phenomenon ( : phenomena) is an observable event. The term came into its modern philosophical usage through Immanuel Kant, who contrasted it with the noumenon, which ''cannot'' be directly observed. Kant was heavily influenced by Gottfried ...
, which are humans' recognized experiences. And so mind itself contains the structure that determines ''space'', ''time'', and ''substance'', how mind's own categorization of noumena renders space Euclidean, time constant, and objects' motions exhibiting the very determinism predicted by Newtonian physics. Kant apparently presumed that the human mind, rather than a phenomenon itself that had evolved, had been predetermined and set forth upon the formation of humankind. In any event, the mind also was the veil of appearance that scientific methods could never lift. And yet the mind could ponder itself and discover such truths, although not on a theoretical level, but only by means of ethics. Kant's metaphysics, then,
transcendental idealism Transcendental idealism is a philosophical system founded by German philosopher Immanuel Kant in the 18th century. Kant's epistemological program is found throughout his '' Critique of Pure Reason'' (1781). By ''transcendental'' (a term that dese ...
, secured science from doubt—in that it was a case of "synthetic a priori" knowledge ("universal, necessary and informative")—and yet discarded hope of scientific realism.


Logical empiricism

Since the mind has virtually no power to know anything beyond direct sensory experience,
Ernst Mach Ernst Waldfried Josef Wenzel Mach ( , ; 18 February 1838 – 19 February 1916) was a Moravian-born Austrian physicist and philosopher, who contributed to the physics of shock waves. The ratio of one's speed to that of sound is named the Mach n ...
's early version of
logical positivism Logical positivism, later called logical empiricism, and both of which together are also known as neopositivism, is a movement in Western philosophy whose central thesis was the verification principle (also known as the verifiability criterion o ...
( empirio-criticism) verged on idealism. It was alleged to even be a surreptitious
solipsism Solipsism (; ) is the philosophical idea that only one's mind is sure to exist. As an epistemological position, solipsism holds that knowledge of anything outside one's own mind is unsure; the external world and other minds cannot be known a ...
, whereby all that exists is one's own mind. Mach's positivism also strongly asserted the ultimate unity of the empirical sciences. Mach's positivism asserted
phenomenalism In metaphysics, phenomenalism is the view that physical objects cannot justifiably be said to exist in themselves, but only as perceptual phenomena or sensory stimuli (e.g. redness, hardness, softness, sweetness, etc.) situated in time and in ...
as to new basis of scientific theory, all scientific terms to refer to either actual or potential sensations, thus eliminating hypotheses while permitting such seemingly disparate scientific theories as physical and psychological to share terms and forms. Phenomenalism was insuperably difficult to implement, yet heavily influenced a new generation of philosophers of science, who emerged in the 1920s while terming themselves ''logical positivists'' while pursuing a program termed '' verificationism''. Logical positivists aimed not to instruct or restrict scientists, but to enlighten and structure philosophical discourse to render ''scientific philosophy'' that would verify philosophical statements as well as scientific theories, and align all human knowledge into a ''scientific worldview'', freeing humankind from so many of its problems due to confused or unclear language. The verificationists expected a strict gap between ''theory'' versus ''observation'', mirrored by a theory's ''
theoretical term Ramsey sentences are formal logical reconstructions of theoretical propositions attempting to draw a line between science and metaphysics. A Ramsey sentence aims at rendering propositions containing non-observable theoretical terms (terms employed ...
s'' versus '' observable terms''. Believing a theory's posited unobservables to always correspond to observations, the verificationists viewed a scientific theory's theoretical terms, such as ''electron'', as metaphorical or elliptical at observations, such as ''white streak in
cloud chamber A cloud chamber, also known as a Wilson cloud chamber, is a particle detector used for visualizing the passage of ionizing radiation. A cloud chamber consists of a sealed environment containing a supersaturated vapour of water or alcohol. An ...
''. They believed that scientific terms lacked meanings unto themselves, but acquired meanings from the logical structure that was the entire theory that in turn matched ''patterns of experience''. So by translating theoretical terms into observational terms and then decoding the theory's mathematical/logical structure, one could check whether the statement indeed matched patterns of experience, and thereby verify the scientific theory false or true. Such verification would be possible, as never before in science, since translation of theoretical terms into observational terms would make the scientific theory purely empirical, none metaphysical. Yet the logical positivists ran into insuperable difficulties. Moritz Schlick debated with Otto Neurath over
foundationalism Foundationalism concerns philosophical theories of knowledge resting upon non-inferential justified belief, or some secure foundation of certainty such as a conclusion inferred from a basis of sound premises.Simon Blackburn, ''The Oxford Dictio ...
—the traditional view traced to Descartes as founder of modern Western philosophy—whereupon only nonfoundationalism was found tenable. Science, then, could not find a secure foundation of indubitable truth. And since science aims to reveal not private but public truths, verificationists switched from phenomenalism to
physicalism In philosophy, physicalism is the metaphysical thesis that "everything is physical", that there is "nothing over and above" the physical, or that everything supervenes on the physical. Physicalism is a form of ontological monism—a "one substanc ...
, whereby scientific theory refers to objects observable in space and at least in principle already recognizable by physicists. Finding strict empiricism untenable, verificationism underwent "liberalization of empiricism".
Rudolf Carnap Rudolf Carnap (; ; 18 May 1891 – 14 September 1970) was a German-language philosopher who was active in Europe before 1935 and in the United States thereafter. He was a major member of the Vienna Circle and an advocate of logical positivism. ...
even suggested that empiricism's basis was pragmatic. Recognizing that verification—proving a theory false or true—was unattainable, they discarded that demand and focused on ''confirmation theory''. Carnap sought simply to quantify a universal law's ''degree of confirmation''—its probable truth—but, despite his great mathematical and logical skill, discovered equations never operable to yield over ''zero'' degree of confirmation.
Carl Hempel Carl Gustav "Peter" Hempel (January 8, 1905 – November 9, 1997) was a German writer, philosopher, logician, and epistemologist. He was a major figure in logical empiricism, a 20th-century movement in the philosophy of science. He is espe ...
found the paradox of confirmation. By the 1950s, the verificationists had established philosophy of science as subdiscipline within academia's philosophy departments. By 1962, verificationists had asked and endeavored to answer seemingly all the great questions about scientific theory. Their discoveries showed that the idealized ''scientific worldview'' was naively mistaken. By then the leader of the legendary venture, Hempel raised the white flag that signaled verificationism's demise. Suddenly striking Western society, then, was Kuhn's landmark thesis, introduced by none other than Carnap, verificationism's greatest firebrand. Instrumentalism exhibited by ''scientists'' often does not even discern unobservable from observable entities.


Historical turn

From the 1930s until
Thomas Kuhn Thomas Samuel Kuhn (; July 18, 1922 – June 17, 1996) was an American philosopher of science whose 1962 book '' The Structure of Scientific Revolutions'' was influential in both academic and popular circles, introducing the term ''paradig ...
's 1962 ''
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions ''The Structure of Scientific Revolutions'' (1962; second edition 1970; third edition 1996; fourth edition 2012) is a book about the history of science by philosopher Thomas S. Kuhn. Its publication was a landmark event in the history, philoso ...
'', there were roughly two prevailing views about the nature of science. The popular view was
scientific realism Scientific realism is the view that the universe described by science is real regardless of how it may be interpreted. Within philosophy of science, this view is often an answer to the question "how is the success of science to be explained?" T ...
, which usually involved a belief that science was progressively unveiling a truer view, and building a better understanding, of nature. The professional approach was
logical empiricism Logical positivism, later called logical empiricism, and both of which together are also known as neopositivism, is a movement in Western philosophy whose central thesis was the verification principle (also known as the verifiability criterion of ...
, wherein a scientific theory was held to be a logical structure whose terms all ultimately refer to some form of observation, while an objective process neutrally arbitrates theory choice, compelling scientists to decide which scientific theory was superior. Physicists knew better, but, busy developing the
Standard Model The Standard Model of particle physics is the theory describing three of the four known fundamental forces ( electromagnetic, weak and strong interactions - excluding gravity) in the universe and classifying all known elementary particles. It ...
, were so steeped in developing
quantum field theory In theoretical physics, quantum field theory (QFT) is a theoretical framework that combines classical field theory, special relativity, and quantum mechanics. QFT is used in particle physics to construct physical models of subatomic particles and ...
, that their talk, largely metaphorical, perhaps even metaphysical, was unintelligible to the public, while the steep mathematics warded off philosophers of physics. By the 1980s, physicists regarded not ''particles'', but ''fields'' as the more fundamental, and no longer even hoped to discover what entities and processes might be truly fundamental to nature, perhaps not even the field. Kuhn had not claimed to have developed a novel thesis, but instead hoped to synthesize more usefully recent developments in the philosophy and history of science.


Scientific realism

One scientific realist,
Karl Popper Sir Karl Raimund Popper (28 July 1902 – 17 September 1994) was an Austrian-British philosopher, academic and social commentator. One of the 20th century's most influential philosophers of science, Popper is known for his rejection of the ...
, rejected all variants of
positivism Positivism is an empiricist philosophical theory that holds that all genuine knowledge is either true by definition or positive—meaning ''a posteriori'' facts derived by reason and logic from sensory experience.John J. Macionis, Linda M. G ...
via its focus on sensations rather than realism, and developed
critical rationalism Critical rationalism is an epistemological philosophy advanced by Karl Popper on the basis that, if a statement cannot be logically deduced (from what is known), it might nevertheless be possible to logically falsify it. Following Hume, Popper ...
instead. Popper alleged that instrumentalism reduces basic science to what is merely applied science. The British physicist David Deutsch, in his much later 1997 book ''
The Fabric of Reality ''The Fabric of Reality'' is a 1997 book by physicist David Deutsch. His follow-up book, '' The Beginning of Infinity'', was published in 2011. Overview The book expands on his views of quantum mechanics and its implications for understanding ...
'', followed Popper's critique of instrumentalism and argued that a scientific theory stripped of its explanatory content would be of strictly limited utility.


Constructive empiricism as a form of instrumentalism

Bas van Fraassen Bastiaan Cornelis van Fraassen (; born 1941) is a Dutch-American philosopher noted for his contributions to philosophy of science, epistemology and formal logic. He is a Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at San Francisco State University an ...
's (1980) project of
constructive empiricism In philosophy of science, constructive empiricism is a form of empiricism. While it is sometimes referred to as an empiricist form of structuralism, its main proponent, Bas van Fraassen, has consistently distinguished between the two views. Overvie ...
focuses on belief in the domain of the observable, so for this reason it is described as a form of instrumentalism.


In the philosophy of mind

In the
philosophy of mind Philosophy of mind is a branch of philosophy that studies the ontology and nature of the mind and its relationship with the body. The mind–body problem is a paradigmatic issue in philosophy of mind, although a number of other issues are add ...
, instrumentalism is the view that propositional attitudes like
beliefs A belief is an attitude that something is the case, or that some proposition is true. In epistemology, philosophers use the term "belief" to refer to attitudes about the world which can be either true or false. To believe something is to take i ...
are not actually
concepts Concepts are defined as abstract ideas. They are understood to be the fundamental building blocks of the concept behind principles, thoughts and beliefs. They play an important role in all aspects of cognition. As such, concepts are studied by s ...
on which we can base scientific investigations of mind and brain, but that acting as if other beings have beliefs is a successful strategy.


Relation to pragmatism

Instrumentalism is closely related to
pragmatism Pragmatism is a philosophical tradition that considers words and thought as tools and instruments for prediction, problem solving, and action, and rejects the idea that the function of thought is to describe, represent, or mirror reality. ...
, the position that practical consequences are an essential basis for determining meaning, truth or value.


See also

* Instrumental and value rationality *
Instrumental and intrinsic value In moral philosophy, instrumental and intrinsic value are the distinction between what is a ''means to an end'' and what is as an ''end in itself''. Things are deemed to have instrumental value if they help one achieve a particular end; intrinsic ...
*
Natural kind "Natural kind" is an intellectual grouping, or categorizing of things, in a manner that is reflective of the actual world and not just human interests. Some treat it as a classification identifying some structure of truth and reality that exists wh ...
* Fact–value distinction *
Inductive reasoning Inductive reasoning is a method of reasoning in which a general principle is derived from a body of observations. It consists of making broad generalizations based on specific observations. Inductive reasoning is distinct from ''deductive'' re ...


Notable proponents

*
John Dewey John Dewey (; October 20, 1859 – June 1, 1952) was an American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer whose ideas have been influential in education and social reform. He was one of the most prominent American scholars in the fi ...
Gouinlock, James, "What is the Legacy of Instrumentalism? Rorty's Interpretation of Dewey." In Herman J. Saatkamp, ed., ''Rorty and Pragmatism''. Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press, 1995. (American pragmatist) *
Richard Rorty Richard McKay Rorty (October 4, 1931 – June 8, 2007) was an American philosopher. Educated at the University of Chicago and Yale University, he had strong interests and training in both the history of philosophy and in contemporary analytic ...


Notes


Sources

* Torretti, Roberto, ''The Philosophy of Physics'' (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), Berkeley, pp. 98, 101–4. {{Authority control Concepts in epistemology Concepts in metaphysics Concepts in the philosophy of mind Concepts in the philosophy of science Empiricism Epistemological theories Epistemology of science John Dewey Metaphysical theories Metaphysics of mind Metatheory of science Philosophical analogies Philosophical problems Positivism Pragmatism Qualia Rationalism Reasoning Theory of mind