instrumentalism

instrumentalism, in the philosophy of science, the view that the value of scientific concepts and theories is determined not by whether they are literally true or correspond to reality in some sense but by the extent to which they help to make accurate empirical predictions or to resolve conceptual problems. Instrumentalism is thus the view that scientific theories should be thought of primarily as tools for solving practical problems rather than as meaningful descriptions of the natural world. Indeed, instrumentalists typically call into question whether it even makes sense to think of theoretical terms as corresponding to external reality. In that sense, instrumentalism is directly opposed to scientific realism, which is the view that the point of scientific theories is not merely to generate reliable predictions but to describe the world accurately.

Instrumentalism is a form of philosophical pragmatism as it applies to the philosophy of science. The term itself comes from the American philosopher John Dewey’s name for his own more general brand of pragmatism, according to which the value of any idea is determined by its usefulness in helping people to adapt to the world around them.

Instrumentalism in the philosophy of science is motivated at least in part by the idea that scientific theories are necessarily underdetermined by the available data and that in fact no finite amount of empirical evidence could rule out the possibility of an alternate explanation for observed phenomena. Because in that view there is no way to determine conclusively that one theory more closely approaches the truth than its rivals, the main criterion for evaluating theories should be how well they perform. Indeed, the fact that no amount of evidence can decisively show that a given theory is true (as opposed to merely predictively successful) begs the question of whether it is meaningful to say that a theory is “true” or “false.” It is not that instrumentalists believe that no theory is better than any other; rather, they doubt that there is any sense in which a theory can be said to be true or false (or better or worse) apart from the extent to which it is useful in solving scientific problems.

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In support of that view, instrumentalists commonly point out that the history of science is replete with examples of theories that were at one time widely considered true but are now almost universally rejected. Scientists no longer believe, for example, that light propagates through the ether or even that there is such a thing as the ether at all. Whereas realists argue that, as theories are modified to accommodate more and more evidence, they more and more closely approximate the truth, instrumentalists argue that, if some of the best historical theories have been discarded, there is no reason to suppose that the most widely accepted theories of the present day will hold up any better. Nor is there necessarily any reason to believe that the best current theories approximate the truth any better than the ether theory did.

There may nevertheless be a sense in which the instrumentalist and realist positions are not as far apart as they sometimes seem. For it is difficult to say precisely what the distinction is between accepting the usefulness of a theoretical statement and actually believing it to be true. Still, even if the difference between the two views is in some sense only semantic, or one of emphasis, the fact is that most people intuitively do make a distinction between the truth and the practical usefulness of scientific theories.