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instrumentalism

Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A pragmatic theory that ideas are instruments that function as guides of action, their validity being determined by the success of the action.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun (Philos.) The view that the sanction of truth is its utility, or that truth is genuine only in so far as it is a valuable instrument.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun philosophy In the philosophy of science, the view that concepts and theories are merely useful instruments whose worth is measured not by whether the concepts and theories are true or false (or correctly depict reality), but how effective they are in explaining and predicting phenomena.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a system of pragmatic philosophy that considers idea to be instruments that should guide our actions and their value is measured by their success

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