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 ofscience , the view that concepts and theories are merely usefulinstruments whose worth is measured not by whether theconcepts andtheories are true or false (or correctly depict reality), but how effective they are in explaining and predictingphenomena .
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
Etymologies
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Examples
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An affectual orientation that contrasts with Seabright’s instrumentalism is represented in The Second Marriage by Seabright’s daughter Sophia.
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In the case of scientific theories, the basic logical empiricist approaches were variations on the idea of instrumentalism, the view that scientific theories were predictive instruments and that the knowledge they represent is limited to what they predict about the observable properties of observables.
Scientific Realism Boyd, Richard 2002
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There is a second kind of instrumentalism-based value inheritance.
Reliabilism Goldman, Alvin 2008
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Ironically it's the same kind of instrumentalism favored by Biblical literalists, for whom all the biosphere was created for human satisfaction.
3quarksdaily 2009
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The public discourse is heavily dominated at present by a perception whether welcomed or deprecated of student instrumentalism.
C. M. Rubin: The Global Search for Education: A Life of Learning C. M. Rubin 2012
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Bartholomew: The trend is towards more focus on fault, less on instrumentalism. eBay explicitly rejected a cheapest cost avoider standard.
Archive 2009-01-01 Rebecca Tushnet 2009
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The bill is entirely too clever for its own good, painfully complicated in its tinkering instrumentalism, which in the end would do very little and do it too late, like an impoverished family scrounging for dinner money on the eve of their eviction.
Christian Parenti: The Big Green Buy: How Government's Purchasing Power Can Drive The Clean-Energy Revolution Christian Parenti 2010
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The bill is entirely too clever for its own good, painfully complicated in its tinkering instrumentalism, which in the end would do very little and do it too late, like an impoverished family scrounging for dinner money on the eve of their eviction.
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Buddy's masterful multi-instrumentalism and Julie's sugar-cutting vocals ring in the truth.
Phil Ramone and Danielle Evin: Dog Ears Music: Volume Ninety-Six 2009
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Buddy\'s masterful multi-instrumentalism and Julie\'s sugar-cutting vocals ring in the truth.
Phil Ramone and Danielle Evin: Dog Ears Music: Volume Ninety-Six 2009
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