Instrumentalism
noun
noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
Noun
- 1 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. countable, uncountable
"Instrumentalism views truth as simply the value belonging to certain ideas in so far as these ideas are biological functions of our organisms, and psychological functions whereby we direct our choices and attain our successes."
- 2 a system of pragmatic philosophy that considers idea to be instruments that should guide our actions and their value is measured by their success wordnet
Example
More examples"Instrumentalism views truth as simply the value belonging to certain ideas in so far as these ideas are biological functions of our organisms, and psychological functions whereby we direct our choices and attain our successes."
Etymology
From instrumental + -ism.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.