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Full Idea
The pragmatist view is that all our theories are instrumental, are mental modes of adaptation to reality, rather than revelations or gnostic answers to some divinely instituted world enigma.
Clarification
'gnostic' here means 'spiritual knowledge'
Gist of Idea
Pragmatism says all theories are instrumental - that is, mental modes of adaptation to reality
Source
William James (Pragmatism - eight lectures [1907], Lec 5)
Book Ref
James,William: 'Pragmatism - eight lectures' [Dover 1995], p.74
A Reaction
This treats instrumentalism as the pragmatic idea of theories as what works (and nothing more), with, presumably, no interest in grasping something called 'reality'. Presumably instrumentalism might have other motivations - such as fun.
| 18982 | Pragmatism says all theories are instrumental - that is, mental modes of adaptation to reality [James] |
| 18985 | True thoughts are just valuable instruments of action [James] |
| 7621 | Special relativity, unlike general relativity, was operationalist in spirit [Putnam on Einstein] |
| 13940 | All linguistic forms in science are merely judged by their efficiency as instruments [Carnap] |
| 17665 | The 'Tractatus' is instrumentalist about laws of nature [Wittgenstein, by Armstrong] |
| 17658 | Users of digital thermometers recognise no temperatures in the gaps [Goodman] |
| 4713 | For Quine, theories are instruments used to make predictions about observations [Quine, by O'Grady] |
| 13067 | For the instrumentalists there are no scientific explanations [Salmon] |
| 14204 | Naïve operationalism would have meanings change every time the tests change [Putnam] |
| 16057 | Instrumentalism normally says some discourse is useful, but not genuinely true [Horgan,T] |
| 17704 | Operationalism defines concepts by our ways of measuring them [Mares] |
| 6778 | Instrumentalists regard theories as tools for prediction, with truth being irrelevant [Bird] |
| 22197 | Theories aren't just for organising present experience if they concern the past or future [Gorham] |
| 22196 | For most scientists their concepts are not just useful, but are meant to be true and accurate [Gorham] |