Instrumentalism
In the philosophy of science, instrumentalism is 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.
In the philosophy of mind, instrumentalism is the view (championed by Daniel Dennett), that propositional attitudes such as belief are not concepts on which we can base scientific investigations of the mind and brain, but that acting as if other beings do have beliefs is often a successful strategy. For example, acting as if the chess playing computer has the belief that taking the queen will give it a significant advantage is a sucessful strategy, despite the fact that few people would argue simple electronics devices have beliefs as we normally think of them.
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Modern science | ScienCe | ScienCes | Scientific | Scientific discoveries
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