As Kant claimed in the Groundwork, and as the idea has been developed by Korsgaard 1997, Bratman 1987, and Broome 2002. This formulation is agnostic on whether reasons for ends derive from our desiring those ends, or from the relation of those ends to things of independent value. However, desire-based theorists may deny, against Hubin 1999, that their theory is a combination of a principle of instrumental transmission and the principle that reasons for ends are provided by desires. Instead, they (...) may say, there is just one principle, a principle of, if you will, instrumental transmutation: if one desires the end, then one has reason to take the means. See the discussion of General Production, in section 8, for a doubt about this. (shrink)

You should be specific, but also explain the context and relevance of the term. (Each ID is worth 5 points).

Roughly, instrumentalism is the view that science is primarily, and should primarily be, an instrument for furthering our practical ends. It has fallen out of favour because historically influential variants of the view, such as logical positivism, suffered from serious defects. -/- In this book, however, Darrell P. Rowbottom develops a new form of instrumentalism, which is more sophisticated and resilient than its predecessors. This position—‘cognitive instrumentalism’—involves three core theses. First, science makes theoretical progress primarily when it furnishes us with (...) more predictive power or understanding concerning observable things. Second, scientific discourse concerning unobservable things should only be taken literally in so far as it involves observable properties or analogies with observable things. Third, scientific claims about unobservable things are probably neither approximately true nor liable to change in such a way as to increase in truthlikeness. -/- There are examples from science throughout the book, and Rowbottom demonstrates at length how cognitive instrumentalism fits with the development of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century chemistry and physics, and especially atomic theory. Drawing upon this history, Rowbottom also argues that there is a kind of understanding, empirical understanding, which we can achieve without having true, or even approximately true, representations of unobservable things. In closing the book, he sets forth his view on how the distinction between the observable and unobservable may be drawn, and compares cognitive instrumentalism with key contemporary alternatives such as structural realism, constructive empiricism, and semirealism. -/- Overall, this book offers a strong defence of instrumentalism that will be of interest to scholars and students working on the debate about realism in philosophy of science. (shrink)

Western philosophers have traditionally concentrated on theory as the means for expressing knowledge about a variety of phenomena. This absorbing book challenges this fundamental notion by showing how objects themselves, specifically scientific instruments, can express knowledge. As he considers numerous intriguing examples, Davis Baird gives us the tools to "read" the material products of science and technology and to understand their place in culture. Making a provocative and original challenge to our conception of knowledge itself, _Thing Knowledge _demands that (...) we take a new look at theories of science and technology, knowledge, progress, and change. Baird considers a wide range of instruments, including Faraday's first electric motor, eighteenth-century mechanical models of the solar system, the cyclotron, various instruments developed by analytical chemists between 1930 and 1960, spectrometers, and more. (shrink)

This paper reviews studies of corporate ethical codes published since 2000 and concludes that codes be can effective instruments for shaping ethical behavior and guiding employee decision-making. Culture and effective communication are key components to a code’s success. If codes are embedded in the culture and embraced by the leaders, they are likely to be successful. Communicating the code’s precepts in an effective way is crucial to its success. Discussion between employees and management is a key component of successful (...) ethical codes. (shrink)

Instrumental rationality prohibits one from being in the following state: intending to pass a test, not intending to study, and believing one must intend to study if one is to pass. One could escape from this incoherent state in three ways: by intending to study, by not intending to pass, or by giving up one’s instrumental belief. However, not all of these ways of proceeding seem equally rational: giving up one’s instrumental belief seems less rational than giving up an end, (...) which itself seems less rational than intending the means. I consider whether, as some philosophers allege, these “asymmetries” pose a problem for the wide-scope formulation of instrumental rationality. I argue that they do not. I also present an argument in favor of the wide-scope formulation. The arguments employed here in defense of the wide-scope formulation of instrumental rationality can also be employed in defense of the wide-scope formulations of other rational requirements. (shrink)

Morrison and Morgan argue for a view of models as 'mediating instruments' whose role in scientific theorising goes beyond applying theory. Models are partially independent of both theories and the world. This autonomy allows for a unified account of their role as instruments that allow for exploration of both theories and the world.

Epistemic instrumentalists seek to understand the normativity of epistemic norms on the model practical instrumental norms governing the relation between aims and means. Non-instrumentalists often object that this commits instrumentalists to implausible epistemic assessments. I argue that this objection presupposes an implausibly strong interpretation of epistemic norms. Once we realize that epistemic norms should be understood in terms of permissibility rather than obligation, and that evidence only occasionally provide normative reasons for belief, an instrumentalist account becomes available that delivers the (...) correct epistemic verdicts. On this account, epistemic permissibility can be understood on the model of the wide-scope instrumental norm for instrumental rationality, while normative evidential reasons for belief can be understood in terms of instrumental transmission. (shrink)

Science is highly dependent on the technologies needed to observe scientific objects. In How Scientific Instruments Speak, Bas de Boer develops a philosophical account of instruments in scientific practice, focusing on the cognitive neurosciences. He argues for an understanding of scientific instruments as mediating technology.

Epistemic instrumentalists face a puzzle. In brief, the puzzle is that if the reason there is to believe in accord with the evidence depends, as the instrumentalist says it does, on agents’ idiosyncratic interests, then there is no reason to expect that this reason is universal. Here, I identify and explain two strategies instrumentalists have used to try and solve this puzzle. I then argue that we should find these strategies wanting. Faced with the failure of these strategies, I articulate (...) a heretofore neglected solution on behalf of instrumentalism. (shrink)

Do the sciences aim to uncover the structure of nature, or are they ultimately a practical means of controlling our environment? In Instrumental Biology, or the Disunity of Science, Alexander Rosenberg argues that while physics and chemistry can develop laws that reveal the structure of natural phenomena, biology is fated to be a practical, instrumental discipline. Because of the complexity produced by natural selection, and because of the limits on human cognition, scientists are prevented from uncovering the basic structure of (...) biological phenomena. Consequently, biology and all of the disciplines that rest upon it--psychology and the other human sciences--must aim at most to provide practical tools for coping with the natural world rather than a complete theoretical understanding of it. (shrink)

Constitutive instrumentalism is the view that responsibility practices arise from and are justified by our being prosocial creatures who need responsibility practices to secure specific kinds of social goods. In particular, responsibility practices shape agency in ways that disposes adherence to norms that enable goods of shared cooperative life. The mechanics of everyday responsibility practices operate, in part, via costly signaling about the suitability of agents for coordination and cooperation under conditions of shared cooperative life. So, there are a range (...) of identifiable conditions where the ordinary operation of responsibility practices—and thus, the usual normative force of the practices—is disrupted. Even so, these conditions are not so widespread as to favor a more thoroughgoing abandonment of responsibility practices. (shrink)

The measure of what can be considered “new” is what is already known. What is “new” – be it a (technical) invention, a new method, or a newly discovered natural phenomenon – must distinguish itself...

This chapter provides an overview of some central philosophical issues surrounding the distinction between instrumental and intrinsic desires and the relationships between them. I first clarify some crucial notions that feature in the initial characterizations of instrumental and intrinsic desires. I then tackle the question of whether an instrumental desire is a further attitude or mental state that exists independently of the intrinsic desire(s) and the means-end belief(s) that explain it. I outline two arguments in support of the negative answer (...) to this question, consider an objection to them, and assess whether the objection succeeds. Finally, I turn to the question of how an agent’s motivation is transmitted from the end to the means and survey two competing accounts of this phenomenon. (shrink)

Properly understood, the instrumental rule says to take means that actually suffice for my end, not, as is nearly universally assumed, to intend means that I believe are necessary for my end. This alternative explains everything the standard interpretation can—and more, including grounding certain correctness conditions for exercises of our will unexplained by the standard interpretation.

There has been much scholarly attention to definitions of the term “scientific instrument.” Rather more mundane work by makers, curators, and users is devoted to instruments' maintenance and repair. A familiar argument holds that when a tool breaks, its character and recalcitrance become evident. Much can be gained from historical study of instruments' breakages, defects, and recuperation. Maintenance and repair technologies have been a vital aspect of relations between makers and other users. Their history illuminates systems of instruction, (...) support, and abuse. These systems were, for example, evident in the development of astronomical instruments around 1800 within and beyond the European sphere. Episodes from that milieu are used to explore how instrument users sought autonomy, how instruments' mutable character was defined, and how judgments of instruments' failure or success were ever secured. (shrink)

AI systems have become increasingly capable of dangerous behaviours in many domains. This raises the question: Do models sometimes choose to violate human instructions in order to perform behaviour that is more useful for certain goals? We introduce a benchmark for measuring model propensity for instrumental convergence (IC) behaviour in terminal-based agents. This is behaviour such as self-preservation that has been hypothesised to play a key role in risks from highly capable AI agents. Our benchmark is realistic and low-stakes which (...) serves to reduce evaluation-awareness and roleplay confounds. The suite contains seven operational tasks, each with an official workflow and a policy-violating shortcut. An eight-variant shared framework varies monitoring, instruction clarity, stakes, permission, instrumental usefulness and blocked honest paths to support inferences regarding the factors driving IC behaviour. We evaluated ten models using deterministic environment-state scorers over 1,680 samples, with trace review employed for audit and adjudication purposes. The final IC rate is 86 out of 1,680 samples (5.1%). IC behaviour is concentrated rather than uniform: two Gemini models account for 66.3% of IC cases and three tasks account for 84.9%. Conditions in which IC behaviour is indispensable for task success result in the greatest increase in the adjusted IC rate (+15.7 percentage points), whereas emphasising that task success is critical or certain framing choices do not produce comparable effects. Our findings indicate that realistic, low-nudge environments elicit IC behaviour rarely but systematically in most tested models. We conclude that it is feasible to robustly measure tendencies for dangerous behaviour in current frontier AI agents. (shrink)

The Hubble Space Telescope (HST) stands as an iconic symbol of scientific exploration, its launch in April 1990 sparking great expectations. However, the initial images were disappointing, revealing blurred starlight and a failure to capture faint sources of light. NASA and optical technicians embarked on immediate troubleshooting, resulting in the discovery of various issues and disparate opinions on their root causes. This shows that defining the boundaries of an instrument’s intended function is complex, raising certain philosophical and practical questions. This (...) chapter applies the philosophy of maintenance, in particular the notion of function and malfunction, to reveal epistemic issues surrounding faulty scientific instruments. The case of the HST highlights some of the epistemic problems concerning the maintenance of scientific instruments, and it also suggests that the relation between function and malfunction should not be seen as binary. Maintenance strategies hinge on implicit or explicit function definitions that are essential for understanding how artifacts operate. However, to delineate an artifact’s intended function, it is also necessary to understand when it is malfunctioning. The conventional view that an artifact is malfunctioning if it fails to fulfill its intended function is therefore insufficient. The case of the HST represents a partial malfunction somewhere between function and malfunction, demonstrating the intricate relation between science, technology, and maintenance. This approach sheds light on epistemic problems arising from flawed scientific instruments. (shrink)

According to epistemic instrumentalism, epistemic normativity arises from and depends on facts about our ends. On that view, a consideration C is an epistemic reason for a subject S to Φ only if Φ-ing would promote an end that S has. However, according to the Too Few Epistemic Reasons objection, this cannot be correct since there are cases in which, intuitively, C is an epistemic reason for S to Φ even though Φ-ing would not promote any of S’s ends. After (...) clarifying both EI and the Too Few Epistemic Reasons objection, I examine three major instrumentalist replies and argue that none of them is satisfactory. I end by briefly sketching a fourth possible response, which is, I suggest, more promising than the other three. (shrink)

This chapter addresses the hard problem of inefficacy: the problem of explaining how individuals can have instrumental reasons to contribute to the realization of an end over which they are ‘powerless’, unable to make a difference. The chapter first argues that existing accounts appealing to collective difference-making or difference made to the ‘security’ of outcomes fail to resolve the problem. It then appeals to everyday instrumental reasoning, building a prima facie case for thinking that instrumental reasons are fundamentally about contributing (...) to the realization of important ends, not about making a difference to it. To substantiate that thought, it further (i) argues that structurally rational instrumental reasoning tracks possibilities to contribute to what the situation ‘calls for’ and not to contribute to what it ‘calls against’, and (ii) provides a Strawsonian account of the weight and authority of contributory reasons, on which these reflect how strongly morally required caring about the relevant values could or would motivate contribution given structural rationality. Because appropriately caring agents see what the situation calls for as depending on open contributions generally, not merely on what they can individually affect, the powerless can have weighty instrumental reasons to contribute to collective goods. (shrink)

Over the past twenty years or so, historians of science have become increasingly sensitized to issues involved in studying and interpreting scientific and medical instruments. The contributors to this Focus section are historians of science who have worked closely with museum objects and collections, specifically instruments used in scientific and medical contexts. Such close engagement by historians of science is somewhat rare, provoking distinctive questions as to how we define and understand instruments, opening up issues regarding the (...) value of broken or incomplete objects, and raising concerns about which scientific and medical artifacts are displayed and interpreted in museums and in what manner. It is hoped that these essays point historians of science in new directions for reengaging with scientific objects and collections. (shrink)

Instruments et ressources électroniques pour le français est le dernier numéro d’une longue série dirigée par Catherine Fuchs, sous le titre L’essentiel français, aux éditions Ophrys. C’est aussi le dernier d’une longue série d’ouvrages publiés par Benoît Habert. Bilan des ressources électroniques disponibles pour l’analyse du français, ce livre est lui-même une ressource : la plus complète, la plus objective, la plus précise, la plus claire. C’est aussi la plus pratique puisque les multiples...

This chapter contains sections titled: Democracy as a Way of Life The Values of a Democratic Way of Life Intrinsic and Instrumental Values of Democracy References.

Parti INTRODUCTION Wittgenstein sometimes suggested looking on words as instruments, for example in the following passages from ...

The issue whether psychopathic offenders are practically rational has attracted philosophical attention. The problem is relevant in theoretical discussions on moral psychology and in those concerning the appropriate social response to the crimes of these individuals. We argue that classical and current experiments concerning the instrumental learning in psychopaths cannot directly support the conclusion that they have impaired instrumental rationality, construed as the ability for transferring the motivation by means-ends reasoning. In fact, we defend the different claim that these experiments (...) appear to show that psychopaths in certain circumstances are not aware of the relevant means for their ends. Moreover, we suggest how further empirical research could help to settle the issue. (shrink)

I defend an instrumentalist account of moral responsibility and adopt Manuel Vargas’ idea that our responsibility practices are justified by their effects. However, whereas Vargas gives an independent account of morally responsible agency, on my account, responsible agency is defined as the susceptibility to developing and maintaining moral agency through being held responsible. I show that the instrumentalism I propose can avoid some problems more crude forms of instrumentalism encounter by adopting aspects of Strawsonian accounts. I then show the implications (...) for our understanding of responsibility: my account requires us to adopt a graded notion of responsibility and accept the claim that certain individuals may not be responsible because they are not susceptible to being influenced by our moral responsibility practices. Finally, I discuss whether the account is committed to allowing the instrumentalization of non-responsible individuals in cases where blaming them may benefit others’ moral agency. (shrink)

This paper argues that instrumental rationality is more permissive than expected utility theory. The most compelling instrumentalist argument in favour of separability, its core requirement, is that agents with non-separable preferences end up badly off by their own lights in some dynamic choice problems. I argue that once we focus on the question of whether agents’ attitudes to uncertain prospects help define their ends in their own right, or instead only assign instrumental value in virtue of the outcomes they may (...) lead to, we see that the argument must fail. Either attitudes to prospects assign non-instrumental value in their own right, in which case we cannot establish the irrationality of the dynamic choice behaviour of agents with non-separable preferences. Or they don’t, in which case agents with non-separable preferences can avoid the problematic choice behaviour without adopting separable preferences. (shrink)

According to epistemic instrumentalism, epistemically rational beliefs are beliefs that are produced in ways that are conducive to certain ends that one wants to attain. In “Epistemic Rationality as Instrumental Rationality: A Critique,” Thomas Kelly advances various objections to epistemic instrumentalism. While I agree with the general thrust of Kelly’s objections, he does not distinguish between two forms of epistemic instrumentalism. Intellectualist forms maintain that epistemically rational beliefs are beliefs arrived at in compliance with rules that are conducive to epistemic (...) ends, such as believing true propositions and not believing false propositions. Pragmatist forms maintain that rational beliefs are those that are formed, maintained, and revised in accordance with rules that are conducive to whatever ends one wants to attain. In this paper, I argue against both forms of epistemic instrumentalism and suggest that epistemic instrumentalism grows out of a mistaken conception of what it means to say that the standards of epistemic rationality are ‘normative.’. (shrink)

Summary A new culture of mathematics was developed in sixteenth-century England, the culture of ?the mathematicalls?. Its representatives were the self-styled mathematical practitioners who presented their art as a practical and worldly activity. The careers of two practitioners, Thomas Bedwell and Thomas Hood, are used as case studies to examine the establishment of this culture of the mathematicalls. Both practitioners self-consciously used mathematical instruments as key resources in negotiating their own roles. Bedwell defined his role in contrast to mechanicians (...) and he secured patronage in military engineering and the service of the commonwealth; Hood worked in the commercial setting of London as a teacher, author, chartmaker, and retailer. Working in new contexts and dealing with new audiences of gentlemen and mechanicians, Bedwell and Hood used instruments to construct a public consensus on the status and aims of mathematics. (shrink)

My description of the cognitive processes involved in the discovery, development, and acceptance of the bacterial theory of ulcers might have left the impression that science is all in the mind (Thagard, forthcoming-b). But only part of the story of the bacterial theory of ulcers is psychological. This paper discusses the important role of physical interaction with the world by means of instruments and experiments, and the equally important role of social interactions among the medical researchers who developed the (...) theory. The main questions I want to answer are the following: 1. What instruments contributed to the development and acceptance of the new theory? 2. What kinds of experiments contributed to the development and acceptance of the new theory? 3. How did theorizing and experimentation interact in the development of new experiments and hypotheses? 4. How did social processes such as collaboration, communication, and consensus contribute to the development and widespread acceptance of the bacterial theory of ulcers? I conclude with a sketch of science as a complex system of interacting psychological, physical, and social processes. (shrink)

Political instrumentalism claims that the right to rule should be distributed such that justice is promoted best. Building on a distinction made by consequentialists in moral philosophy, I argue that instrumentalists should distinguish two levels of normative thinking about legitimacy, the critical and applied level. An indirect instrumentalism which acknowledges this distinction has significant advantages over simpler forms of instrumentalism that do not.

I've previously suggested that the historical evidence used to challenge scientific realism should lead us to embrace what I call Uniformitarianism, but many recently influential forms of scientific realism seem happy to share this commitment. I trace a number of further points of common ground that collectively constitute an appealing Middle Path between classical forms of realism and instrumentalism, and I suggest that many contemporary realists and instrumentalists have already become fellow travelers on this Middle Path without recognizing how far (...) they have thereby diverged from those who share their labels and slogans. I conclude by describing their central remaining disagreement and the sorts of evidence needed to resolve it. (shrink)

This study aims to provide a window into current developments in curatorial practice and museum studies regarding a multicultural topic within China. Our case concerns a new kind of collection of musical instruments and its unique context in a leading archaeological and cultural heritage institution. It consists of 203 traditional musical instruments, primarily of more recent origin, from all around the world with a primary focus on Eurasia. It is the only collection of this scope and theme in (...) China. It was assembled over decades by the renowned Chinese scholar Ziye Fan and curated by the authors at the Yungang Academy in Datong, China, in 2024. The Yungang Academy is situated at the Yungang Grottoes, a 5th-century Buddhist UNESCO World Heritage Site, which is also known for its music-related, multicultural Silk Road iconography. The study begins by analyzing this context, followed by an introduction to the collection. It then proceeds with a critical reflection on the curation process regarding preservation, documentation, classification, organological analysis, and the creation of a new Chinese musical instrument nomenclature. Within the Chinese museum landscape, this project can be characterized as a pioneering undertaking. The ethical provenance and unique placement context of the collection, which resonates with the collection’s topic, invite new research perspectives. The study investigates whether the collection can serve as a pioneering postcolonial model for curating world heritage in a Chinese context. We discuss the collection’s acquisition history and the symbolic value of its placement. As a result, the collection is established as an example of a novel postcolonial approach in China, bearing great symbolic significance for equal cultural exchanges and dialogue. (shrink)

Victor Tadros’ The Ends of Harm is the most recent systematic attempt to defend the good old utilitarian justification of punishment. The attempt fails for a variety of reasons, which are here explored. First, the attempt presupposes an implausible account of human’s psychology. Second, the attempt confuses an attack on retributivism with an attack on certain criminal justice systems. Finally, Tadros admits that his justification of punishment is best seen as a mere step along the road to full-blown abolitionism – (...) and so he unwittingly admits the extraordinarily thin sense in which he could be said to be really attempting to justify punishment. (shrink)

The sciences improve by extending our sensory and cognitive abilities through extrapolation, conversion, and augmentation, as Paul Humphreys has argued. While the opacity of some epistemic enhancers may challenge certain kinds of scientific understanding, I argue that such enhancement is compatible with and extends pragmatic understanding. Drawing on and developing aspects of an epistemology for instruments, I suggest that instrumental functions provide the grounds for extending pragmatic understanding when an inquiry procedure can rely on the instrument’s function to achieve (...) some aim. By continually improving and extending our abilities by relying on instruments, the sciences improve our understanding of the world by extending and enhancing our practical and instrumental facility with it. (shrink)

Prior research on sustainability in business often assumes that decisions on social and environmental investments are made for instrumental reasons, which points to causal relationships between corporate financial performance and corporate social and environmental commitment. In other words, social or environmental commitment should predict higher financial performance. The theoretical premise of sustainability, however, is based on a systems perspective, which implies a tighter integration between corporate financial performance and corporate commitment to social and environmental issues. In this paper, we describe (...) the important theoretical differences between an instrumental and integrative logic in managing business sustainability. We test the presence of each logic using data from 738 firms over 13 years and find evidence of integrative logic applied in business. (shrink)

The ArugmentThis essay answers a single question: what was Robert Hooke, the Royal Society's curator of experiments, doing in his well-known 1665 work,Micrographia?Hooke was articulating a “universal cure of the mind” capable of bringing about a “reformation in Philosophy,” a change in philosophy's interpretive practices and organization. The work explicated the interpretive and political foundations for a community of optical instrument users coextensive with the struggling Royal Society. Standard observational practices would overcome the problem of using nonstandard instruments, while (...) inherent inrepresentation– the interpretive practice championed in the text – were important theological and political meanings. Hooke's kind of experimental philosophy undermined the claims made by “atheists” and “enthusiasts” – the enemies of the restored church and state – while also producing useful knowledge. Equally important, Hooke modeled the community described inMicrographiaupon the classicalres publica, but his community made important concessions to Restoration political realities, especially the growing role of commercial or transactional relationships. (shrink)

Epistemic instrumentalists think that epistemic normativity is just a special kind of instrumental normativity. According to them, you have epistemic reason to believe a proposition insofar as doing so is conducive to certain epistemic goals or aims—say, to believe what is true and avoid believing what is false. Perhaps the most prominent challenge for instrumentalists in recent years has been to explain, or explain away, why one’s epistemic reasons often do not seem to depend on one’s aims. This challenge can (...) arguably be met. But a different challenge looms: instrumental reasons in the practical domain have various properties that epistemic reasons do not seem to share. In this chapter, we offer a way for epistemic instrumentalists to overcome this challenge. Our main thesis takes the form of a conditional: if we accept an independently plausible transmission principle of instrumental normativity, we can maintain that epistemic reasons in fact do share the relevant properties of practical instrumental reasons. In addition, we can explain why epistemic reasons seem to lack these properties in the first place: some properties of epistemic reasons are elusive, or easy to overlook, because we tend to think and talk about epistemic reasons in an ‘elliptical’ manner. (shrink)

The thesis of instrumental convergence holds that a wide range of ends have common means: for instance, self preservation, desire preservation, self improvement, and resource acquisition. Bostrom contends that instrumental convergence gives us reason to think that "the default outcome of the creation of machine superintelligence is existential catastrophe". I use the tools of decision theory to investigate whether this thesis is true. I find that, even if intrinsic desires are randomly selected, instrumental rationality induces biases towards certain kinds of (...) choices. Firstly, a bias towards choices which leave less up to chance. Secondly, a bias towards desire preservation, in line with Bostrom's conjecture. And thirdly, a bias towards choices which afford more choices later on. I do not find biases towards any other of the convergent instrumental means on Bostrom's list. I conclude that the biases induced by instrumental rationality at best weakly support Bostrom's conclusion that machine superintelligence is likely to lead to existential catastrophe. (shrink)