Instrumentalism is one of a multitude of modern schools of thought created by
scientists and philosophers throughout the 20th century. Its premises and
practices were most clearly and persuasively stated by two
philosophers—John Dewey and Karl Popper. Independently, they defined the school
quite similarly, but their judgments of it were irreconcilable.
Dewey was a practitioner of instrumentalism who, while fearing that
the name was easily misunderstood, adopted it for his modernization of
tools of induction and his denial of reality behind experience. Popper was a
critic who judged its insistence on induction and its denial of reality
behind experience to be hopelessly flawed. These contrary judgments endowed
the school with the legacy of confusion and ambiguity described below.
This article reports the definition of instrumentalism accepted by these two
philosophers. It explains the grounds of their irreconcilable judgments, now
embedded in popular understanding of the school. And it describes the practice of
followers of each philosopher, demonstrating that neither philosopher's
judgments have achieved universal assent, leaving the school's meaning and
legitimacy in modern scientific inquiry indeterminate.
Instrumentalism defined In 1925, John Dewey published an article
entitled "The Development of American Pragmatism," in which he defined
instrumentalism to distinguish it from schools known as "pragmatism" and
"experimentalism." In 1956, Karl Popper published an article entitled "Three
Views Concerning Human Knowledge," in which he defined instrumentalism to
distinguish it from "essentialism" and a "third view"—his own-which he came to
call "critical rationalism." Dewey's article was republished in 1984
in John Dewey: The Later Works. Popper's article was republished in 1962 in
Conjectures and Refutations. The following four premises defining
instrumentalism are taken from these sources. Premises 1 and 2 were accepted
by both philosophers and the general public. Premises 3 and 4 were and remain
controversial, and will be analyzed in the next section.
1) Theories are instruments, tools-of-the-trade of thinking.
Dewey: Popper:
2) Theories are tested by consequences, applying the instrumental criterion of
judgment. Dewey:
Popper: 3) Theory-development requires inductive
reasoning, basing general statements on limited observations.
Dewey: Popper:
4) There are no realities beyond what can be known using instrumental
theories. Dewey:
Popper: Instrumentalism is often identified with
other schools which share some of these premises: positivism, pragmatism,
operationalism, behaviorism, anti-realism, empiricism,
consequentialism. Instrumentalism judged
Dewey and Popper disagreed on premises 3 and 4. The primary grounds of their
disagreement were expounded in the 1930s. In 1935, Popper published Logic
of Scientific Discovery, in which he used traditional logical forms to
criticize modern schools of thought, including instrumentalism. In 1938,
Dewey published Logic: the Theory of Inquiry, in which he reconstructed
traditional logical forms to make them usable by modern schools of thought.
Neither of these volumes used the name instrumentalism, but both discussed and
judged the premises above. = Popper's critique=
The opening paragraph of Popper's The Logic of Scientific Discovery observed
that all modern empirical schools accept premises 1 and 2, which he later
identified with Instrumentalism: Several paragraphs later, he admitted
the popularity of induction—premise 3—but denied its capacity to generate
logically true theories: Popper's reference to swans recalls a
famous historic error: the inductively-derived belief that all
swans are white. He labelled the practice illogical: "Now in my view
there is no such thing as induction. Thus, inference to theories, from
singular statements which are 'verified by experience', is logically
inadmissible." Popper rejected inductive reasoning in
favor of deductive reasoning because he maintained that the former could not
achieve logical form. Deduction can move from a self-evident universal statement,
such as "All men are mortal", to true singular statements that every
individual human is mortal, because the universal statement already embraces all
singulars. But there can be no principle by which a singular statement can
justify a universal, because no singular statement can report observing "all" of
any kind. Popper rejected induction—premise 3–-but
not premise 2—the criterion of instrumental efficiency. He argued that
deduction could serve modern science, not by assuming general statements to be
true, but by providing general statements testable by their
consequences. Falsification "works" when experience contradicts a theory's
predictions: "it must be possible for an empirical scientific system to be
refuted by experience." Popper rejected premise 4 because it
denies the distinction between pure and applied science. He granted that science
might be viewed from an empirical or instrumental point of view, but asserted
that an epistemological or reality point-of-view was equally valid, meaning
logical truths can be found independently of experience. His
evidence was that pure sciences such as mathematics and logic can make true
statements without observing facts-of-the-case.
Logically true theories don't require establishing facts-of-the-case; they can
be conjectural myths, derived from inspiration or chance, which are "...
psychologically or genetically a priori, i.e., prior to all observational
experience." They can also precede observation or recognition of
similarities and differences. Instrumentalism's denial of
logically-certain deductive truths—premise 4—threatens "... the idea
of the objectivity of knowledge and of common standards of criticism or
rationality." Because Instrumentalists claim that "truth" is always
situational, they forfeit their capacity to explain sciences in which the
instrumental criterion of judgment cannot be applied. In pure sciences, the
criterion is logically-established truth, not what works or is useful given
temporary conditions. = Dewey's reconstruction=
Dewey's Logic of 1938 was very different from Popper's Logic of 1935. While
Popper used traditional logical forms to criticize modern practices such as
induction, Dewey revised those forms. He addressed the problem of whether
scientific inquiry "can develop in its own ongoing course the logical standards
and forms to which further inquiry shall submit." His affirmative answer is the
substance of premise 4, which traditional logic led Popper to deny.
Dewey's Logic did not name instrumentalism or pragmatism, but
asserted that both schools treat theories as tools for producing
consequences. Consequences are "necessary tests of the validity of
propositions, provided these consequences are operationally
instituted and are such as to resolve the specific problem evoking the
operations, ..." When Dewey analyzed induction—premise
3—he accepted its standard meaning of processes for developing general
propositions from particular cases. He explained why Aristotle's understanding
of these methods was no longer acceptable.
Popper partially repudiated Aristotle's belief that superior intellects can
"intuit the essence" of eternal forms by observing physically changing forms:
each observed swan is an imperfect sample of universal-but-unobservable
swan-ness. But he provided no rational means to carry out induction's necessary
function of establishing the facts-of-the-case by relating singular
observations of kinds to general statements about kinds. Dewey's
instrumental analysis did provide such means by reconstructing both induction
and deduction. One may think of a singular observation,
i.e., "this swan is white", as an isolated fact without general reference.
But Dewey insisted that such an observation necessarily involves the
general meaning of "swan" as a particular kind of "bird". If one were
not familiar with a kind of animal having numerous well-established
characteristics, one could not name it either "bird" or "swan". Kinds,
including species, do not exist apart from experience. They are created by
inquiries which—contrary to Popper—use induction to distinguish stable
characteristics of experience from accidental or irrelevant
characteristics. Dewey argued that modern science does
not treat particular observations as knowledge of what is real: one does not
assume, after a few observations, that whiteness is a defining characteristic
of swans. Particular observations "are selectively discriminated so as to
determine a problem whose nature is such as to indicate possible modes of
solution." Observations become facts-of-the-case only after being
causally related to a problem. Dewey supported this theoretical
generalization with an example of medical knowledge. The case of malaria
shows how modern induction avoids Popper's charge of requiring endless
observations. After certain "singular" symptoms came
to be recognized as constituting a disease, it was named malaria—literally
"bad air"—as a common-sense conjecture about its cause—premise 1. Popper might
have considered that conjecture to be testable by predicting that the disease
would be absent in environments with "good air." But testing a prediction
about air quality could not have led to new insights. It was an insignificant
fact-of-the-case. When further observations—applying
premise 3—identified the conjunction of parasites with the disease, experiments
revealed the life-history of particular parasites and their relation to a
particular kind of mosquito: anopheles. At each stage of inquiry, particular
observations [inductions] led to general hypotheses [deductions] guiding further
observations to establish logically-warranted particular and
general propositions. Multiple theories generated by induction were used
throughout the process of inquiry. They evolved from quite conjectural to quite
confirmed generalizations, but never from "conjectural myths" to "truths"
independent of observable life processes.
The result of this hypothetical-deductive sequence was to
establish malaria as a specific kind of disease with a determinate etiology.
Dewey affirmed the logical force of this demonstration. It provides the logical
principle justifying induction, the possibility of which Popper denied.
With this logical principle, Dewey validated induction—premise 3—as well as
his rejection of realms such as pure science capable of establishing
objective truths unknowable by applied science—premise 4. He argued that
warranted generalizations never exist apart from experience. They arise only
in the process of inquiry, making invalid any claim to truths "logically
prior to observation or recognition of similarities and differences."
But the dependence of warranted theories on situational factors—induction—does
not eliminate objective standards of judgment, as Popper feared. Both ends
and means have consequences that can be judged more or less instrumentally
efficient—premise 2. In summary, Dewey's reconstruction of
logic directly refuted Popper's argument for rejecting induction and for
maintaining the distinction between pure and applied science. His instrumentalism
requires hypothetical-deductive operations to establish warranted
assertions to solve problems—employing all four premises.
Instrumentalism practiced Dewey and Popper never confronted their
differences. Consequently, the advocate's and the critic's
irreconcilable patterns of thought remain identified with the school.
Current use of the name embraces this incoherent legacy.
To exemplify this continuing ambiguity, this article examines recent practice by
significant people influenced by each philosopher's view of instrumentalism.
Economist Milton Friedman identified himself with the theory and practice of
Popper, while philosopher Larry Hickman and economist John Fagg Foster
identified themselves with Dewey. Should any of them be called adherents of
instrumentalism? = Milton Friedman's practice of
Instrumentalism= Milton Friedman was a Nobel laureate in
economics who contributed to the two branches into which economics is often
divided: a pure value-free science—positive economics—and an
applied normative science—political economy. He participated in the Mount
Pelerin Society to which Karl Popper belonged. In 1953 he published an
essay—"The Methodology of Positive Economics"—which came to identify him
with instrumentalism despite never mentioning that school, or Popper, or
Dewey. Friedman explicitly embraced premises 1
and 2 when he identified the task of positive economics as providing "a
system of generalizations or conjectures that can be used to make correct
predictions about the consequences of any change in circumstances." But his
position on premises 3 and 4 was ambiguous. Contrary to Popper, he
appeared to approve of basing theoretical conjectures on
facts-of-the-case provided by inductive observations—premise 3:
But he joined Popper in rejecting premise 4—that conjectures must derive
from descriptively true assumptions. This rejection appears to make
irrelevant the practice of relating theories to facts by induction.
In words close to Popper's praise of false conjectures, Friedman praised
purely mental hypotheses derived from inaccurate assumptions:
Friedman's 1953 essay provoked extensive criticism from both orthodox and
heterodox economists. In 1959, economist Lawrence Boland published "A Critique of
Friedman's Critics", in which he asserted that all critics were wrong
because they failed to understand that Friedman was an Instrumentalist.
The "coherent philosophy" which Boland identified with approval as
instrumentalism included premises 1 and 2, acceptable to both Popper and
Dewey—using theories as instruments to generate successful predictions. But
Boland left out of his definition premises 3 and 4—the premises Popper
rejected along with the name. Because Friedman downplayed inductive operations
and praised unrealistic hypotheses, Boland felt justified in praising him as
an instrumentalist, although the same logic would justify praising Popper as
an instrumentalist. Boland's paper generated further debate
over the meaning of instrumentalism and whether the school Popper rejected could
be made acceptable. In 1989, economists Abraham Hirsch and Neil De Marchi
published a detailed analysis of Friedman's professional work, which
found Friedman's practice inconsistent and Boland's interpretation misleading.
After analyzing Friedman's theoretical and practical writings, Hirsch and De
Marchi reached convoluted conclusions. They agreed that Friedman sometimes
practiced what Boland called instrumentalism, applying premises 1 and
2. But they also found much of his work compatible with Dewey's instrumentalism
but not Popper's—applying premises 3 and 4.
Hirsch and De Marchi recognized the irreconcilability of Popper's "notions
of deductive explanations" which avoid induction and Dewey's "process-view of
inquiry" which requires both induction and deduction. They concluded that these
represent "two types of instrumentalism." While Boland placed
Friedman—with approval—in the tradition of Popper, they placed Friedman—with
approval but contrary to Boland—more in the tradition of Dewey.
But rather than claim that a divided Instrumentalism embraces irreconcilable
premises, Hirsch and De Marchi yielded the Institutionalist title to the more
widely recognized interpretation of Popper. Still disagreeing with Boland's
interpretation, they considered it less ambiguous to call Friedman a pragmatist
in the tradition of Dewey. This decision leaves unresolved the
meaning and scientific legitimacy of both instrumentalism and pragmatism.
Boland found instrumentalism acceptable as long as it rejects premises 3 and 4,
while Hirsch and De Marchi found it unacceptable so defined.
= Larry Hickman's practice of Instrumentalism=
Larry Hickman, a professor of philosophy, became Director of the
Center for Dewey Studies at Southern Illinois University in 1993. In 1990, he
published John Dewey's Pragmatic Technology, expressing the current
meaning and relevance of Dewey's instrumentalism, despite his decision
not to use that label in his title. Hickman's study places Dewey's pattern
of thought in current philosophical context. He argues that it is best
understood as a "philosophy of technology" and a modern version of
pragmatism. Hickman's first chapter confirms Hirsch
and De Marchi's finding that multiple and irreconcilable meaning of
Instrumentalism are common. He labels meanings incompatible with Dewey's
thinking "naïve" and "straight-line" instrumentalism.
Straight-line instrumentalism separates means from ends by treating theories as
tools "in the mind;" as purely mental conjectures. This meaning affects all
four premises of instrumentalism. If theories are simply "in the mind",
then applying and testing them can likewise be "in the mind", accomplished
by symbol manipulation rather than by observable actions. This interpretation
makes premises 3 and 4 unnecessary, leaving premises 1 and 2, which were
acceptable to Popper. Hickman follows Dewey in arguing that
theories are not "in the mind" but are statements of potential ways of acting
that are tested by application in concrete situations. Competent inquiry
starts by judging a situation to be undesirable and seeks an "end" judged
more desirable. It creates theoretical and physical tools as "means" to that
end. Both mental and physical tools, when they work, become technological
artifacts, available for further inquiries and knowings.
This sequence of competent inquiry expresses Dewey's endorsement of all
four premises of Instrumentalism as a technological enterprise.
Hickman defends Dewey's theory and practice against other philosophers
claiming the name instrumentalism, but does not himself adopt that name.
Whether "pragmatic technology" used in his title is a satisfactory new name for
this school remains doubtful, since neither of these words has a
well-established meaning in philosophy. Current status of Instrumentalism
Popper's theoretical destruction of premises 3 and 4 is widely accepted and
none of the men above chose to call himself an instrumentalist, but the few
scholars who endorse Dewey's defense of premises 3 and 4--here represented by
Larry Hickman- integrate his theory with their practice.
References