Word.ws English Dictionary

instrumentalisms

instrumentalisms is the plural of instrumentalism.

Meaning of instrumentalism

Noun

instrumentalism (countable and uncountable, plural instrumentalisms)

  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.
    • 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.1908, Josiah Royce, The Problem of Truth in Light of Recent Discussion

Questions about instrumentalisms

What is instrumentalisms the plural of?
Instrumentalisms is the plural of instrumentalism.

Words near instrumentalisms in the dictionary

  1. instrumentalise
  2. instrumentalised
  3. instrumentalises
  4. instrumentalising
  5. instrumentalism
  6. instrumentalisms
  7. instrumentalist
  8. instrumentalists
  9. instrumentalities
  10. instrumentality
  11. instrumentalization

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: instrumentalisms (page history and authors); instrumentalism (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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