Instrumentalism / Constructive Empiricism
Theories are tools for predicting phenomena and need not be true.
What it claims
Instrumentalism takes the goal of scientific theories to be not the description of unobservable reality but the organization and prediction of observable phenomena. What this position denies is the inference from predictive success to the truth of a theory. The central argument is underdetermination.
Nearby positions
Goes together with
Opposed to
Key thinkers
Bas van Fraassen · Pierre Duhem · Ernst Mach · Larry Laudan · Arthur Fine