It is a gun for hire that can be employed in the service of whatever goals we have, good or bad.”Įven adherents of rationality as instrumental rationality must, however, grant the possibility of some rational criticism of ends. It cannot tell us where to go at best it can tell us how to get there. As Simon, a modern defender of the instrumental conception of rationality puts it : “eason is wholly instrumental. Instrumental rationality deals only with the most effective and efficient means to reach given ends. In this conception, it is not contrary to reason, as Hume famously remarked, “to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my finger”. In line with Hume's dictum “Reason is, and ought only to be, the slave of the passions…”, the instrumental conception of rationality assumes that the fixation of goals or ends falls outside the province of rationality (reason).

The person's beliefs can be seen as part of the instrument and therefore themselves subject to rational criticism and candidates for being replaced by better ones. This conception is called instrumental rationality, since a person's rationality serves as an instrument in the service of this person's ends or desires. The most dominant conception of rationality restricts the domain of rationality to the effective and efficient realization of ends or desires, where the efficiency or effectiveness of a particular realization is judged against the background of one's beliefs. Louis Bucciarelli, in Philosophy of Technology and Engineering Sciences, 2009 4.4 Fixation of means versus fixation of endsĪ long-standing issue in discussions about rationality concerns whether the norms of rationality only apply to the fixation of means, once ends are given, or whether the fixation of ends may also be subject to rational evaluation.

Logic young sinatra 1 instrumental