From analytic pragmatism to historical materialism: Frankfurt school critical theory and the Quine‐Duhem thesis

European Journal of Philosophy 31 (3):576-599 (2023)
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Abstract

My aim in this paper is to explore an affinity between early critical theory and analytical philosophy. The affinity is in a fairly unexpected area: philosophy of science. I argue that early critical theory embraces a view of science which is a natural if somewhat unfamiliar extension of the pragmatist one defended by Quine. In particular, I argue that Horkheimer has a version of the Quine-Duhem thesis (“underdetermination of theory choice by the evidence”). How do the Frankfurt and analytical versions of the underdetermination thesis differ? Quine and others have taken the thesis to motivate a form of pragmatism. What this means is that it is certain interests that ultimately determine the choice of theory: chief among them, an interest in simplicity of our theories. However, the Critical Theorists offer us a distinctly historical materialist version of the underdetermination thesis, in which it is the imperatives of the prevailing mode of production, for example, capitalism, which are decisive. The result is an unfamiliar Marxist version of an otherwise familiar thesis from the analytic tradition.

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Jacob McNulty
Columbia University

References found in this work

Ontological relativity and other essays.Willard Van Orman Quine (ed.) - 1969 - New York: Columbia University Press.
Two Dogmas of Empiricism.Willard V. O. Quine - 1951 - Philosophical Review 60 (1):20–43.
Word and Object.Willard Van Orman Quine - 1960 - Les Etudes Philosophiques 17 (2):278-279.
Critique of Pure Reason.I. Kant - 1787/1998 - Philosophy 59 (230):555-557.

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