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Logical empiricism is not frequently associated with social and political philosophy, but several of the logical empiricists were politically active during their earlier careers and did consider the ways in which their scientific philosophy could provide tools for political engagement. The scientific worldview that they explicitly endorsed was intended to be allied with other modernist projects for the improvement of ordinary life. This chapter argues that some of the philosophical tools and frameworks they developed for those ends can be fruitfully reclaimed by contemporary analytic philosophers engaged in thinking about our social world. Rudolf Carnap’s work, for example, is complementary to some contemporary work on conceptual engineering, such as Sally Haslanger’s work on ameliorative concepts. Additionally, Otto Neurath’s holism, and discussion of the work of auxiliary motives, can help us think through situations in which we have competing empirically adequate theories. I will demonstrate the potential benefits of these frameworks by showing how they might be brought to bear on contemporary issues such as misogyny, transphobia, and scientific racism. I do not claim that the logical empiricists can solve those issues for us, but rather that their work is friendly to the work of philosophers trying to deploy analytic philosophy for liberatory ends. In other words, I argue that there are potential benefits for our viewing the contemporary political turn in analytic philosophy as a return to the political in scientific philosophy.
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