Logical empiricism as critical theory? the debate continues

Is logical empiricism incompatible with a critical social science? The longstanding assumption that it is incompatible has been prominent in recent debates aboutwelfare economics. Sen’s development of a critical and descriptively rich welfare eco nomics is taken by writers such as Putnam, Walsh and Sen to involve the excising of theinfluence of logical empiricism on neo-classical economics. However, this view standsin contrast to the descriptively rich contributions to political economy of members ofthe left Vienna Circle, such as Otto Neurath. This paper considers the compatibilityof the meta-theoretical commitments of Neurath and others in the logical empiricisttradition with this first-order critical political economy