Home – Home – Jornals – Philosophy of Sciences 2025 number 4

Quine’s philosophy is considered to be an important stage in the development of analytical philosophy. However, some researchers see in the philosophy of Quine and his followers “the decline of analytical philosophy in all but name.” The article discusses the reasons for this point of view by stating the incompatibility of the scientism of analytical philosophy and Quine’s thesis of the continuity of science and philosophy. It is shown that Quine’s thesis is based on an appeal to skeptical arguments that contradict the concept of scientism as such, since they include the following elements alien to science: holism (the Duhem-Quine thesis), the limitation of scientific and philosophical discourses to first-order logic, thought experiments (the “anthropological” argument about the uncertainty of radical translation), the revival of metaphysics (Quine’s criterion of existence and ontological obligations). The conclusion is made about the absence of scientism in Quine’s analytical philosophy as its essential characteristic. Although Quine’s advocacy of naturalism in philosophy is often considered as the evidence of its scientism, there are doubts about whether naturalism itself is compatible with analytical philosophy, as well as whether Quine is even an analytical philosopher in its current understanding.,