I agree that "rationalism" has an ideological implication that "the study of rationality" (or "rationology"?) does not.
I also think that for quite a lot of LW, "rationalism" is the correct word (although we may wish to use a different one for signaling purposes).
I agree that "rationalism" has an ideological implication that "the study of rationality" (or "rationology"?) does not.
"Rationology" is much, much worse, because it's an "-ology" and a new term that wasn't historically used much. (I invite you to flee in horror from the stuff that google search on "rationology" turns up.)
I feel that the term "rationalism", as opposed to "rationality", or "study of rationality", has undesirable connotations. My concerns are presented well by Eric Drexler in the article For Darwin’s sake, reject "Darwin-ism" (and other pernicious terms):
So, my suggestion is to use "rationality" consistently and to avoid using "rationalism". Via similarity to "scientist" and "physicist", "rationalist" doesn't seem to have the same problem. Discuss.
(Typical usage on Less Wrong is this way already, 3720 Google results for "rationality" and 1210 for "rationalist", against 251 for "rationalism". I've made this post as a reference for when someone uses "rationalism".)