Note on Terminology: "Rationality", not "Rationalism"

Vladimir_Nesov

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):

To call something an “ism” suggests that it is a matter ideology or faith, like Trotskyism or creationism. In the evolution wars, the term “evolutionism” is used to insinuate that the modern understanding of the principles, mechanisms, and pervasive consequences of evolution is no more than the dogma of a sect within science. It creates a false equivalence between a mountain of knowledge and the emptiness called “creationism”.

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".)

To call something an “ism” suggests that it is a matter ideology or faith, like Trotskyism or creationism. In the evolution wars, the term “evolutionism” is used to insinuate that the modern understanding of the principles, mechanisms, and pervasive consequences of evolution is no more than the dogma of a sect within science. It creates a false equivalence between a mountain of knowledge and the emptiness called “creationism”.

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.

But the thing is: rationality is an ideology when it's used to the degree we do here. We might want to consciously not refer to it as such for PR purposes, but we still ought to be clear on the priority we place on being rational.

Taboo "ideology". According to the inferences you've borrowed from your usage of the word, mathematics is also an ideology (adhered to by mathematicians), which doesn't sound right.

I don't think the accurate analogy is with mathematics itself.

Consider the belief that the universe must be fundamentally mathematical in nature, that if some aspect of it appears not to admit of mathematical description that's just because we don't understand it well enough yet, or our tools can't handle the complexity or somesuch, not because of any fundamental incompatibility.

That belief (to which I and probably most readers here subscribe) is an ideology as the term is being used here.

I will suggest that belief is to rationalism as mathematics is to rationality.

6DSimon15y

When words end in -ism, I tend to think of them as a framework or philosophy that is applicable in general terms, on a day-to-day basis. This has negative associations and examples (i.e. Darwinism, creationism), but on the whole I see it as something that applies strongly to what LWers mean by rationality, particularly instrumental rationality. Mathematics might also be appropriately described that way, but not I think when it comes to mathematicians, who certainly use mathematics as a primary framework for their jobs, but may compartmentalize the rest of their daily activities and use non-mathematical approaches there. A lot of LW topics might appropriately be described as "mathematicism" in this sense, for example posts that give general day-to-day advice based on game theory or decision theory. Edit: On further thought, my two examples actually don't match my stated criteria, since they're not about day-to-day activity. My revised explanation is that it has less to do with how often the ideas are used, and more to do with how much the person consciously identifies themselves with (or, in the case of "Darwinism", identifies other people with) the philosophy as a kind of group membership or point of pride. I think rationality, and rationalists, fit under that -ism-ness as well.

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Note on Terminology: "Rationality", not "Rationalism"

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Note on Terminology: "Rationality", not "Rationalism"

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