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.

Drexler's article is, in my opinon, simply inaccurate. The suffix -ism is used not only for political, ideological, and religious opinions, but also for philosophical opinions and theories in exact sciences and mathematics whose accuracy is a matter of dispute, or has historically been a matter of dispute. He's also displaying what appear to be strange gaps in his vocabulary -- Mendelism (alternatively Mendelianism) and Newtonianism have been widely used terms for centuries, as a simple search of Google Books will show.

In the concrete case of Darwinism, the term is very useful to differentiate Darwinian evolution from other theories of biological evolution that have been proposed historically, like Lamarckism or intelligent design.

Connotations don't study history or philosophy, what matters in the context of Drexler's article is prevalence in popular perception, and resulting normative recommendation.

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

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

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