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

As for the terms "rationalism" and "rationalist," they have a strong established historical meaning quite different from the way they're commonly used by many people here. The first thing that occurs to me when I hear them is the old philosophical notion of "rationalism" as opposed to "empiricism."

Also, it's important to note that historically these have never been terms of uncontroversial and unambiguous praise. In many contexts, they have been traditionally understood to convey criticism, not compliment. For example, when Michael Oakeshott titled his essay Rationalism in Politics, he definitely didn't aim to make the reader positively disposed towards the subject from the title. Whether and to what extent people on LW tend to commit the same errors and hold the same unsubstantiated beliefs that have traditionally been connoted by this term is certainly a complex and amusing question.

As the bottom line, the "rationalism" terminology is probably too deeply embedded in the LW folklore to ever be abandoned, but I would certainly advise against using it when talking to outsiders. Even if people understand the term precisely the way it's used here, describing oneself like that explicitly is a status-lowering way of qualifying oneself.

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 think people confusing rationalism with one side of the age old rationalism/empiricism debate in philosophy is a much more probable event than someone confusing it with a faith based ideology.

I disagree mildly. As a practical matter, I see your point that we want to dissociate what we do at LW from the sorts of things that ideologies do badly (insularity from disagreement, cultishness, faith, etc.)

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.

Does the same reasoning apply to all -isms? Empircism, materialism, internalism and externalism to name a few.

ism has a few different uses it can indicate a group of principles (empiricism), or a political movement (socialism), or a type of discrimination (sexism).

Your worry seems to be that "rationalism" looks like a political movement, but that sort of thing is more likely to be determined by how the people who use the term of themselves act. And that problem does not go away by refusing to use certain words. If people who call themselves rationalist try to spread their ideas through exerting political force rather than calm argumentation then it is going to look like a political movement, whether or not a ism is being used.

If you're worried about this then you need to deal with the underlying problems, not just worry about words (after all, I'm not aware that empiricists have this concern).

As an aside, I think the main reason for not using it is that it already taken: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rationalism-empiricism/

Agreed.

"Rationality" can also have some bad or incorrect-from-our-perspective connotations — Spock, Ayn Rand, sociopathic CDT-like agents in economic/game-theoretic models, etc. — but at least without the "ism" it doesn't sound like we're pledging our allegiance to an ideology, and we can explain what we mean by it without people saying "But philosophers X, Y, and Z were 'rationalists' and they didn't believe that!"

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.

"Rationalism" has a meaning that "rationality" does not: namely, the attitude that rationality is a good thing. You can't just throw out a word without offering a working replacement.

I agree that 'rationalism' has undesirable connotations.

'rationalist' also has these connotations, but I am not sure what other name I should call someone who devotes themselves to 'rationality'. Ideas?

Agreed. Related: -isms give me a prickly feeling of "self-trusting system".

Although I'm not sure why I get that impression, "rationalism" to me seems to imply, not the practice of engaging in rationality, but the practice of rationalizing.

Well, my own understanding is that "rationality" is the art of being rational (of using reason and its related tools to improve your map of reality, and therefore be able to steer the future in a direction you desire) while "rationalism" is the philosophy that says using "rationality" is a good thing.

For example, a post that explains what Bayes' theorem is and how to use it, what is the "fundamental attribution error" and how to avoid it, or explaining the basis of game theory are "rationality". A post that explains the importance of "wanting to be stronger", how you shouldn't accept blissful ignorance (aka "doublethink") or why we need to "raise the sanity waterline" are "rationalism".

That's the difference between saying "how you do it" and "why you should do it".

Of course in many cases, the limit isn't clear. Words are fuzzy boundaries, after all.

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. Discus

A while back I argued against using the term "rationalist".

Ernst Mayr's What Evolution Is uses "evolutionism" for "belief in evolution" and isn't even slightly worse because of it. I'm not sure we should let people who are wrong whenever they use a certain word prevent us from using that word. I feel the connotation, but I know where it's coming from.

As for "rationalism", I don't see a good reason someone would prefer it over "rationality" and it isn't understood with the same separate meaning for everyone. So until a need to universalize it comes along, I'll stick with "rationality", and would recommend the same, for those less-ambiguity points. Clear communication matters, and such.

Yes. The implied claim ownership of the word "rationalism" is more than a little annoying.