Yes, 'rationalism', is a specific thing in the academic discipline of philosophy, but the rationalist community isn't an academic community so using a term that existed and meant something even before the specific academic jargon was coined only seems problematic if you somehow believe the academic philosophers should always and forever be granted linguistic priority.
And anyways, I suspect the idea that "rationality comes prior to experience" is almost certainly true, albeit in a weak, tho profound, sense. For one, nothing can learn, i.e. form or update beliefs or theories, without a pre-existing algorithm to do so.
> ... That's not the way the 'rationalists' are using it, and what's more, the way they are using it is kinda crude, even if we ignore the fact it displays a kind of illiteracy, or at least, a disinterest in the history of thought, to re-use a really common term in a totally unrelated way.
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> That's also what comes across from the stuff they write. What I've read is clever, well written, well thought out, but also profoundly ignorant of the tradition of thinking about the topics they're interested in. You can't help but be crude if you just try a naive response, without first looking at how other people have addressed the problem at hand. So it comes across as the philosophical equivalent of that guy you met once who's convinced he has invented a new kind of maths without the number zero, because 'zero doesn't exist'. It might have been an interesting debate 2000 years ago, but things have moved on.
The rationalist community is a loose agglomeration of people interested in a bunch of different topics, with the kind of binding focus on forming or acquiring (more) accurate beliefs and acting (more) effectively in the real world. There's an incredibility variety and diversity of interests, backgrounds, and knowledge across a huge number of philosophies, schools, academic disciplines, and intellectual pursuits.
It's interesting that you claim that they "[display] a kind of illiteracy" as it seems clear to me, from reading a lot of the work of the members of the rationalist community, that (a) a lot of those members are perfectly aware of philosophical rationalism; (b) the community doesn't ascribe to anything that anyone terms 'rationalism'; and (c) almost everyone rejects philosophical rationalism as being true or useful.
Among the various members of the community, some of whom don't identify as members too, there's a lot of frequent and deep referencing of academic philosophy, so the claim that the community as a whole is unaware of "how other people have addressed the problem at hand" is just flat wrong. But the rationalist community is more like pre-professional science in that almost everyone is an amateur, there's almost no (formal) gatekeeping. So yes, it's absolutely true that there are many people in or interacting the community that are relatively ignorant of lots of different things like your example of someone convinced that they've invented a new school of mathematics.
And besides all of that, there's a lot of utility, to lots of people, particularly the participants, in debating something that you or academic philosophers might be convinced 'everyone' else has moved on from.
I get what you're saying about academic jargon, but it's honestly on the level of a term like 'imperative programming', 'darwinism', or 'boolean logic'. Except, it's like 500 years old, so perhaps even more extreme.
I just don't feel like it would be a good start for a bunch of people who wanted to discuss maths to redefine the term 'boolean' to mean being smarter than other people. I equally don't think it's a good start to call yourself a rationalist when you're actually an empiricist. It's not an obscure term. It's the kind of thing you learn in school, if you take a philosophy class at A-level.
When you talk about 'frequent and deep referencing', I would very much hope that they would be aware of philosophical rationalism. It's literally the most influential tradition of thought in the last five centuries. I also can imagine that if you spent enough time reading, you might transition from the sort of person who would identify as a 'rationalist', to somebody who might have interesting comments on philosophical rationalism. I also feel like work is done by building on other people's work. That's as true in philosophy as it is in any field. You won't make interesting work impossible by starting from scratch, but you do make it really unlikely - sort of like trying to build a steam engine using an anvil and tongs.
Nobody who had a basic grounding in philosophy would use a word like rationalist to mean 'very rational' in the same way that nobody who had a basic understanding of physics would use the word gravity to mean 'heavy stuff'. It's literally that bad.
Realistically, if you define a group by a word that sounds good, but displays ignorance, you're going to get a lot of good sounding ignorance. And that's kinda my take on the whole rationalist thing.
But they're not using 'rationalism', which is the specific thing term you mentioned. And lots of other fields, likes economics and decision theory, use 'rational' and that term covers the core interest of the 'rationalist' community.
Naming is hard, it's common for lots of people to make 'mistakes' similar to what you've pointed out, and it seems like a very minor criticism of what is otherwise a great group of people united by an interest in important and useful thinking.
>And anyways, I suspect the idea that "rationality comes prior to experience" is almost certainly true, albeit in a weak, tho profound, sense. For one, nothing can learn, i.e. form or update beliefs or theories, without a pre-existing algorithm to do so.
And anyways, I suspect the idea that "rationality comes prior to experience" is almost certainly true, albeit in a weak, tho profound, sense. For one, nothing can learn, i.e. form or update beliefs or theories, without a pre-existing algorithm to do so.
> ... That's not the way the 'rationalists' are using it, and what's more, the way they are using it is kinda crude, even if we ignore the fact it displays a kind of illiteracy, or at least, a disinterest in the history of thought, to re-use a really common term in a totally unrelated way.
>
> That's also what comes across from the stuff they write. What I've read is clever, well written, well thought out, but also profoundly ignorant of the tradition of thinking about the topics they're interested in. You can't help but be crude if you just try a naive response, without first looking at how other people have addressed the problem at hand. So it comes across as the philosophical equivalent of that guy you met once who's convinced he has invented a new kind of maths without the number zero, because 'zero doesn't exist'. It might have been an interesting debate 2000 years ago, but things have moved on.
The rationalist community is a loose agglomeration of people interested in a bunch of different topics, with the kind of binding focus on forming or acquiring (more) accurate beliefs and acting (more) effectively in the real world. There's an incredibility variety and diversity of interests, backgrounds, and knowledge across a huge number of philosophies, schools, academic disciplines, and intellectual pursuits.
It's interesting that you claim that they "[display] a kind of illiteracy" as it seems clear to me, from reading a lot of the work of the members of the rationalist community, that (a) a lot of those members are perfectly aware of philosophical rationalism; (b) the community doesn't ascribe to anything that anyone terms 'rationalism'; and (c) almost everyone rejects philosophical rationalism as being true or useful.
Among the various members of the community, some of whom don't identify as members too, there's a lot of frequent and deep referencing of academic philosophy, so the claim that the community as a whole is unaware of "how other people have addressed the problem at hand" is just flat wrong. But the rationalist community is more like pre-professional science in that almost everyone is an amateur, there's almost no (formal) gatekeeping. So yes, it's absolutely true that there are many people in or interacting the community that are relatively ignorant of lots of different things like your example of someone convinced that they've invented a new school of mathematics.
And besides all of that, there's a lot of utility, to lots of people, particularly the participants, in debating something that you or academic philosophers might be convinced 'everyone' else has moved on from.