Well, my peeve with the word “rationalist” is that it has many meanings. It could mean “rationality student”, “rationality enthusiast”, or “person who is rational”, not to mention “person who shuns intuition in favor of reason” and “person who shuns evidence in favor of reason”. I think avoiding the word “rationalist”, and instead saying what we mean by the word, could make our prose a lot more precise and not much longer.
Well, my peeve with the word “rationalist” is that it has many meanings. It could mean “rationality student”, “rationality enthusiast”, or “person who is rational”, not to mention “person who shuns intuition in favor of reason” and “person who shuns evidence in favor of reason”. I think avoiding the word “rationalist”, and instead saying what we mean by the word, could make our prose a lot more precise and not much longer.