Most philosophical terminology has a bunch of different definitions from different authors and the terms have a lot of attached connotations.
There’s principle of charity for example which comes out of philosophy of language and often gets used outside of that with a different meaning. By using a new term like steelmanning you can move past the conflation of concepts that the philosophers engage in.
Take rationalism as you spoke about it. It’s not a term with a single meaning. There the textbook definition from Baron that’s close to the way we use the term in LessWrong. There’s an older notion of it being about abstract reasoning. Reusing that term produces a lot of trouble.
I remember someone counting the number of distinct uses of is_a and coming out at 37.
Do you have specific examples in mind where you think there’s an existing word with a single meaning?
I was referring more to Yudowsky’s reinvention of philosophical terminology.
Most philosophical terminology has a bunch of different definitions from different authors and the terms have a lot of attached connotations.
There’s principle of charity for example which comes out of philosophy of language and often gets used outside of that with a different meaning. By using a new term like steelmanning you can move past the conflation of concepts that the philosophers engage in.
The analytical tradition doesn’t, or at least much less so. (And noting that a situation is bad is no excuse for making it worse).
And analytical philosophy is a major rival to rationalism inasmuch as it’s a way of doing philosophy that’s based on science and logic.
But it isnt a rival to rationalism inasmuch as rationalism is a thing where one guru-like amateur philosopher solves everything.
Take rationalism as you spoke about it. It’s not a term with a single meaning. There the textbook definition from Baron that’s close to the way we use the term in LessWrong. There’s an older notion of it being about abstract reasoning. Reusing that term produces a lot of trouble.
I remember someone counting the number of distinct uses of is_a and coming out at 37.
Do you have specific examples in mind where you think there’s an existing word with a single meaning?