I haven’t read the relevant Chapman stuff, but, to be sure, if we look up Rationalism on Wikipedia, it lists Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, and Kant, devoting many paragraphs to their views. Only in one sentence at the end does it mention Less Wrong: “Outside of academic philosophy, some participants in the internet communities surrounding Less Wrong and Slate Star Codex have described themselves as “rationalists.”″ It doesn’t even mention Yudkowsky, Hanson, or Scott Alexander by name.
The point is, there exists some academic context in which “rationalism” has a preexisting meaning that refers to those 1600s-1800s people, and probably not to Less Wrong people. So, when Chapman writes about “rationalists”, is it possible he’s acting like he’s in that context, and talking about the pre-1900 people?
Doing Google searches with site:meaningness.com, I get “descartes” → 8 results, “spinoza” → 2 results, “leibniz” → 1 result [though it’s about calculus], “kant” → 21 results; meanwhile, “yudkowsky OR eliezer” → 10 results, “less wrong” → 5 results, “hanson” → 3 results… and “scott alexander” OR “slate star codex” OR “astral codex ten” → 31 results!
Hmmph. I guess he talks about both. It would require actually reading the blog to judge what he means when he says “rationalist” and whether he’s consistent about it. I’ll let Viliam report on this.
… And I see a further result, from what seems to be a book Chapman wrote, bold added by me:
The book uses “rationality” to refer to systematic, formal methods for thinking and acting; not in the broader sense of “any sensible way of thinking or acting,” as opposed to irrationality.
“Rationalism” refers to any belief system that makes exaggerated claims about the power of rationality, usually involving a formal guarantee of correctness.
Oh, dear. You define a term like that based on whether the claims are exaggerated vs accurate? That seems like a recipe for generating arguments about whether something qualifies as “rationalism”. (If Descartes writes an essay about the power of rationality, and some of the claims are exaggerated while others are correct, does that mean the essay is partly rationalism and partly not? And, obviously, if we disagree about something’s correctness, then that means we’d disagree about whether it’s “rationalism”. I have the impression that people often don’t try to label philosophical ideas beyond who wrote them and when, and any voluntary self-labeling the author did; this type of thing is probably why.)
I’ve now updated to find Said and Viliam’s complaints very plausible.
I haven’t read the relevant Chapman stuff, but, to be sure, if we look up Rationalism on Wikipedia, it lists Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, and Kant, devoting many paragraphs to their views. Only in one sentence at the end does it mention Less Wrong: “Outside of academic philosophy, some participants in the internet communities surrounding Less Wrong and Slate Star Codex have described themselves as “rationalists.”″ It doesn’t even mention Yudkowsky, Hanson, or Scott Alexander by name.
The point is, there exists some academic context in which “rationalism” has a preexisting meaning that refers to those 1600s-1800s people, and probably not to Less Wrong people. So, when Chapman writes about “rationalists”, is it possible he’s acting like he’s in that context, and talking about the pre-1900 people?
Doing Google searches with site:meaningness.com, I get “descartes” → 8 results, “spinoza” → 2 results, “leibniz” → 1 result [though it’s about calculus], “kant” → 21 results; meanwhile, “yudkowsky OR eliezer” → 10 results, “less wrong” → 5 results, “hanson” → 3 results… and “scott alexander” OR “slate star codex” OR “astral codex ten” → 31 results!
Hmmph. I guess he talks about both. It would require actually reading the blog to judge what he means when he says “rationalist” and whether he’s consistent about it. I’ll let Viliam report on this.
… And I see a further result, from what seems to be a book Chapman wrote, bold added by me:
Oh, dear. You define a term like that based on whether the claims are exaggerated vs accurate? That seems like a recipe for generating arguments about whether something qualifies as “rationalism”. (If Descartes writes an essay about the power of rationality, and some of the claims are exaggerated while others are correct, does that mean the essay is partly rationalism and partly not? And, obviously, if we disagree about something’s correctness, then that means we’d disagree about whether it’s “rationalism”. I have the impression that people often don’t try to label philosophical ideas beyond who wrote them and when, and any voluntary self-labeling the author did; this type of thing is probably why.)
I’ve now updated to find Said and Viliam’s complaints very plausible.