We need some kind of word that means “seeker after less wrongness”, and refers pragmatically to a group of people who go around discussing epistemic hygiene and actually worrying about how to think and whether their beliefs are correct. I know of no shorter and clearer alternative than “rationalist”. There are some words I’m willing to try to rescue, and this is one of them.
Perhaps it’s not worth complaining, but historically “rationalist” was contrasted with “empiricist.” Descartes, Leibniz, and Spinoza were rationalists, while Locke and Hume were empiricists. Obviously that’s not a contrast you mean to be invoking, though maybe that use of “rationalist” is rare enough that there’s no risk of confusion.
More recently, rationalist has tended to have a meaning closer to its current one, but with strong negative affect associated with it. Peter Drucker, for instance, seems to use it as a term of reproach in “Adventures of a Bystander”, to mean the sort of small souled narrow-minded person who thinks that they can be right and others wrong and are allowed to say so because they have reasons for their beliefs instead of having made them up to express feelings but the assumption is that one shouldn’t do this because doing it leads to communism, fascism, or other forms of authoritarianism. If people don’t have the right to believe what they want then some authority must have the right to tell them what to believe. Traditional conservatives can associate this attitude with communism and other badness. Basically, rationalism is used to mean affiliation with authoritarian regimes who claim the prestige of science.
@Daniel, I agree with this observation. Minimizing being wrong is a pretty recent intellectual development. Epistemic minimax is probably logically a better name, although it sort of sucks.
We don’t want to minimax since we aren’t playing a zero sum game. We just want to maximize expected utility with a few caveats and with a few blanks filled in.
The James Randi definition of skeptic seems to have much overlap. I would guess that what EY is looking for has James Randi definition of skeptic as a subset of EY’s rationalist belief processes.
We need some kind of word that means “seeker after less wrongness”, and refers pragmatically to a group of people who go around discussing epistemic hygiene and actually worrying about how to think and whether their beliefs are correct. I know of no shorter and clearer alternative than “rationalist”. There are some words I’m willing to try to rescue, and this is one of them.
Perhaps it’s not worth complaining, but historically “rationalist” was contrasted with “empiricist.” Descartes, Leibniz, and Spinoza were rationalists, while Locke and Hume were empiricists. Obviously that’s not a contrast you mean to be invoking, though maybe that use of “rationalist” is rare enough that there’s no risk of confusion.
More recently, rationalist has tended to have a meaning closer to its current one, but with strong negative affect associated with it. Peter Drucker, for instance, seems to use it as a term of reproach in “Adventures of a Bystander”, to mean the sort of small souled narrow-minded person who thinks that they can be right and others wrong and are allowed to say so because they have reasons for their beliefs instead of having made them up to express feelings but the assumption is that one shouldn’t do this because doing it leads to communism, fascism, or other forms of authoritarianism. If people don’t have the right to believe what they want then some authority must have the right to tell them what to believe. Traditional conservatives can associate this attitude with communism and other badness. Basically, rationalism is used to mean affiliation with authoritarian regimes who claim the prestige of science.
@Daniel, I agree with this observation. Minimizing being wrong is a pretty recent intellectual development. Epistemic minimax is probably logically a better name, although it sort of sucks.
We don’t want to minimax since we aren’t playing a zero sum game. We just want to maximize expected utility with a few caveats and with a few blanks filled in.
Apparently, “aletheia” is Greek for truth, and “veritas” is Latin. You can pick either and stick “phile” at the end. So, say, veritophile.
(My reliable source is two minutes with online dictionaries)
‘Info-maximizers’? It’s too bad we can’t use ‘philosopher’ – you’d think you just provided it’s definition.
How about “asymptotist”? A Google search suggests it is available.
“Skeptic”?
The James Randi definition of skeptic seems to have much overlap. I would guess that what EY is looking for has James Randi definition of skeptic as a subset of EY’s rationalist belief processes.