I’m specifically boosting the prescriptivist point about not using the word “rational” in an inflationary way that doesn’t make literal sense. Comments can be valid, explicit on their own epistemic status, true, relevant to their intended context, not making well-known mistakes, and so on and so forth, but they can’t be rational, for the reason I gave, in the sense of “rational” as a property of cognitive algorithms.
I think this is a mistake
Incidentally, I like the distinction between error and mistake from linguistics, where an error is systematic or deliberatively endorsed behavior, while a mistake is intermittent behavior that’s not deliberatively endorsed. That would have my comment make an error, not a mistake.
I’m specifically boosting the prescriptivist point about not using the word “rational” in an inflationary way that doesn’t make literal sense. Comments can be valid, explicit on their own epistemic status, true, relevant to their intended context, not making well-known mistakes, and so on and so forth, but they can’t be rational, for the reason I gave, in the sense of “rational” as a property of cognitive algorithms.
Incidentally, I like the distinction between error and mistake from linguistics, where an error is systematic or deliberatively endorsed behavior, while a mistake is intermittent behavior that’s not deliberatively endorsed. That would have my comment make an error, not a mistake.
I like it.