To address 2) specifically, I would say that philosophical “Rationalists” are a wider group but they would generally include the kind of philosophical views that most people on e.g. LW hold, or at least they include a pathway to reaching those view.
See the philsophers listed in the wikipedia article for example:
Pythagoras—foundation for mathematical inquiry into the world and mathematical formalism creating in general
Plato—foundation for “modern” reasoning and logic in general, with a lot of ***s
Aristotle -- (outdated) foundation for observing the world and creating theories and taxonomies. The fact that he’s mostly “wrong” about everything and the “wrongness” is obvious also gets you 1⁄2 of the way to understand Kuhn
René Descartes—“questioning” more fundamental assumptions that e.g. Socrates would have had problems seeing as assumptions. Also foundational for modern mathematics.
Baruch Spinoza—I don’t feel like I can summarize why reading “Spinoza” leads one to the LW-brand of rationalism. I think it boils down to this obsession with internal consistency and his obsession to burn any bridge for the sake of reaching a “correct” conclusion.
Gottfried Leibniz—I mean, personally, I hate this guys. But it seems to me that the interpretations of physics that I’ve seen around here, and also those that important people in the community (e.g. Eliezer and Scott) use are heavily influenced by this work. Also arguably one of the earliest people to build computers and think about them so there’s that.
Immanuel Kant—Arguably introduced the Game Theoretical view to the world. Also helped correcting/disproving a lot of biased reasoning in philosophy that leads to e.g. arguments for the existence of good based on linguistic quirks.
I think, at least in regards to philosophy until Kant, if one were to read philosophy following this exact chain of philosopher, they would basically have a very strong base from which to approach/develop rationalist thought as seemingly espoused by LW.
So in that sense, the term “Rationalist” seems well fitting if wanting to describe “The general philosophical direction” most people here are coming from.
Looking at the listed philosophers is not the best way to understand what’s going on here. The category of rationalists is not “philosophers like those guys,” it is one of a pair of opposed categories (the other being the empiricists) into which various philosophers fit to varying degrees. It is less appropriate for the ancients than for Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz (those three are really the paradigm rationalists). And the wikipedia article is taking a controversial position in putting Kant in the rationalist category. Kant was aware of the categories (indeed, is a major source of the tradition of grouping philosophers into those two categories), and did not consider himself to belong to either of them (his preferred terms for the categories were “dogmatists” for the rationalists and “skeptics” for the empiricists, which is probably enough on its own to give you a sense for how he viewed the two groups). There is admittedly a popular line of Kant interpretation which reads him as a kind of crypto-rationalist, but there are also those of us who read him as a crypto-empiricist, and not a few who take him at his word as being outside both categories.
In any event, the empiricist tradition has at least as much, if not more, influence on the LW wrong crowd as the rationalist tradition, and really both categories work best for early moderns and aren’t fantastic for categorizing most in the present era. So anybody familiar with the philosophical term is likely to find the application to this community initially confusing.
Cool quote, but in this case probably not accurate. From wikipedia:
The term became useful in order to describe differences perceived between two of its founders Francis Bacon, described as an “empiricist”, and René Descartes, who is described as a “rationalist”.
Were I obliged to give a short name to the attitude in question, I should call it that of radical empiricism, in spite of the fact that such brief nicknames are nowhere more misleading than in philosophy. I say ‘empiricism’ because it is contented to regard its most assured conclusions concerning matters of fact as hypotheses liable to modification in the course of future experience; and I say ‘radical,’ because it treats the doctrine of monism itself as an hypothesis, and, unlike so much of the half way empiricism that is current under the name of positivism or agnosticism or scientific naturalism, it does not dogmatically affirm monism as something with which all experience has got to square. The difference between monism and pluralism is perhaps the most pregnant of all the differences in philosophy. [William James, preface to “The Sentiment of Rationality” in “The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy,” 1897]
EDIT: There is some debate as to when “modern” use of the term empiricism started, the first use was at least much much older. Stanford.edu writes:
The first people to describe themselves as empiricists (empeirikoi) were a group of medical writers of the Hellenistic period. We know of these thinkers only indirectly, through the work of other ancient writers, in particular Galen of Pergamon (129–ca. 200 CE).
Quinean naturalism used to be used to describe which corner of philosphy LW tends to inhabit. Also Wittgensteinian in understanding of language (Human’s Guide to Words etc).
To address 2) specifically, I would say that philosophical “Rationalists” are a wider group but they would generally include the kind of philosophical views that most people on e.g. LW hold, or at least they include a pathway to reaching those view.
See the philsophers listed in the wikipedia article for example:
Pythagoras—foundation for mathematical inquiry into the world and mathematical formalism creating in general
Plato—foundation for “modern” reasoning and logic in general, with a lot of ***s
Aristotle -- (outdated) foundation for observing the world and creating theories and taxonomies. The fact that he’s mostly “wrong” about everything and the “wrongness” is obvious also gets you 1⁄2 of the way to understand Kuhn
René Descartes—“questioning” more fundamental assumptions that e.g. Socrates would have had problems seeing as assumptions. Also foundational for modern mathematics.
Baruch Spinoza—I don’t feel like I can summarize why reading “Spinoza” leads one to the LW-brand of rationalism. I think it boils down to this obsession with internal consistency and his obsession to burn any bridge for the sake of reaching a “correct” conclusion.
Gottfried Leibniz—I mean, personally, I hate this guys. But it seems to me that the interpretations of physics that I’ve seen around here, and also those that important people in the community (e.g. Eliezer and Scott) use are heavily influenced by this work. Also arguably one of the earliest people to build computers and think about them so there’s that.
Immanuel Kant—Arguably introduced the Game Theoretical view to the world. Also helped correcting/disproving a lot of biased reasoning in philosophy that leads to e.g. arguments for the existence of good based on linguistic quirks.
I think, at least in regards to philosophy until Kant, if one were to read philosophy following this exact chain of philosopher, they would basically have a very strong base from which to approach/develop rationalist thought as seemingly espoused by LW.
So in that sense, the term “Rationalist” seems well fitting if wanting to describe “The general philosophical direction” most people here are coming from.
Looking at the listed philosophers is not the best way to understand what’s going on here. The category of rationalists is not “philosophers like those guys,” it is one of a pair of opposed categories (the other being the empiricists) into which various philosophers fit to varying degrees. It is less appropriate for the ancients than for Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz (those three are really the paradigm rationalists). And the wikipedia article is taking a controversial position in putting Kant in the rationalist category. Kant was aware of the categories (indeed, is a major source of the tradition of grouping philosophers into those two categories), and did not consider himself to belong to either of them (his preferred terms for the categories were “dogmatists” for the rationalists and “skeptics” for the empiricists, which is probably enough on its own to give you a sense for how he viewed the two groups). There is admittedly a popular line of Kant interpretation which reads him as a kind of crypto-rationalist, but there are also those of us who read him as a crypto-empiricist, and not a few who take him at his word as being outside both categories.
In any event, the empiricist tradition has at least as much, if not more, influence on the LW wrong crowd as the rationalist tradition, and really both categories work best for early moderns and aren’t fantastic for categorizing most in the present era. So anybody familiar with the philosophical term is likely to find the application to this community initially confusing.
Great comment. I would just like to add that Kant killed/unified Empiricism and Rationalism and after Kant the terms quickly started the fizzle out.
Seems like Kant killed it by naming it.
.
The Tao that can be named is not the eternal Tao;
because the later philosophers will call themselves “post-Taoists”.
Cool quote, but in this case probably not accurate. From wikipedia:
From etymonline:
EDIT: There is some debate as to when “modern” use of the term empiricism started, the first use was at least much much older. Stanford.edu writes:
EDIT 2: [emphasis added]
Quinean naturalism used to be used to describe which corner of philosphy LW tends to inhabit. Also Wittgensteinian in understanding of language (Human’s Guide to Words etc).