[astrange]

I think the use of "rationalism" follows modern philosophy trends and isn't a reinvention. They are "actually" empiricists as opposed to rationalists, yes, but most of those rationalist ideas[0] moved to continental philosophy and are now part of the modern rationalists' enemies, humanities people who read French theory.

"Rationalism" descends from analytic philosophy/logical positivism/scientific method types, so they're into experiments now. This is good, because their main program of logical positivism doesn't actually work, so it's kind of a problem that they're still trying to do it.

[0] the world doesn't exist, there's only sense data causing you to imagine a shared world, thinking about things logically is better than trying them out

[guerrilla]

> Rationalism descends from analytic philosophy/logical positivism/scientific method types, so they're into experiments now.

This is false. Rationalism predates analytic philosophy by nearly 300 years. Maybe you mean "rationalism" does.

[astrange]

That is what I meant, yes. I don't believe obviously false things like that, no.

[pasabagi]

Wait, I'm getting confused between the two senses of 'rationalism' here. My guess is that contemporary 'rationalism' doesn't actually descend from any explicit philosophical tradition, just because if you read an introductory philosophy book, you'd not join a group with that name combined with their ethos.

I'm not that well versed in analytic philosophy - I think it's come a long way since the early days, so now straddles both sides of the rationalist/empiricist divide. At this point, I think it's basically a writing style. You get a lot of analytic philosophers with some pretty wild assertions about reality.

On the other side, somebody like Deleuze is basically a hardcore empiricist, but he's as 'continental' as they come.

[guerrilla]

> My guess is that contemporary 'rationalism' doesn't actually descend from any explicit philosophical tradition, just because if you read an introductory philosophy book, you'd not join a group with that name combined with their ethos.

It definitely doesn't. The community started in almost complete ignorance of philosophy in general and that philosophy had already covered everything they were trying to.

> I'm not that well versed in analytic philosophy - I think it's come a long way since the early days, so now straddles both sides of the rationalist/empiricist divide.

I'm pretty sure they meant "rationalism" comes from analytic philosophy, which I don't think it does although now at least they've realized it exists. Actual rationalism predates both by approximately three centuries.