Rationalism vs. empiricism

[…] there were historical groups called the rationalists and empiricists, where the empiricists were all about doing experiements and looking at the world, and the rationalists were all about figuring things out just by thinking.

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(your definitions for rationalist vs. empiricist are off. Per SEP, the usual definition is some variant of ‘rationalists think we have some innate knowledge, while empiricists think we get all our knowledge from experience’.)

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This distinction was always fake. The Wikipedia page on Rationalism begins with portraits of Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz. Spinoza was a lens grinder who worked closely with astronomer-physicist Christiaan Huygens and wrote in his magnum opus, Ethics, that we only know about things in the world through our bodies interacting with them. It is unclear to me how it is possible for someone to be more committed to looking at the world. The Wikipedia page on Empiricism begins with portraits of Francis Bacon, John Locke, and David Hume. Hume’s An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding includes the following, which implies that abstract mathematical reasoning is one of the two valid sources of knowledge, and refers to experimental reasoning:

"If we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance; let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames: for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion."

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Alberto Vanzo argues that the modern philosophical ‘rationalist vs. empiricist’ dichotomy comes from Kant and early Kant-influenced thinkers. Though the dichotomies ‘rational vs. irrational’ and ‘reason vs. experience’ are both much older than the term ‘rationalist’; e.g., Francis Bacon in ~1600 was contrasting ‘rationalis’ with ‘empiricus’, though this was talking about dogmatists vs. experimentalists, not talking about the modern (Kant-inspired) rationalist v. empiricist dichotomy.

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Thanks, Rob! I agree with this summary. It is unfortunate that “rationalism” has this standard usage in philosophy (“rationalist vs empiricist”). This usage is not completely unrelated to the “rational vs superstitious/​irrational” distinction, which makes it more likely to confuse. That said, outside of the fields of philosophy and intellectual history, not many people are aware of the rationalist/​empiricist distinction, and so I don’t see it as a major problem.

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If I try to steelman the Rationalist-Empiricist divide:

Empiricists think that arguments justifying organized violence are nonsense so we ought to ignore them, do what we like instead, and argue about math and science.

Rationalists think that arguments justifying organized violence are sketchy so we should investigate them carefully as hypotheses for how mind organizes itself in the world. [because rationalists think the mind has to do with everything?]

– www.greaterwrong.com/posts/DtcbfwSrcewFubjxp/the-rationalists-of-the-1950s-and-before-also-called