What is another word for rationalists?

Pronunciation: [ɹˈaʃənəlˌɪsts] (IPA)

Rationalists are individuals who believe in the importance of rationale, logical thinking, and reasoning in decision-making. The term "rationalist" has various synonyms, including logician, critical thinker, cogitator, thinker, and philosopher. While each synonym has subtle linguistic nuances, they all imply a similar approach to problem-solving, where facts and evidence hold more weight than intuition and emotion. Rationalists are often associated with philosophical movements like the Enlightenment and the scientific revolution, which valued empirical evidence over dogma and authority. Regardless of the term used, the rationalist mindset has been instrumental in shaping our understanding of the world and its workings.

What are the hypernyms for Rationalists?

A hypernym is a word with a broad meaning that encompasses more specific words called hyponyms.

What are the opposite words for rationalists?

Antonyms for the word "rationalists" include "irrationalists," "anti-intellectuals," "superstitious," "unscientific," and "dogmatic." Irrationalists rely on emotion and superstition rather than logical reasoning, while anti-intellectuals reject the value of intellectual pursuits altogether. Superstitious individuals believe in supernatural forces and omens, rather than in rational thought and empirical evidence. Unscientific individuals ignore scientific evidence and rely on personal opinion or anecdotal evidence to support their beliefs. Finally, dogmatic individuals are rigid in their beliefs and are unwilling to consider alternative viewpoints or evidence that contradicts their preconceived notions.

What are the antonyms for Rationalists?

Usage examples for Rationalists

They were ready for some utterance of the emotional and imaginative element in religion and philosophy which was left out of account by the wits and rationalists.
"English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century"
Leslie Stephen
At the same time, it is abundantly evident that it is not argument but supposed authority which influences the great majority of those who style themselves rationalists.
"The Old Riddle and the Newest Answer"
John Gerard
The only rationalists of any distinction in the second century were Lucian and Galen.
"Roman Society from Nero to Marcus Aurelius"
Samuel Dill

Famous quotes with Rationalists

  • Good men, whether they be Christians or rationalists, do not desire to discriminate between races, but the distinctions implanted by Nature are too conspicuous to escape the observation of our senses.
    Arthur Keith
  • So-called psychoanalysis is the occupation of lustful rationalists who trace everything in the world to sexual causes - with the exception of their occupation.
    Karl Kraus
  • Religion is not a primitive type of scientific theorizing, any more than science is a superior kind of belief-system. Just as rationalists have misunderstood myths as proto-versions of scientific theories, they have made the mistake of believing that scientific theories can be literally true. Both are systems of symbols, metaphors for a reality that cannot be rendered in literal terms. Every spiritual quest concludes in silence, and science also comes to a stop, if by another route. As George Santayana has written, ‘a really naked spirit cannot assume that the world is thoroughly intelligible. There may be surds, there may be hard facts, there may be dark abysses before which intelligence must be silent for fear of going mad.’ Science is like religion, an effort at transcendence that ends by accepting a world that is beyond understanding. All our inquiries come to rest in groundless facts. Just like faith, reason must at last submit; the final end of science is a revelation of the absurd.
    John Gray (philosopher)
  • The idea of evil as it appears in modern secular thought is an inheritance from Christianity. To be sure, rationalists have repudiated the idea; but it is not long before they find they cannot do without it. What has been understood as evil in the past, they insist, is error – a product of ignorance that human beings can overcome. Here they are repeating a Zoroastrian theme, which was absorbed into later versions of monotheism: the belief that ‘as the “lord of creation” man is at the forefront of the contest between the powers of Truth and Untruth.’ But how to account for the fact that humankind is deaf to the voice of reason? At this point rationalists invoke sinister interests – wicked priests, profiteers from superstition, malignant enemies of enlightenment, secular incarnations of the forces of evil. As so often is the case, secular thinking follows a pattern dictated by religion while suppressing religion’s most valuable insights. Modern rationalists reject the idea of evil while being obsessed by it. Seeing themselves as embattled warriors in a struggle against darkness, it has not occurred to them to ask why humankind is so fond of the dark. They are left with the same problem of evil that faces religion. The difference is that religious believers know they face an insoluble difficulty, while secular believers do not. Aware of the evil in themselves, traditional believers know it cannot be expelled from the world by human action. Lacking this saving insight, secular believers dream of creating a higher species. They have not noticed the fatal flaw in their schemes: any such species will be created by actually existing human beings.
    John Gray (philosopher)
  • This is the great paradox of Russell. All his instincts were on the side of the "rationalists"; his greatest hatred was for those who exalted emotion, or any sort of mystic intuition, at the expense of reason. But because Russell was the greatest rationalist of all, he had to admit that reason cannot prove the mystics wrong. In fact, in some private moods he was a mystic himself.
    Bertrand Russell

Related words: rationalism, rationalists in history, darwinian rationalists, what is rationalism, what is a rationalist, how to be a rationalist, who are the most famous rationalists, which countries have the most rationalists

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