| | Tim
"Rationalistic" doesn't mean "rational." "Rationalistic" describes a method of thinking whereby undue emphasis is placed on deduction without reference to the real world (induction); one may deduce conclusions, in strict adherence to logical form, from specified premises, but those premises are arbitrary inventions, dreamed up inside one's own head. An example would be one I used in my dispute with a philosophy professor a few years back: "All philosophy professors are dogs. Robert Nola is a philosophy professor. Therefore Robert Nola is a dog."
The opposite of rationalism is empiricism, which emphasises induction at the expense of deduction. Empiricists downplay or outright deny the validity of abstract concepts such as necessity or causality because you can't "see" them the way you see a tree.
Objectivism is "foundationalist" in the sense that it begins, as a philosophy, with axiomatic concepts, but it's important to stress that these concepts are after-the-fact identifications, based on interaction with & reflection on the real world.
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