Well, I certainly don’t want to get into a dispute about what terms like “atheism”, “agnosticism”, “anti-realism”, etc. ought to mean.
I don’t see why not.
If all goes well in a definitional dispute, at the end of it we have agreed on what meaning to assign to a word. I don’t really care; I’m usually perfectly happy to assign to it whatever meaning my interlocutor does. In most cases, there was some other more interesting question about the world I was trying to get at, which got derailed by a different discussion about the meanings of words. In most of the remaining cases, the discussion about the meanings of words was less valuable to me than silence would have been.
That’s not to say other people need to share my values, though; if you want to join definitional disputes (by referencing a dictionary or something) go right ahead. I’m just opting out.
If shminux is using arguments for Unknowable Reality as arguments for No Reality,
I don’t think he is, though I could be wrong about that.
If all goes well in a definitional dispute, at the end of it we have agreed on what meaning to assign to a word. I don’t really care; I’m usually perfectly happy to assign to it whatever meaning my interlocutor does. In most cases, there was some other more interesting question about the world I was trying to get at, which got derailed by a different discussion about the meanings of words. In most of the remaining cases, the discussion about the meanings of words was less valuable to me than silence would have been.
That’s not to say other people need to share my values, though; if you want to join definitional disputes (by referencing a dictionary or something) go right ahead. I’m just opting out.
I don’t think he is, though I could be wrong about that.