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I don't think any interesting questions boil down to agreeing on a dictionary definition. Say you could get everyone to agree on the same definition for free wi

I don't think any interesting questions boil down to agreeing on a dictionary definition. Say you could get everyone to agree on the same definition for free will or consciousness. You're still left with the same questions about to what extent do we have defined free will and subjective experiences, which people will still disagree and debate on. Unless you get people to agree on definitions that define the problem away, but then you're just going to be using a different definition to pose the question that came up, because it will keep coming up. Language is just a tool to express ourselves. It's not the fabric of existence.

ThomPete 8y ago
Besides personal experience of phenomena what other way do you express your philosphical inquiry in? The dictionary isnt the point here, postmodernism isnt concerned about that. Its actually a critique of exactly that.
AndrewKemendo 8y ago
It's not about agreeing on some dictionary definition. The exercise is semantic in the sense that it seeks to describe and then connect sets of concepts to sets of beliefs in certain contexts. So in that sense, it's analytically deep. However what tends to happen is that most casual students get to a certain depth in PM, say undergraduate level, give up on the complexity and then throw their hands up and say "nothing is real so I can create my won world that you need to conform to." That's the problem.