[jamesrcole]

I've read a fair bit of philosophy, and I think the approach this post describes is often problematic.

They try to treat concepts as if they were like mathematical symbols that they can reason precisely with. The problem is when they don't understand the concepts involved well-enough to be able to treat them in this way. This is often the case, given that the subject-matter is in philosophy.

So you end up with a situation where it looks like they're drawing conclusions in a rigorous fashion, but where it's actually a kind of garbage-in-garbage-out situation.

Precision is really important. But you have to acknowledge the level of precision that your level of understanding affords. Trying to be more precise than that makes things worse.