I have to disagree. I do a lot of pseudo-philosophical and non-philosophical arguing (my s.o. is a philosophy student), and I've realized that, as years have gone by and I've gotten better at this type of discussion, the best first step is to precisely define what each word is assumed to mean in that context and then proceed to arguing what does that mean to the topic at hand.
As a counter example, I was greatly unnerved the other day at watching a bar discussion between two friends that revolved on whether or not one could make money daytrading. Friend A said "obviously you can't, the market is random", while friend B insisted that "well, with mathematics you can predict the way it will go". This went on for hours (I refused to join) while they both had clearly very different meanings for the words "random", "luck" and "mathematics". I believe that, had they stopped early enough to define those terms, they wouldn't have argued.
Of course, sometimes the discussion is specifically about the definition of a few key words. Even then, I find what really helps is agreeing on some restricted definitions for other "primitive" words and using those primitives to build up definitions for the words in question. For example, person A could argue that selfishness is actually a form of blindness, while person B insists that it is not really so, and one can be selfish while seeing what others are doing. This way they can argue, by having pre-defined what "blind" "see", etc mean in this context.
Discussions about the meaning of words are easily just philosophical traps where one person says A and the other hears B.
As a counter example, I was greatly unnerved the other day at watching a bar discussion between two friends that revolved on whether or not one could make money daytrading. Friend A said "obviously you can't, the market is random", while friend B insisted that "well, with mathematics you can predict the way it will go". This went on for hours (I refused to join) while they both had clearly very different meanings for the words "random", "luck" and "mathematics". I believe that, had they stopped early enough to define those terms, they wouldn't have argued.
Of course, sometimes the discussion is specifically about the definition of a few key words. Even then, I find what really helps is agreeing on some restricted definitions for other "primitive" words and using those primitives to build up definitions for the words in question. For example, person A could argue that selfishness is actually a form of blindness, while person B insists that it is not really so, and one can be selfish while seeing what others are doing. This way they can argue, by having pre-defined what "blind" "see", etc mean in this context.
Discussions about the meaning of words are easily just philosophical traps where one person says A and the other hears B.