Thus demonstrating why "philosophy" discussions on the internet are a waste of time. The emphasis is on quibbling and attempts to defend some earlier fuzzy or erroneous statement not on an attempt to understand reality, as philosophy should rightly be about.
The purpose of defining a term is so that everyone understands and agrees what is being discussed. Using a term, once clearly defined, means that the definition does not have to be repeated for everyone to understand exactly what is being said.
Robust definitions of terms that everyone accepts also avoid such asinine 'arguments' as "but tomatoes aren't painted with red paint so they can't be red."
Two points:
You seem to have read much, much more into that post than was there.
To the beginning of your point 1, absolutely science uses philosophy as part of their attempts to understand reality. Hypotheses are arrived at through philosophical reasoning but scientifically stated to make them testable. Einstein wouldn't have been able to develop his theory of relativity without a hell of a lot of philosophical reasoning. In fact the second term of the TOE is nothing but pure philosophy (though explicitly defined). Then there are some areas of science that are predominately philosophical such as cosmology or even string theory.
Your point 2 lost me. Your apparent frustration with people's take on scientism, Ayn Rand, libertarianism, etc. seems to me to be a very different matter.
