That makes sense. I didn’t consider that aspect of the problem. It’s overreaching to attempt to refute skepticism with a succint argument when I don’t have my basic terms defined. I wasn’t too clear about what the goal of my post was either. Maybe more thought about goals and context when figuring what to ask about would help there.
Also, I can hardly define any words from memory. Word meanings and recollection is largely a bunch of loose associations and synomyms for me. How to define words/terms is something that I have wanted to study but I mostly forgot about the topic. I vaguely remember some ARI lectures that discussed defining words in terms of essential characteristics or something. I also hope to do a little study of the structure of lexical definitions at some point.
So, its not productive to think of this as an excercise in philosophical refutation. If I’m reading about a topic like skepticism and want to try thinking critically, maybe it would make sense to try asking more basic questions about the meaning of terms and questions to figure out what a small concept or idea is about.
Instead of succint refutation, I could try getting more ideas about skepticism in my head and see what smaller problems come up that. Like, more focus on little important details.