I don't get it. You don't think philosophers should dispute what words ought to mean?
Isn't sorting out terminology one of the more important jobs of the philosophy of science?
If not philosophers, who do you think should be doing that work?
There is a difference between concept analysis - which ideally ends with words having a useful meaning - and a different, less productive kind of analysis which ideally ends up with words in a discussion having the same meaning that they have outside the discussion.
Philosophers are indeed uniquely trained to conduct the first kind of analysis.
This post is a bit of shameless self-promotion, but also a pointer to an example of Yudkowskian philosophy at work that LWers may enjoy, this time concerning philosophical theories of desire.
Episode 14 of my podcast with Alonzo Fyfe, Morality in the Real World, begins to dissolve some common philosophical debates about the nature of desire by replacing the symbol with the substance, etc. Transcript and links here, mp3 here. The episode can also probably serve as a big hint of where I'm going with my metaethics sequence.
Warning: Alonzo and I are not voice actors, and my sound engineering cannot compare to that of Radiolab.