Intellectual Honesty

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You should put that in your original claim, then; if you're going to rely on as nitpicky a definition of conviction as you must in order for your argument to be about something, then you should also say that your argument doesn't really apply to probably 99% of what there is in the world to have convictions about.

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Wow, that's a surprising claim. One look at this forum reveals that many people have convictions about abstract concepts in religion and philosophy. The most heated debates are those that science cannot resolve.

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Really? Then why waste time on philosophy at all? What do you gain from thinking about it if you can't actually learn anything?

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Heh, this goes back to Socrates, the wisest man in Athens because he knew he didn't know anything. Philosophy isn't a discipline of concrete realities. I think it's best served for speculating how to live life, which is not something fact-based. It entails abstract thought. Convictions therefore are a hinderance philosophical progress.