Agnostics

[FatAndFaithless]

But the bolded part above - that's what I was getting at, you're positions are the same as mine, but the terms can get jumbled and confusing, which is bound to happen sometimes.  But, when someone asks you "Do you believe the cat is alive?", all they're asking you about is specifically your position regarding the statement "The cat is alive", and vice versa for the other way round.  The question is almost always formed this way, in this conditional structure, and the agnosticism of the position doesn't really enter into it.  They aren't asking "do you think it's possible to gain knowledge" about the cat being alive, they're just asking if you accept it as true or likely true.

Maybe it's my way of thinking about questions that is different.  If you ask me, "Do you believe the cat is alive?" I interpret that as a question about the cat's state, and infer ". . . or dead?" whether you ask it or intend it.  In this case, I don't know what TO believe, since I'm given two candidate beliefs and no method for applying a weight to them.  I'm in a state of limbo with regard to the process of establishing a belief.  But since those beliefs have reached the brain well-formed and coherent, and since I'm vividly imagining and openly considering them, I think saying I "lack" any belief is a misstatement-- saying I can't choose among the two beliefs seems more accurate to me, or to put it simply, "I don't know what to believe."

But my question isn't "Is the cat alive or dead?"  I'm not asking you to pick between two possibilities, I'm specifically asking you about your position on the claim "The cat is alive."  I'm not even concerned about the cat's "dead" status in this question. If you need that to be clarified each time, that's fine, but you've already given you answer to this question previously.

"Do you believe the cat is alive?" You said "No." That's all the answer I was looking for - nothing about the possibility of gaining knowledge about the cat, or even about the possibility of the cat's 'dead' status.