July 13, 2004

There's only one Fafblog!

Posted by Brian

Some philosophers, your humble narrator occasionally included, get irritated when people, especially intro ethics students, focus on what we take to be irrelevant details of what are meant to be serious, if somewhat improbably grisly, examples. But really we’re not upset about the lack of philosophical sophistication our students shown, just about how stylishlessly they complain. If all our intro ethics students were like Fafnir and Giblets I can’t imagine we’d ever be so irritated.

Posted on July 13, 2004 09:56 PM UTC
Comments

Congratulations! According to my sources, you are just the second person ever to use the word “stylishlessly” on the internet. Who’s the first? You guessed it: pogue mahone.

Posted by dan · July 13, 2004 10:15 PM

And there I was thinking that philosophers spent their whole working lives worrying about irrelevant details…

Posted by themoabird · July 13, 2004 10:27 PM

Reminds me of this classic

Posted by novalis · July 13, 2004 10:28 PM

See, I thought philosophers argued whether there is such a thing as an irrelevant detail.

Posted by rob · July 13, 2004 10:48 PM

Dan, so as soon as this post is googled there will be some really easy googlewhacks to be found between the two posts. I think ‘stylishlessly irritated’ could describe me before breakfast most mornings.

Posted by Brian Weatherson · July 13, 2004 11:16 PM

I thought googlewhacks had to use actual words. Or plausible ones, at least. (Shouldn’t it be either the simpler stylelessly or the baroque stylishnesslessly?)

Posted by Jeff R. · July 14, 2004 12:34 AM

Unfortunately, the Dictionary doesn’t seem to care much for your word. The Dictionary really is a very closed-minded dictionary. It doesn’t even like stylelessly or unstylishly, which yield a combined 416 google hits. If you want an adverb meaning “in a manner lacking in style” don’t go looking for the Dictionary to help you out. And don’t expect Googlewhack to let you fill in the gaps left by unimaginative dictionaries.

Posted by dan · July 14, 2004 02:28 AM
Followups

This discussion has been closed. Thanks to everyone who contributed.