analytic pedantry types

Oh, this is fun. Jon Cogburn’s blog is building on my typology of pedants. Cogburn himself points to Brandom’s use of italics in lieu of argumentation as a type of pedantry that neds a name. And int he comemnts section one Mark Silcox gives a concrete suggestion:

“Crispin Wright: Pedantry of Attrition. I.e., ‘here are seventeen different arguments for why you can have anti-realism without logical revision. Some of them suck, and others are really just iterations, but by the end of my book, you will be bludgeoned into submission.’ Posted by: Mark Silcox | April 15, 2009 at 08:55 PM”

*lol*

Also, I have to agree with Cogburn that Quine is just a dreadful writer. I’ve heard a number of analytic philosophers claim that Quine is an outstanding prose stylist, but I’m not even sure how to respond to a statement as idiotically off the wall as that one. Anyone capable of saying such a thing is hardly worth having a discussion about style with, since they clearly must believe that lack of precision is the only factor that makes a style bad.

But at least Quine is a better stylist than Sellars, who is the worst prose writer I know of in any tradition.