Pragmatism, Internalism and the Authority of Claims

This paper develops and defends an internalist account of having authority for one's claim. It begins with Robert Brandom's pragmatist account of thinking which locates the root notion of reasoning in a primitive language game of asking for and giving reasons. The idea is that the authority of a claim can be spelled out pragmatically in terms of the social practice of undertaking commitments and attributing entitlements. It is argued that this account fails to acknowledge the role of the subject's grasp of the higher-order concept of the evidence on which I base my claim.     

Building the perfect curse word: A psycholinguistic investigation of the form and meaning of taboo words

Taboo words represent a potent subset of natural language. It has been hypothesized that “tabooness” reflects an emergent property of negative valence and high physiological arousal of word referents. Many taboo words (e.g., dick, shit) are indeed consistent with this claim. Nevertheless, American English is also rife with negatively valenced, highly arousing words the usage of which is not socially condemned (e.g., cancer, abortion, welfare). We evaluated prediction of tabooness of single words and novel taboo compound words from a combination of phonological, lexical, and semantic variables (e.g., semantic category, word length). For single words, physiological arousal and emotional valence strongly predicted tabooness with additional moderating contributions from form (phonology) and meaning (semantic category). In Experiment 2, raters judged plausibility for combinations of common nouns with taboo words to form novel taboo compounds (e.g., shitgibbon). A mixture of formal (e.g., ratio of stop consonants, length) and semantic variables (e.g., ± receptacle, ± profession) predicted the quality of novel taboo compounding. Together, these studies provide complementary evidence for interactions between word form and meaning and an algorithmic prediction of tabooness in American English. We discuss applications for models of taboo word representation.

     

THE CASE OF THE BULIMIC MAFIA AND THE TOOLS OF THEIR TRADE

Following a discussion of some psychoanalytic approaches to bulimia nervosa (and in particular its multi‐impulsive sub‐type), the place of pathological organizations of the personality within such pathologies and aspects of their NHS treatment, the paper focuses on the omnipotent management of separation difficulties in such eating‐disordered women. The role of shame and the ego‐ideal is discussed, as are their by‐products: secrecy and a preoccupation with the gaze and iconic figures, as seen in the general body‐ego pathology and over‐valuation of thinness in these patients. Illustrating these ideas with material drawn from the early stages of a woman seen in twice‐weekly NHS psychotherapy, the author discusses the literal and metaphorical roles of a box or case and its manic contents, which the patient employed to support her retreat. These secreted items (the box and its magazines, razors, laxatives and paracetamol tablets) constituted the concrete tools of the trade of her Mafia‐like pathological organization. The need to give appropriate clinical attention to such details is stressed and aspects of technique are discussed, especially the importance of creating and sustaining an appropriate therapeutic ‘play‐space’.