Genes,Fears, Phobias,and Phobic Disorders

It has become widely accepted that we may be biologically “prepared” to associate fear more easily with some stimuli (e.g., heights) than with other stimuli (e.g., electric outlets). The current literature on the topic of the genetics of fears and phobias is surveyed with an eye toward answering the question “What might be heritable?” For ordinary fears among the general population, heredity appears to contribute mainly to a trait of general fearfulness and may be a major reason for the strong intercorrelation among different fears. Surprisingly, the available evidence suggests little environmental transmission from parent to offspring, although adoption data have yet to be reported on this issue. Although the results of two small twin series are consistent with some genetic influence on clinically significant phobias, it is still not clear what might be genetically transmitted in these disorders. There is a strong possibility that phobic disorders may be genetically heterogeneous.     

An Error Concerning Noses

We identify a strategy for getting beliefs from fiction via three assumptions: (1) a certain causal generality holds in the fiction and does so because (2) causal generalities in fiction are (with noted exceptions) carried over from what the author takes to be fact; (3) the author is reliable on this topic, so what the author takes to be fact is fact. We do not question (2). While (3) will, in particular cases, be doubtful, the strategy is vulnerable more generally to the worry that what looks like a causal generality may be instead an authorial intervention of a kind from which no causal connection can be inferred; in such cases (1) turns out to be false though it may seem at first sight to be true. In consequence we have extra reason for being careful in forming beliefs based on fictions.