Religion and Mental Health: an exploration of the relationship between the ineffable and the indefinable

This article suggests that the relationship between religion and mental health is both important and complex. It reviews some studies of the relationship and suggests that religion can be good or bad for one's mental health, depending on the content of the religious message. It also presents a model of mental health and suggests that this or some similar scheme can be employed to assess the extent to which one's religious or value system promotes mental health.     

Can Reliabilists Believe in Subjective Probability?

According to reliabilist conceptions of knowledge, knowledge implies reliable true belief. Since reliability is an irreducibly probabilistic notion, one's view of knowledge also depends on one's view of probability. If one believes that all probability is subjective probability, knowledge becomes a relativized concept: knowledge is relative to a given body of beliefs of a given person at a given time. Since such a relativized conception of knowledge is extremely implausible and since reliabilism seems to capture at least part of the truth, one should rather give up a purely subjective view of probability.     

A Quantitative Trait Locus Associated With Cognitive Ability in Children

Quantitative trait loci (QTLs) associated with general cognitive ability ( g ) were investigated for several groups of children selected for very high or for average cognitive functioning. A DNA marker in the gene for insulin-like growth factor-2 receptor (IGF2R) on Chromosome 6 yielded a significantly greater frequency of a particular form of the gene (allele) in a high- g group (.303; average IQ = 136, N = 51) than in a control group (.156; average IQ = 103, N = 51). This association was replicated in an extremely-high- g group (all estimated IQs > 160, N = 52) as compared with an independent control group (average IQ = 101, N = 50), with allelic frequencies of .340 and .169, respectively. Moreover, a high-mathematics-ability group ( N = 62) and a high-verbal-ability group ( N = 51) yielded results that were in the same direction but only marginally significant ( p = .06 and .08, respectively).     

Weigh(t)ing for Awareness

We wished to learn if weight perception can be extinguished by studying two patients with right hemisphere brain damage. When lifting weights simultaneously, a patient with right frontal damage was not biased in her judgments of which weight was heavier. By contrast, a patient with right parietal damage reported left-sided weights as being lighter than those on the right. Psychophysical power functions revealed that her awareness of increasing weights on the left was dampened compared to the right when lifting weights individually on each side. Strikingly, her awareness of weight changes on the left was completely abolished when she lifted weights in both hands simultaneously. She demonstrated an unusual split in awareness, being motorically aware of and actively engaged with left-sided weights while being unaware of their incremental changes.     

IN DEFENSE OF ONE FORM OF TRADITIONAL EPISTEMOLOGY

Philosophical Studies -