The Relationship Between Religious and Psychospiritual Measures and an Inflammation Marker (CRP) in Older Adults Experiencing Life Event Stress

Journal of Religion and Health - Inflammation, often measured by C-reactive protein (CRP), is thought to be related to a number of debilitating illnesses as we age, including cardiovascular...     

Queer in Southern MSW programs: lesbian and bisexual women discuss stigma management

The author described the processes by which a sample of lesbian and bisexual women assessed and managed prejudice and discrimination while pursuing degrees of masters of social work. The author presented as being pivotal to the participants' assessments of social work settings the social cues that participants identified as indicative of potential attitudes and beliefs regarding lesbian and bisexual women. In addition, the author discussed strategies that the women used to manage others' expression of prejudicial attitudes. Through these interactional processes, the participants demonstrated that they were active in shaping and reducing their experience of oppression.     

Beliefs and inferences—a test of a rational-emotive hypothesis: 3. On expectations about enjoying a party

Ninety-six subjects were asked to imagine that they were going to a party. They were further asked to imagine (a) that they adhered to a rational or an irrational belief; (b) that they had jilted or been jilted by a partner with whom they were having an intimate relationship; and (c) that they knew or did not know other friends who would be going to the party. Whilst in role, subjects were asked to make inferences about various aspects of their enjoyment of the party. The results supported the hypothesis that holding an irrational belief leads to more negatively distorted inferences than holding a rational belief, and that having been jilted by a partner would have a similar effect. There was only limited support for the hypothesis that the second two independent variables would have a moderating or amplifying effect on the negativity of inferences through interaction with the belief variable. The implications of these findings for counselling are discussed, especially with respect to challenging irrational beliefs.     

Quine: Peter HyltonReference, Ontological Relativity, and Realism

Section I of this essay discusses Quine's views about reference,, contrasting them with those of Russell. For the latter, our language and thought succeed in being about the world because of our acquaintance with objects; the relation of reference—roughly, the relation between a name and its bearer—is thus fundamental. For Quine, by contrast, the fundamental relation by which our language comes to be about the world, and to have empirical content, is that between a sentence and stimulations of our sensory surfaces; reference, while important, is a derivative notion. Section II shows how this view of reference as derivative makes possible the notorious Quinean doctrine of ontological relativity. Section III raises the issue of realism. It argues that somewhat different notions of realism are in play for Quine and for Russell—for Russell, objects, and our knowledge of objects, play the fundamental role, while for quine objectivity and truth are fundamental, with ontology being derivative.