Existential grounds of basic belief

1136 Transferable Belief Model Basic Belief Assignment

This note is a very short presentation of the transferable belief model (TBM), a model for the representation of quantified beliefs based on belief functions. Details must be found in the recent literature. The TBM covers the same domain as the subjective probabilities except probability functions are replaced by belief functions which are much more general. The model is much more flexible than...

The Function of Religious Belief: Defensive Versus Existential Religion

The article is a theoretical and empirical review attempting to describe two modes of religious motivation: defensive versus existential religion. The article begins by seriously considering theoretical and empirical evidence that religion may function as a defense mechanism. It is argued that this description of religious belief is coherent and cannot be ignored by psychology of religion resea...

Belief Revision Conditionals: Basic Iterated Systems

Revising Some Basic Proofs in Belief Revision

This paper reobtains GROVE’s results [3] through means which are hopefully clearer and more illustrative of the underlying notions. Also, the proofs are worked through in enough details that possible errors in GROVE’s proof are clearly avoided. The paper concludes with a discussion on elementary (or closed) systems of spheres and it notes that each revision function can be given by such a syste...

Scientific faith: Belief in science increases in the face of stress and existential anxiety☆

Growing evidence indicates that religious belief helps individuals to cope with stress and anxiety. But is this effect specific to supernatural beliefs, or is it a more general function of belief - including belief in science? We developed a measure of belief in science and conducted two experiments in which we manipulated stress and existential anxiety. In Experiment 1, we assessed rowers abou...