bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Commonsense Reasoning, Logic, and Human Rationality
Authors: Oaksford Mike , Chater Nick
Published: February 2006

This chapter argues that the most important issue for the cognitive science of reasoning is whether deduction provides a computational-level theory of a substantial amount of everyday, commonsense thought. The chapter is organized as follows. It begins by outlining what deduction is, in abstract terms, and then considers various ways in which it can be related to human reasoning, using the framework of D. Marr's levels of explanation. Three sophisticated lines of arguments are developed from epistemology, AI, and the psychology of reasoning. Each argument supports the conclusion that deduction has no significant role in commonsense reasoning. The implications of rejecting deduction for the cognitive science of human reasoning are considered.
Reasoning Imperialism
Authors: Rips Lance J.
Published: February 2006

Although people can recognize and make deductively valid arguments on occasion, one perspective is that there might be no psychologically valid distinction between the deductive correctness of a conclusion and its inductive strength. This perspective is called reasoning imperialism: the attempts of one theoretical camp to assimilate the data explained by another. This chapter shows that an element crucial to extending a mental models theory of deduction to handle inductive-strength judgments is unavailable, namely, the specification of constraints on what counts as relevant counterexamples to the inductive inference under consideration. It is argued that reasoning imperialism may not work for deduction and induction, for people may hold different sorts of arguments to different sorts of standards and evaluate them in qualitatively different sorts of ways.
Ending the Rationality Wars How to Make Disputes about Human Rationality Disappear
Authors: Samuels Richard , Stich Stephen , Bishop Michael
Published: February 2006

This chapter focuses on the two opposing sides of the current rationality wars with the “heuristics and biases” researchers on the one hand, and the evolutionary psychologists on the other. The former group cites decades of evidence that people have systematic deviations from rationality, as evidenced by their performance on certain types of formal reasoning tasks. The latter group asserts the implausibility of the human architecture evolving with an inaccurate sense of probability and offers evidence that a representation of various formal problems in more ecologically valid forms makes the so-called irrational response patterns disappear. It is argued that the illusion that evolutionary psychology and the heuristics and biases tradition have a deep disagreement about how rational human beings are should disappear. This is not to say, however, that there are no genuine disagreements between these two research programs.
Tsung-mi's Zen Prolegomenon
Authors: Broughton Jeff
Published: February 2006

This chapter analyzes the Chinese Chan Buddhist text, Zen Prolegomenon (Chanyuan chuchuanchi duxu) by Kuei-feng Tsung-mi (Zongmi) (780-841). This text is a descriptive and analytical guide to the teachings and practices of the numerous Chan lineages of Chinese Buddhism in the T’ang dynasty. The chapter describes the life of Tsung-mi, especially his relation to the literati figure P’ei Hsiu, and the evaluative classification of all types of Zen known in China at that time. The essay reflects on the contribution of the Tun-huang (Dunhuang) literature in the study of Zen history.
Mazu yulu and the Creation of the Chan Records of Sayings
Authors: Poceski Mario
Published: February 2006

This chapter analyzes the Mazu yulu, compiled around 1085, which purports to record the life and teachings of the famous Zen monk, Mazu Daoyi (709-788). It examines the structure of the text, its complex internal structure and style, and reflects on the image provided in this text of the “golden age of Zen” in the Tang dynasty. The author places this text in relation to the larger genre of “Records of Sayings” (yulu), using that analysis to begin to rethink the history of Chinese Chan Buddhism.
The Lidai fabao ji (Record of the Dharma-Jewel through the Ages)
Authors: Adamek Wendi
Published: February 2006

This chapter examines the Chan or Zen text, the Lidai fabao ji, an important early text that was discovered in the Mogao caves of Dunhuang in 1900, and which had been lost for many years. Adamak finds that this text provides an important prototype of two genres, the “discourse records” (yulu) and the “transmission of the lamp records” (chuangdeng lu). This important early Zen text sheds light on the development of characteristically Zen genres in the Sung dynasty, and on the hagiographical styles that became central to the Chan tradition in that era.
Lineage and Context in the Patriarch's Hall Collection and the Transmission of the Lamp
Authors: Welter Albert
Published: February 2006

This chapter offers a precise analysis of the early Zen literature known as chuandenglu (records of the transmission of the lamp), which sets the Zen tradition up into family-like lineages transmitting the dharma from one master to another through lines of teaching heritage. Welter shows how this literary genre helps give rise to the classical divisions of Chinese Chan Buddhism into the “five houses,” although each text examined displays under careful scrutiny the preference by its authors for one lineage or another. The essay analyzes the early example of this genre known as the Zutang ji, and shows its relation to the most famous version of transmission texts, the Jingde chuandeng lu (The Jingde era record of the Transmission of the Lamp).
The Record of Hongzhi and the Recorded Sayings Literature of Song-Dynasty Chan
Authors: Schlütter Morten
Published: February 2006

This chapter offers an analysis of the “recorded sayings” genre of Zen literature by focusing on the Chan master Hongzhi Zhengjue (1091-1157), a well-known Song dynasty Zen teacher around whom an extensive literary tradition evolved. The essay begins by outlining the yulu genre, its origins and development, and then offers a similar study of development in the history of the literature surrounding this one master, Hongzhi. The Hongzhi lu is shown to be composed of a variety of historical layers, each grafted onto the whole over time through a variety of techniques. The text is shown to develop from small collections of sayings circulating during the master’s lifetime to larger official collections, until its eventual loss in China and increasing prominence in Japan.
The Eihei kōroku: The Record of Dōgen's Later Period at Eihei-ji Temple
Authors: Heine Steven
Published: February 2006

This chapter examines the textual history and structure of the Eihei-ji koroku, one of the two primary texts produced by the famous Zen master, Dogen, founder of the Soto school of Zen in Japan. Although this text represents Dogen’s thought in his mature period, it has been the subject of far less interest than the well-known Shobogenzo. Both texts are composed mainly of sermons by Dogen interpreting Zen koans and other stories in the tradition. This essay analyzes how their styles differ, the Eihei-ji koroku in formal, Chinese format (kanbun) and the Shobogenzo in informal, vernacular style. Heine’s analysis seeks to uncover the various biographical and literary levels that permeate the text.
Bearing Witness
Authors: Harrison Milmon F.
Published: February 2006

This chapter presents the stories of three people that highlight and express some of the dominant themes to emerge in talking to people about so personal and intimate a topic as their faith. These include the stories of “Cassandra”, an African American woman in her mid-30s who worked as a social worker at the Sacramento County Child Protective Services; “Russell,” a married Baby Boomer who was raised in a Jewish household but has been with the Word of Faith Movement since its early days in the late 1970s; and “Katia”, a single, 25-year-old immigrant from Ukraine. Their accounts of their personal experiences and insights demonstrate that the understanding and meaning of religion as it is lived in everyday contexts can be quite nuanced and complicated, and often fraught with difficulty. Their stories help bring abstract points of doctrine into the realm of the concrete and the real.
Faith Christian Center
Authors: Harrison Milmon F.
Published: February 2006

This chapter provides insight on the culture within the movement by focusing on one of the member congregations of the Word of Faith Movement — Faith Christian Center in Sacramento, California. This congregation teaches the Faith Message to literally thousands of people each week through worship services, Bible studies, and the weekly television broadcast. This church is therefore a major site on the map of the Word of Faith Movement in northern California. The culture inside the ministry, worship services, the faith message and needs of the ministry, and dealing with diversity are discussed.
Heal Thyself
Authors: Shuman Joel James , Meador Keith G.
Published: February 2006

Sickness and suffering are nearly universal human concerns, and many of the world's great religious traditions are devoted, in part, to teaching their adherents how to live faithfully in the midst of these unhappy realities. A recent spate of scholarly and popular literature suggests that religious activity – what frequently is referred to as spirituality – is a potentially effective means of achieving better health. This contemporary rapprochement between religion and medicine, however, has little in common with the Christian tradition and its concern for the well‐being of the human creature. The God whose presence is displayed to the world in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth is not one who may be domesticated by human belief, but who calls into existence a community of friends who care for one another as a sign of God's care for the world.
Religious Belief as Commodity Fetishism
Authors: Shuman Joel James , Meador Keith G.
Published: February 2006

According to Karl Barth, a religion understood simply as a function of human subjectivity will tend always to be shaped by the culture of which its adherents are members. This chapter shows how the religion of the contemporary rapprochement is shaped by three of the most fundamental tendencies of contemporary North Atlantic culture and its attendant consumer capitalism: radical individualism, narcissism, and the dominance of a therapeutic sensibility.
Science and Partial Truth
Authors: Costa Newton C. A. da , French Steven
Published: February 2006

In the past thirty years, two fundamental issues have emerged in the philosophy of science. One concerns the appropriate attitude we should take towards scientific theories — whether we should regard them as true or merely empirically adequate, for example. The other concerns the nature of scientific theories and models and how these might best be represented. This book looks at these two issues together by arguing that theories and models should be regarded as partially rather than wholly true. It adopts a framework that sheds new light on issues to do with belief, theory acceptance, and the realism-antirealism debate. The new machinery of “partial structures” that is developed here offers a new perspective from which to view the nature of scientific models and their heuristic development.
Aims and Overview
Authors: Costa Newton C. A. da , French Steven
Published: February 2006

This introductory chapter begins with a brief discussion of the consequences of the naturalist turn in the philosophy of science. The development of the post-positivist gulf between our actual knowledge-gathering activities and the philosophical characterization of these activities is then considered. An overview of the subsequent chapters in this book is presented.
Truth, the Whole Truth, and Partial Truth
Authors: Costa Newton C. A. da , French Steven
Published: February 2006

This chapter reviews the formalism of “pragmatic” or “quasi” truth. Just as Tarski's formalization attempted to capture what he called the “intentions” of the correspondence view of truth, the formalism outlined here attempts to represent the “intentions” of the pragmatists, notably Peirce and James. Of these, perhaps the most significant is a concern with representations of the world that are not perfect copies but are, in certain respects, incomplete and partial. The nature of the agreement between such representations and the world is then spelled out in pragmatic terms, which emphasize the set of empirical consequences of a particular idea or “concept”. The fundamental formal device behind this formalism is that of a “partial structure” and it is upon this that our epistemic construction rests.
Theories and Models
Authors: Costa Newton C. A. da , French Steven
Published: February 2006

Tarski's innovation performed a double duty in both mathematics and philosophy. In formalizing an intuitive notion of truth-as-correspondence in terms of “sentence s is true in a structure” and suggesting that other semantic notions could be defined similarly, he brought model theory into mathematics and was therefore largely responsible for the explosion of developments that resulted. Motivated by Tarski's work, it has been argued that the semantic counterpart of scientific theories is of fundamental importance, and that scientific theories should be viewed not as axiomatized sets of sentences in some suitable formal language but as classes of models. This chapter presents a “semantic” or “model-theoretic” approach in the philosophy of science based on this theory.
Inconsistency in Science
Authors: Costa Newton C. A. da , French Steven
Published: February 2006

This chapter presents a model-theoretic account in which regarding theories in terms of partial structures offers a straightforward and natural way of accommodating inconsistency. In particular, it draws attention to the heuristic importance of inconsistency in science. Shifting to the epistemic perspective, inconsistent theories can then be regarded as quasi-true and accepted as such, just like any other theory in science. This common epistemic framework forces a blurring of the standard discovery-justification distinction. A form of paraconsistent logic is introduced at the epistemic level as a logic of quasi truth.
Quasi Truth and the Nature of Induction
Authors: Costa Newton C. A. da , French Steven
Published: February 2006

This chapter considers the “vertical” relationship between theory and evidence. In particular, it considers the impact of the conception of “partial” truth on the dynamics of belief change. A new basis for a logic of induction is developed which is faithful to the central principles of induction as set down by Russell, and which can handle various well-known problems that are taken to beset standard Bayesian approaches. It is shown that the standard, but implausible, assumption of “logical omniscience” can be appropriately weakened through a formal modification of the notion of “quasi truth”.
Epistemic Enhancers
Authors: Humphreys Paul
Published: February 2006

Extrapolation, conversion, and augmentation are three ways in which our natural observational and computational abilities can be extended. Examples of each are given and the possibility of and need for a completely automated science is explored, with particular reference to the data explosion.
Scientific Empiricism
Authors: Humphreys Paul
Published: February 2006

The need for epistemic security is best satisfied by a scientific rather than a traditional empiricism. The emphasis on human observations can be transcended by the dilution argument and the overlap argument, but scientific empiricism requires that we know how instruments work, a position argued with reference to Galileo and Hacking. The three instrumental criteria of accuracy, precision, and resolution are examined. Instruments detect properties and it is argued that objects are clusters of properties.
Computational Science
Authors: Humphreys Paul
Published: February 2006

Computational science involves a new kind of scientific method. The concepts of a computational template and a computational model are introduced as alternatives to scientific theories and laws, and it is shown how the construction process for templates allows us to hold a selective form of scientific realism. There is an important distinction between the process of construction and the process of adjustment for templates, and the latter is not subject to many conventionalist objections. Templates provide a way of re-organizing the sciences, but subject-specific knowledge is still needed to use them effectively. The important role of syntax in templates argues against the semantic account of theories.
Computer Simulations
Authors: Humphreys Paul
Published: February 2006

A definition of computer simulations is given, emphasizing the dynamic aspects of simulations. The important role of visualization in many simulations is explained. Computational issues in simulations are connected to observational issues with instruments via the microscope metaphor. Digital simulations are compared with analog simulations, and the advantages and disadvantages of simulations are explored. Agent-based simulations are compared to equation-based simulations.
Further Issues
Authors: Humphreys Paul
Published: February 2006

Various underdetermination arguments against selective realism are explored and rebutted. The role of abstraction and idealization in templates is explored. The fact that most computational processes are epistemically opaque is emphasized, and the effect that opacity has on scientific knowledge is explained using the Ising model as an example. Arguments are given for emphasizing mathematical form over logical form in the philosophy of science, and for emphasizing methods applicable in practice over those applicable only in principle.
Introducing Durkheim
Authors: Smith Jonathan Z.
Published: February 2006

This chapter begins with a discussion on the different ways of introducing Durkheim to college students. It presents four rules: the first rule is to always begin with the question of definition. Before opening Elementary Forms, after discussing the logic and forms of definition, it is useful to take time in class to have the students write out their definitions of terms such as religion, sacred/profane, and church and, later, to have them rewrite their definitions in light of Durkheim's definitions, accounting for each revision with specific reference to Durkheim's counterintuitive proposals. The second rule of introducing Durkheim insists on the importance of making arguments explicit. The third rule of introducing Durkheim is that nothing must stand alone, with the idea that comparison opens up space for criticism. The fourth rule states that that students should be asked to demonstrate their mastery of Durkheim by exhibiting a capacity to “play” with the argument, applying it to an example quite different from the Australian aboriginal data on which Elementary Forms is based.
Durkheim Sings
Authors: Strenski Ivan
Published: February 2006

The publication in 1974 of Steven Lukes's Emile Durkheim: His Life and Work, brought a new Durkheim into focus. A new generation of historical reappraisal and study was initiated into the life and works of Durkheim, the benefits of which are only now, a quarter of a century later, being reaped. Here, Durkheim is located within the context of his real life and times and not tailored to fit the needs of theorizing in the social sciences, in fields such as quantitative sociology, or in the dogmas of mainstream ideologies, such as with bourgeois individualism. This chapter discusses how this “new” Durkheim can be taught in religious studies.
Translating Durkheim on Religion
Authors: Fields Karen E.
Published: February 2006

A gap exists between Durkheim's original text and the translated English. The phrase “does not exist” (n'existe pas) as a translation doesn't quite have the same meaning as the French original. Durkheim writes: faire évanouir. If literally translated, he is indicting a science that “makes [its own subject] disappear” or “vanish into thin air” like a ghost or a phantom. The distance between the original sentence and the translated sentence displays a general feature of translation, as a process and as a product. This is explored using three editions of Forms that seeks to improve on Swain's work: excerpts by W.S.F. Pickering and Jacqueline Redding (1975); the author's own complete retranslation (1995), and an Oxford World's Classics Abridgement by Mark S. Cladis and Carol Cosman (2001).
Putting Durkheim's Texts to Work
Authors: Jones Robert Alun
Published: February 2006

In a variety of different subject areas — for example, sociology, history, and most recently religious studies — Durkheim has been a central focus in this book's author's teaching for more than thirty years. As a graduate student during the late sixties, the book's author was introduced to Thomas Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962), which contained radical ideas about the history of ideas. Since then, his approach to teaching intellectual history has remained largely the same — that is, historicist, nominalist, and neopragmatist — albeit with minor adjustments along the way. Since this progression defines so much of what he does in the present, this chapter takes a brief look at the past.
The Socratic Durkheim*
Authors: Turner Stephen P. , Bertha Carlos
Published: February 2006

This chapter discusses pedagogical uses of Durkheim that serve to make sense of obligation by enabling students to see how these and related moral concepts are based on, and express, actual moral feelings and bear on actual moral experience. The chapter looks at a course taught by this bookʇs author to a multidisciplinary audience, including students interested in political philosophy, sociological theory, and political theory. The discussion centres on a four-week section of the course devoted to Durkheim, which focused on readings from Pickering's Sociology of Religion. The course readings also included substantial material from selections in Durkheim's Elementary Forms of Religious Life.
Confronting the Canon in the Classroom
Authors: Pedersen Jean Elisabeth
Published: February 2006

This chapter recounts this book's author's own experiences of teaching Durkheim and introducing feminist theory, which have always occurred in settings where the dominant approach is reading and discussion. Each section takes a similar approach, beginning with an overview of the existing work on Durkheim in a particular area, continuing with an analysis of its relevance to the Elementary Forms of Religious Life, and including a series of possible discussion questions for classroom use. Topics covered include women, sex, and gender in Durkheim's works; Durkheim on divorce and sex education; and feminist theory and Durkheimian social realism.
Durkheim's Theory of Misrecognition
Authors: Berlinerblau Jacques
Published: February 2006

This chapter offers a brief exegesis of Durkheim's theory of misrecognition, a component of his work that has received little attention. Although he never explicitly employed the term misrecognition, it accurately describes a basic idea seen in all of his major works and many of his minor ones. The analysis of this concept is germane to this inquiry in the following respects. First, this theme is found in everything that irks students and scholars about Durkheimian theory. Second, within the notion of misrecognition are a variety of pedagogical orientations which may be of use to those who lecture on theory.
Biological Synergies and Disease
Authors: Stillwaggon Eileen
Published: February 2006

This chapter brings together the results of numerous scientific studies on the biology of immune function and disease. It presents the biomedical evidence that malnutrition and parasite infection contribute to greater susceptibility to any infectious disease, including those which are transmitted sexually. The conditions of poverty increase HIV susceptibility, not only to opportunist diseases after HIV infection but also to HIV transmission, just as they increase vulnerability to other infectious diseases.
HIV-Specific Synergies
Authors: Stillwaggon Eileen
Published: February 2006

This chapter explains the biological synergies of malnutrition, parasitic and infectious diseases, and immune response that are specific to HIV transmission, and widespread among poor populations in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the transition countries. It draws on extensive medical literature that demonstrates that malnutrition, malaria, soil-transmitted helminths and other worms, schistosomiasis (and its genital lesions and inflammation, which resemble sexually transmitted diseases, or STDs), and other parasites increase HIV viral load and viral shedding, and hence increase the risk of HIV transmission.
The Context of HIV/AIDS in Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union
Authors: Stillwaggon Eileen
Published: February 2006

This chapter examines the health profile of countries in Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union within the context of an emerging HIV epidemic. Unlike the epidemics in most of the developing world, the HIV epidemics in the transition economies of Europe are apparently fueled by drug use and commercial sex work. The emphasis on the behavioral conditions, however, masks the important role played by economic crises in the collapse of public health services and the increase in human trafficking. This chapter broadens the analysis of declining health in the former socialist economies and situates the study of HIV epidemics within a biomedical analysis of disease vulnerability, rather than the reigning behavioral model.
Racial Metaphors
Authors: Stillwaggon Eileen
Published: February 2006

This chapter examines Western preconceptions regarding African sexuality that distorted early research on the social context of AIDS in Africa and continue to limit the scope of preventive policies. It examines social science and policy works that constructed a hypersexualized pan-African culture as the main reason for the high prevalence of HIV in sub-Saharan Africa, supporting their hypotheses with sweeping generalizations and innuendo based on anecdotal evidence, rather than on useful comparative data on sexual behavior. This chapter offers a critical analysis of the discourse on African “exceptionalism”, excessive reliance on anthropological or ethnographic methodology, and the historical and philosophical origins of treating Africa as a special case that derives from racial science and the eugenics movement.
Opportunistic Investments for Health and Human Development
Authors: Stillwaggon Eileen
Published: February 2006

This chapter uses the economic concept of externalities to evaluate the positive spillovers that exist in health interventions. It argues for mainstreaming AIDS prevention by addressing a broad array of development problems, rather than by employing a just-in-time approach to HIV intervention. It demonstrates that non-health investments are often the best way to achieve health goals, such as increasing the efficiency of customs regulations at border posts to reduce the spread of HIV along trucking routes. It also argues for broad community health programs that exploit economies of scale and scope.
Nietzsche's New Darwinism
Authors: Richardson John
Published: February 2006

Nietzsche wrote in a scientific culture transformed by Darwin. He read extensively in German and about British Darwinists, and his own works dealt often with such obvious Darwinian themes as struggle and evolution. Yet most of what Nietzsche said about Darwin was hostile: he sharply attacked many of his ideas, and often slurred Darwin himself as mediocre, so most readers of Nietzsche have inferred that he must have cast Darwin quite aside. But in fact, this book argues, Nietzsche was deeply and pervasively influenced by Darwin. He stressed his disagreements, but was silent about several core points he took over from Darwin. Moreover, the book claims, these Darwinian borrowings were to Nietzsche's credit: when we bring them to the surface we discover his positions to be much stronger than we had thought. Even Nietzsche's radical innovations are more plausible when we expose their Darwinian ground; we see that they amount to a new Darwinism.
Metaethics
Authors: Richardson John
Published: February 2006

This chapter begins by examining the interface between Nietzsche's values generally and the claims of fact sketched in Chapter 1. It is argued that just as his explanations are variants on Darwinian ones, so is his way of making his transition from explanations to values. How Nietzsche explains values is determined in order to address his metaethics — in particular this question about the ontic and epistemic relations between his facts and his values. It is shown that Nietzsche uses his quasi-Darwinian facts about the sources of our values to raise himself (as he thinks) into a superior valuative stance, from which he carries out his “revaluation of values”. This stance gives credit or support to the “new values” that result from this revaluation.
Ethics-Politics
Authors: Richardson John
Published: February 2006

This chapter focuses on Nietzsche's ethics and politics. It considers the particular genealogies Nietzsche gives for pity and altruism; his genealogies generally proceed through two stages: natural and social selection. Whether/how those social virtues get selected naturally and how they are then exapted by social selection are examined. This Nietzschean story is compared with the Social Darwinists' account of how morality evolves. These Darwinists hold that the development of these social virtues represents “progress”, and that it shows us the way to progress still further. Nietzsche vehemently rejects this claim about progress, and even seems to dispute whether the notion itself is coherent. It is argued that his critique of progress leaves untouched kinds of personal and social progress in which he still believes. Nietzsche's ethical and political revaluings are discussed.
Introduction
Authors: Gert Bernard
Published: February 2006

This introduction discusses the areas of widespread agreement about morality, and lists those features of rational human nature that account for it. The sources of unresolvable moral disagreement, e.g., different rational rankings of the goods (benefits) and evils (harms), and different views about the scope of morality, are described. The strong analogy between morality and grammar is used to explain how to know what counts as morally acceptable without being able to state this explicitly.
Part I The Moral System
Authors: Gert Bernard
Published: February 2006

Part I describes the moral system, including the moral rules, moral ideals, morally relevant features, and the two-step procedure for determining when a violation of a moral rules is strongly justified, weakly justified, or unjustified. It includes a list of the ten justified moral rules. An account of the moral virtues and vices is provided, and their relation to the moral system is shown.
Part II The Moral Theory
Authors: Gert Bernard
Published: February 2006

Part II contains a justification of the moral system that shows that all rational persons who limit their beliefs to those shared by all other moral agents, and who seek agreement with them, will put forward morality as the system they should all follow. The standard accounts of rationality are criticized, and an account that makes rationality the fundamental normative concept is presented. The distinction between the requiring force and the justifying force of reasons is used to explain why it is often rational to act either morally or immorally. Although morality does not provide a unique correct answer to every moral question, it always provides adequate reasons for acting morally.
A Korean Contribution to the Zen Canon: The Oga Hae Seorui
Authors: Muller Charles
Published: February 2006

This chapter traces the role of the Diamond Sutra through the earlier Korean tradition down to the present, focusing on the various types of commentarial treatment it received, and the way it is used at present both in monastic and lay practice. It also focuses on another sutra, the Ogahae, its production and content, along with Gihwa’s own assessments of its value. With widespread awareness of the Korean Sōn (Zen) tradition that developed mainly during the Goryeo and Joseon periods, having come relatively late as compared with its Japanese and Chinese counterparts, there is always a tendency to make comparisons with these traditions when trying to identify the character of Korean Sōn. One of the most prominent distinctive aspects of the Korean Sōn tradition is the degree to which Buddhist scriptural texts have continued to play a central role in the tradition. The most influential scripture is the Diamond Sutra, which has not only been studied and commented on extensively, but is by far the most commonly chanted text in Korea.
“Rules of Purity” in Japanese Zen
Authors: Foulk T. Griffith
Published: February 2006

This chapter outlines the history of the Japanese Zen appropriation and adaptation of Chinese rules of purity attributed to master Baizhang, from the Kamakura period down to the present. The so-called transmission of Zen from China to Japan in the Kamakura period (1185-1333) was a complex event with many facets, but it is convenient to analyze it as having two distinct dimensions: (1) the communication to Japan of Chan mythology, ideology, and teaching styles, accomplished largely through the media of texts such as Chanyuan qinggui (Rules of Purity for Chan Monasteries), in which the distinctive rhetorical and pedagogical forms of Chan were re-enacted; and (2) the establishment in Japan of monastic institutions modeled after the great public monasteries of Southern Song China. This was facilitated by the travels of mainly Myōan Eisai, Enni Ben’en, and Dōgen to China, who brought various “rules of purity”.
Zen Kōan Capping Phrase Books
Authors: Hori G. Victor Sōgen
Published: February 2006

Zen phrase books include books of proverbs or wise sayings, handbooks compiled by early Zen monks as aids to composing Chinese poetry, dictionaries of Chinese dialect or colloquial language, and guidebooks for reading tea ceremony scrolls. In a narrower sense, the Zen phrase book is the handbook that Japanese Rinzai Zen monks use for the “capping phrase” exercise in the Zen kōan practice. This chapter describes two classic and three modern Zen Phrase Books. The classic ones are Kuzōshi by Tōyō Eichō Zenji and Zenrin Kushūi by Ijōshi. The new collections are: Zudokko Kushō, compiled by Fujita Genro, Shinsan Zengoshō, complied by Tsuchiya Etsudō, and Kunchō Zenrin Kushū, edited and revised by Shibayama Zenkei Roshi. The chapter closes with some reflections on two broader questions: How can Zen, supposedly “not founded on words and letters” have a capping phrase practice? And what are the origins of the capping phrase exercise and how did it get incorporated into Zen meditation practice.
“Thou Shall Not Freeze-Frame,” or, How Not to Misunderstand the Science and Religion Debate
Authors: Latour Bruno
Published: February 2006

This essay aims to subvert typical assumptions about science and religion as a necessary preface to rethinking their relationship. Latour likens religion to love as a performative (vs. merely referential) manner of speech that brings immediacy, not the distant God as is generally assumed. He similarly flips science on the head of general assumptions, arguing that it is concerned not with the immediate stuff of life, but with largely invisible worlds (the supposed domain of religion). He then addresses representation in science and religion, suggesting how science is not the simplistic matter of corresponding words to world, but an unending process of cascading chains of transformation by which matter becomes form. Latour also critiques the traditional notion of religious images as pointing toward the invisible and not being sacred in themselves. Rather, he argues that religious images work to distort and confuse general notions of direct apprehension of the distant and invisible, thus placing re-emphasis on the immediate, a (literal) re-presentation. In both cases, Latour argues for a dynamic notion of truth, cautioning against “freeze-framing” truth as a static world of scientific reference or a static incarnation of the sacred in historical time.
Kabbalah and Contemporary Cosmology: Discovering the Resonances
Authors: Matt Daniel C.
Published: February 2006

This essay considers the possible resonances between contemporary physical cosmology and the kabbalistic tradition of Jewish mysticism. Matt begins by suggesting that common views of science and religion as distinct or separable are themselves limited in not suggesting possibilities for fruitful interaction. Religion, for example, gives science wonder, and science gives religion a view of knowledge as provisional, thus leading to humility in light of realities such as the nature of God. Matt then recapitulates the scientific theory of the Big Bang; yet perhaps in the Big Bang one can recapture mythic depth and meaning, as the Big Bang indicates that we are made out of the same stuff as all creation. Kabbalah and physical cosmology, in fact, make parallel statements as to the singularity of the origin of the universe and its resultant unfolding. Other physical theories such as broken symmetry find kabbalistic parallels, in spite of their widely differing methodologies, and suggest that science and spirituality are complementary. Matt argues that utimately, this fractured world needs mending, and that God needs us to mend it — God being best understood as infinite and hidden, yet as close to us as is our connection with the Big Bang.
The Complementarity of Science and Religion
Authors: Oliver Harold H.
Published: February 2006

This essay focuses on the notion of complementarity between science and religion. Oliver grounds complementarity in relativity theory and quantum theory. He appeals to metaphysics as the basis for his relational paradigm, reassessing its Aristotelian legacy, which assumed the subject/object structure of the Greek language and produced the substantialist thesis that reality ultimately consists of things, whereas relations between things are accidental. To Oliver, the cosmos is a grand unity of relations, with subject and object, mind and brain, and ultimately God and World, existing as derivatives from this fundamental relatedness. Oliver then proceeds to argue that religious language is not referential, but symbolic of relational reality. It is when this relational reality is reduced to its derivatives that religious language is changed from mythical to referential discourse. In the case of science, Oliver argues that science aims for the most economical way of speaking of the world, versus the rich metaphorical language of religion; ultimately, though, religion and science are about the same domain of human experience. Oliver then considers the question of science, religion, and truth, cautioning against saying that certain scientific theories may be “true,” and arguing instead that it is preferable to consider that well-established scientific theories add to our experience of reality. In the case of religion, Oliver cautions even more strongly against truth as referring to the independent existence of an object, religious “truth” being realization or experience of relational reality.
Darwin, Design, and the Unification of Nature
Authors: Brooke John Hedley
Published: February 2006

This essay focuses on the idea of the unity of nature which has been important in both scientific and religious discourse. Brooke notes that the unity of nature thesis — so central to Christian theology — was not simply an epistemological assertion, but one which was intended to demonstrate the beauty of God and creation. In the case of Darwin, the unity of nature thesis would seem to pose a threat to his religious belief, as naturalistic explanation of the origin of life would leave no need for God. Yet Brooke notes that Darwin’s own personal beliefs on God were complex, arguing that it was ultimately a series of incidents, both personally experienced and impersonally witnessed, which led Darwin to thoroughly question the idea of God as a caring, guiding Creator. Darwin’s own theory of evolution did not seem to uphold any tidy unity of nature — since nature competed against itself in a struggle for existence —. Among some Christian leaders, it had similarly challenging implications as well. But what greater unification could be imagined than Darwin’s theory? In particular, his inclination toward the view that all of life had been derived from a single proto-life form suggests his striving toward unification. Brooke concludes by noting the important political ends to which the unity of nature thesis was taken after Darwin, suggesting that it could remain as a meeting-ground between science and religion.
Darwinism and Christianity: Must They Remain at War or Is Peace Possible?
Authors: Ruse Michael
Published: February 2006

This essay considers the arguments of three scholars who have maintained that there is indeed a contradiction between Darwinism and religion. The first is entomologist and sociobiologist Edward O. Wilson, whom Ruse argues is quite sympathetic to religion as an ethical system, but maintains that its existence can be explained on evolutionary grounds; yet, Wilson considers religion to be a necessary illusion, hardly true in its own right. In the case of Richard Dawkins, Ruse considers the thesis — popular among early Christian Darwinians — that God designed life through the process of evolution. One problem with this thesis is the very random, seemingly undersigned nature of evolution, yet Dawkins himself was not worried by random variation. As his third example, Ruse considers his own argument — that the biblical injunction to love one’s neighbor as oneself does not seem to be based on biological fitness as much as would a near-neighbor form of love; yet, Ruse counters himself by arguing that perhaps Jesus’ injunction did not admonish one to love everyone equally, or alternatively. Christianity could be reaching out to extend a system of morality that biology has attuned to only near-neighbor forms of concern. Ultimately, Ruse argues that the conflict between Darwinism and religion was initiated for social and political, not scientific reasons, and that though challenges still exist in reconciling the two viewpoints, there is no necessary contradiction.
Gods and the Mental Instincts That Create Them
Authors: Boyer Pascal
Published: February 2006

This essay offers an evolutionary explanation of religion, in particular, religious mental concepts. Boyer argues that the human “mind-brain” consists of multiple systems that guide understanding and action in different realms. Although none of these is specific to religion, several may be connected to religious concepts, and some concepts may be more successful at cultural transmission via these systems than others. The first important feature of religious concepts to Boyer is that they are supernatural concepts, defined by their violation of some, but not all, normal domain-level expectations. Boyer further clarifies that religious concepts tend to build on our templates of persons, but emphasize their intentional agency, which can be evolutionarily explained either in terms of the mind-brain’s need to understand complex social interaction characteristic of humans, or as an asset in predator-prey interactions. Religious concepts are also about social interaction, yet in contrast to ordinary people, supernatural agents have “perfect access” to all strategic (socially relevant) information relevant to a given social situation. Boyer cites research which suggests that people who believe in the Christian God combine features of omniscience with a human-like mind, for instance, one must pray in order for God to hear you. Finally, Boyer argues that religious concepts prey upon common intuitions about misfortune. Gods that do not matter much to people’s daily lives — no matter how powerful they are otherwise — are not that religiously important. Thus, these concepts focus not on how but why the supernatural agents cause misfortune, the reason tracing back to some mishap of social interaction with these agents.
Empathy and Human Experience
Authors: Thompson Evan
Published: February 2006

This essay considers empathy as a central feature of the human experience in which to ground science and religion. Thompson draws upon cognitive science, contemplative psychology, and phenomenological philosophy in considering empathy as the dynamic coupling of self and other, as a basic intersubjective dimension, one which precludes distinction of “inner” and “outer” realities. Phenomenological inquiry suggests four aspects to empathy: involuntary coupling of self and other, imaginary transposition of oneself to the place of the other, interpretation of oneself as Other to the other and vice versa, and moral perception of other as person. These capacities exist wholly or in part in specific instances; all of these elements are found in human developmental psychology, and come together in the lived bodily experience and via language. Thompson turns to Buddhist contemplative psychology as a means of discussing implications for nonduality of self and other. He analyzes the 8th century Way of the Bodhisattva, which argues that notions of “self” and “other” have no independent existence, but are conceptually based. Thus, Buddhism as a “middle way” negotiates between the conventional truth that we have bounded selves, and the ultimate truth that self has no bounds. Thompson finally turns to consider implications for cognitive science, arguing that it tends to rely on third-person theories and models. For Thompson, the very fact of experience suggests the importance of adding first-person models to develop scientific accounts of consciousness. These first-person methods not only provide authentic experience, but afford the kind of reflective distancing necessary to process the complex set of interactions that intersubjective experience affords.
Kant and British Empiricism
Authors: Waxman Wayne
Published: February 2006

This chapter begins with a discussion of the concept of sensibilism, the theory that all ideas originate in being perceived, and are non-existent prior to or independently of their immediate presence to consciousness in perception. It dispels one of the most common misconceptions about sensibilism: its limitation to a thesis about the senses as merely sources of sensations. It argues that sensibilism, as the principle of unity, and psychologism, as the principle of continuity, connect the philosophies of John Locke, George Berkeley, David Hume, and Immanuel Kant. An understanding of the fundamental principles uniting Kant with his British Empiricist predecessors, particularly Hume, will show that the only thing that separates Kant’s positions from theirs is a source of representations unconsidered by Locke, Berkeley, and Hume — pure sensible intuition.
A Kantian Way Out of Hume's Quandary
Authors: Waxman Wayne
Published: February 2006

This chapter considers a way to make the case that Hume’s own premises, if strictly adhered to, inexorably points beyond empirical psychologism to transcendentalism. This concerns a difficulty Hume detected but failed to resolve: the quandary of personal identity described in an appendix to the second volume of A Treatise of Human Nature. Hume was unable to explain the principles that united successive perceptions in thought or consciousness. Since the same Humean principles that made mathematics vulnerable to the skeptical argument on the necessity of a cause for every beginning of existence prevented Hume from finding a way out of the quandary, it is natural to wonder if Kant’s doctrine of pure sensibility may have been the explanatory principle Hume sought. It is shown that Kant’s psychologism provides a solution to the quandary not open to Hume’s empirical psychologism.