bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
9 The Growing Complexity of the Real
Authors: Ramadan Tariq 
Published: January 2009

Abstract
This chapter explores the evolution of the sciences to understand better what this is going to entail as far as dealing with texts and establishing an Islamic ethics is concerned. It argues that we have reached limits that prevent contemporary Islamic thought from moving forward and thus in facing the challenges of our time as it should. It proposes new geography of the sources of law that entails shifting the center of gravity of religious and legal authority in contemporary Muslim societies and communities.
16 Ethics and Universals
Authors: Ramadan Tariq 
Published: January 2009

Abstract
The reform presented in the course of this book must begin with reconciliation with the texts, their meaning, and their higher goals considered in history and in various human societies. There is a need to reconcile with an Islamic universality whose essence is pluralistic. Confirming its universality means engaging a twofold movement that consists in determined self-assertion allied to confident opening up to all civilizations and religions, but also to the different subjects of thought that were long considered dangerous precisely because of fears about dilution or transgressions against the text. This chapter discusses these in terms of areas such as philosophy, mysticism, and interfaith dialogue.
Supersizing the Mind
Authors: Clark Andy 
Published: January 2009

AbstractStudies of mind, thought, and reason have tended to marginalize the role of bodily form, real-world action, and environmental backdrop. In recent years, both in philosophy and cognitive science, this tendency has been identified and, increasingly, resisted. The result is a plethora of work on what has become known as embodied, situated, distributed, and even ‘extended’ cognition. Work in this new, loosely-knit field depicts thought and reason as in some way inextricably tied to the details of our gross bodily form, our habits of action and intervention, and the enabling web of social, cultural, and technological scaffolding in which we live, move, learn, and think. But exactly what kind of link is at issue? And what difference might such a link or links make to our best philosophical, psychological, and computational models of thought and reason? These are among the large unsolved problems in this increasingly popular field. This book offers both a tour of the emerging landscape, and an argument in favour of one approach to the key issues. That approach combines the use of representational, computational, and information-theoretic tools with an appreciation of the importance of context, timing, biomechanics, and dynamics. More controversially, it depicts some coalitions of biological and non-biological resources as the extended cognitive circuitry of individual minds.
1 The Active Body
Authors: Clark Andy 
Published: January 2009

AbstractThis chapter focuses on some of the most fundamental ways in which appeals to the body, to the environment, and to embodied action may inform our vision and understanding of mind. The benefits enabled by the coevolution of morphology, materials, and control are considered. Related strategies of ‘ecological assembly’ in which embodied agents exploit the opportunities provided by dynamic loops, active sensing, and iterated bouts of environmental exploitation and intervention are discussed.
2 The Negotiable Body
Authors: Clark Andy 
Published: January 2009

AbstractThis chapter argues that human minds and bodies are essentially open to episodes of deep and transformative restructuring in which new equipment (both physical and ‘mental’) can become quite literally incorporated into the thinking and acting systems that we identify as our minds and bodies. This theme is pursued with special attention to the negotiability of our own embodiment. Three grades of embodiment are discussed: mere embodiment, basic embodiment, and profound embodiment.
3 Material Symbols
Authors: Clark Andy 
Published: January 2009

AbstractLanguage can be viewed as a form of mind-transforming cognitive scaffolding: a persisting, though never stationary, symbolic edifice whose critical role in promoting thought and reason remains surprisingly ill-understood. This chapter examines three distinct but interlocking benefits of the linguistic scaffold. First, the simple act of labeling the world opens up a variety of new computational opportunities and supports the discovery of increasingly abstract patterns in nature. Second, encountering or recalling structured sentences supports the development of otherwise unattainable kinds of expertise. Third, linguistic structures contribute to some of the most important yet conceptually complex of all human capacities: our ability to reflect on our own thoughts and characters and our limited but genuine capacity to control and guide the shape and contents of our own thinking.
Mechanisms of Democracy
Authors: Vermeule Adrian 
Published: January 2009

Abstract
What institutional arrangements should a well-functioning constitutional democracy have? Most of the relevant literatures in law, political science, political theory, and economics address this question by discussing institutional design writ large. This book moves beyond these debates, changing the focus to institutional design writ small. In established constitutional polities, the book argues that law can and should — and to some extent already does — provide mechanisms of democracy: a repertoire of small-scale institutional devices and innovations that can have surprisingly large effects, promoting democratic values of impartial, accountable and deliberative government. Examples include legal rules that promote impartiality by depriving officials of the information they need to act in self-interested ways; voting rules that create the right kind and amount of accountability for political officials and judges; and legislative rules that structure deliberation, in part by adjusting the conditions under which deliberation occurs transparently or instead secretly. Drawing upon a range of social science tools from economics, political science, and other disciplines, the book carefully describes the mechanisms of democracy and indicates the conditions under which they can succeed.
Absolute Majority Rules: Optimizing Accountability
Authors: Vermeule Adrian 
Published: January 2009

Abstract
This chapter introduces another voting mechanism — the absolute majority rule. Absolute majority voting rules, which require a majority of all eligible members or voters to take institutional action, can promote accountability by insuring legislative and democratic majorities against strategic behavior by minorities. Moreover, such rules simultaneously promote the accountability of legislators and other officials to broad electorates and minimize the accountability of officials to narrow interest groups and other democratically suspect third parties. These two effects are complementary — the first promotes accountability where it is desirable, the second dilutes it where it is undesirable. Absolute majority rules, which can be used in conjunction with submajority rules, thus provide a tool for optimizing accountability.
Delegation, Accountability and Judging
Authors: Vermeule Adrian 
Published: January 2009

Abstract
This chapter addresses the question: In a democratic polity, how (if at all) can judges promote accountability and allied democratic virtues? It suggests a supermajority voting rule that weights law in favor of the exercise of delegated lawmaking authority by government officials. Legal doctrine already requires this, but does not enforce the requirement with a voting rule. The suggestion here is that a small-scale institutional mechanism can better enforce the current law, promoting the democratic accountability of administrative law and policy at lower cost than the current regime. The chapter thus connects delegation with voting rules geared to promoting accountability, the theme of Chapters 3 and 4.
Teaching Death and Dying in the Context of Religious Studies
Authors: Sasson Vanessa R. 
Published: January 2009

AbstractThis chapter describes a religious studies survey course on world religions that the author of this chapter has been teaching for a number of years in two different academic institutions. The course introduces students to some of the major world religions and investigates in particular how each of these deals with death and dying. The result has been twofold: not only are students given a good basis upon which to compare religious traditions seriously, but they are also provided with an opportunity to reflect upon and discuss their mortality together. The chapter explores these results theoretically and anecdotally.
Love Letters to the Dead: Immortal Gifts for the Lifelong Learner
Authors: Lander Dorothy , Graham‐Pole John 
Published: January 2009

AbstractThis chapter explores the “reflective practice” of letter-writing to the deceased. It reviews the literature of this unique form of epistolary communication, as a prelude to writing letters to the chapter's authors' beloved dead. In subsequent dialogue, the chapter reviews the potential of this autoethnographic and holistic methodology for death education, as well as for research and care work, in both formal and informal palliative care settings. It is argued that death and mourning are hard to teach through didactics and need to be interwoven with arts-based personal story, self-expression, and dialogue. The chapter proposes that such direct, non-mediated, communications can offer a vital, although largely unexplored, form of lifelong pedagogy as well as serving as a source of direct healing for bereaved people, whether personal or professional caregivers.
Life After Death: An Overview of Contemporary Beliefs for Teachers
Authors: Badham Paul 
Published: January 2009

AbstractThis chapter was originally written as a guide for teachers in Britain responsible for teaching Philosophy of Religion to Advanced Level Students. The “A” Level examination is taken at age 18 in Britain and this chapter was first published in the journal Dialogue in November 2003. The chapter explores the wide range of beliefs held in contemporary society giving both the case for extinction on naturalistic grounds as well as spelling out the importance for world religion of belief in life after death. It explores the case for dualism in the writings of leading British philosophers. It looks at Resurrection in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam as well as the importance of the law of Karma in the religions of the East. It outlines the philosophical arguments for life after death in Christian philosophy, and examines the empirical evidence for reincarnation with special to the Tibetan and Pure-land traditions of Buddhism. The chapter ends with an examination of Near-death experiences and their possible significance.
Teaching Religion and Film
Authors: Watkins Gregory J. 
Published: January 2009

Abstract
In a culture increasingly focused on visual media, the use of movies in religious studies and theology classrooms has far outpaced both the scholarship on religion and film and the study of pedagogical practices in the field. This volume makes great strides on both fronts. The seventeen contributors to this volume, many of them leaders in this area, provide an overview of the main approaches to religion and film studies, argue for advancements in theoretical approaches, and consider the practical realities of teaching religion and film. Part I presents general categories for thinking about the intersection between religion and film, as well as an argument for an emerging line of theoretical inquiry. The chapters in Part II examine the use of film in teaching religious traditions, whether movies are seen from the critical perspective of particular religious traditions or are used to teach the traditions themselves. Part III focuses on the use of film in the religious studies classroom, where religion or theories of religion are more generally addressed. Part IV considers the promise and challenge of using films to teach critical perspectives on fundamental human values, whether films are seen as vehicles for bringing stories into the classroom or as powerful indicators of a culture's core values.
What Are We Teaching When We Teach “Religion and Film”?
Authors: Blizek William L. , Desmarais Michele 
Published: January 2009

Abstract
This chapter is a discussion of four basic methods in teaching religion and film: 1) using religion to offer new interpretations of movies; 2) using movies to critique religions or religious ideas; 3) using movies to promote religion; and 4) using movies to promote cultural values. Attention to these differences is helpful both for planning a course on religion and film and for helping students negotiate the terrain between religion and film.
Teaching Biblical Tourism
Authors: Bach Alice 
Published: January 2009

AbstractWith a wealth of material already published on the general project of matching films with biblical texts (especially within the “sword‐and‐sandal” genre), this chapter proposes a new method that uses documentaries about Palestinians and Israelis in order to approach critical theory and religion. Instead of engaging students in film criticism by comparing text to film representation, documentaries involve the students in the social criticism those very same texts present. This chapter includes appendices with extensive bibliographies on Bible and film, as well as religion and film material.
Buddhism, Film, and Religious Knowing
Authors: Cho Francisca 
Published: January 2009

AbstractThis chapter is about using film to teach a different way of understanding and knowing. Western academic knowledge is discursive and analytical by definition. This is most often our approach to film as well—what could be called a literary approach, in which film is read like a text. The study of Buddhism, too, is expected to address the content of its philosophical doctrines and the historical context of its making and evolution. One of the primary aims of Buddhist teaching is to look at our conventional experience of reality in a very different way, similar to what art often tries to do. Film has particular advantages because of its ability to mimic and even foster real‐time experience. The larger theoretical question raised by this investigation is whether academic learning can incorporate more than discursive content and critical analysis to include aesthetic, or sense‐based, learning.
Film and the Introduction to Islam Course
Authors: Hussain Amir 
Published: January 2009

AbstractThis chapter will be useful to those who want to incorporate film into their introductory course on Islam. It discusses the representations of Islam and of Muslim lives in contemporary Western films and the way in which these relate to the particular challenges of using movies to teach Islam. The chapter describes various motion pictures to give a sense of the range of Islamic issues that movies can productively portray, including fundamentalism and assimilation. There is also a discussion of films from the Muslim world (most notably Iran) that depict Muslim life in a way that is not usually seen in Western films. Tips on the use of documentary films about Islam are also provided.
Seeing Is Believing, but Touching's the Truth
Authors: Carp Richard M. 
Published: January 2009

AbstractThe emerging field of the anthropology of the senses critiques not only the academy's verbocentrism but also its (scopotropism (hypervisuality)) at the same time that it argues for a reintegration of all other senses into the practice of ethnography. This does not mean we should not use films in our religious studies classes, but it does mean that both students and (especially) teachers should have some sophistication in thinking about the medium. As an example, the films of Jean Rouch have been held up as the filmic equivalent of Artaud's “theatre of cruelty,” including films on religious phenomena such as African spirit possession. This chapter articulates a particular theoretical perspective on film and religion (anthropology of the senses) and presents a discussion of teaching this approach in the classroom.
There Is No Spoon?
Authors: Grieve Gregory J. 
Published: January 2009

Abstract
After presenting a cogent survey of the many interpretations of the movie The Matrix, this chapter offers its own compelling analysis by weaving together many distinctive theoretical and methodological approaches, including postmodernism, perennial philosophy, Marxism, Buddhism, and gnosticism. The chapter argues in the end for an understanding of a distinctively contemporary form of modern Western religiosity called “postperennialism.” The Matrix serves as a vehicle for both understanding and critiquing postperennialism. The analysis contained in the chapter serves as model for sustained investigation of this particular movie in a classroom setting.
TeachingFilm as Religion
Authors: Lyden John C. 
Published: January 2009

AbstractThis chapter begins by describing the mythological approach to film and religion by arguing that movies provide the collective myths that help a culture deal with its anxieties and hopes, usually by way of the cathartic drama of rewarded heroes and punished villains. Having established this theoretical groundwork, the chapter addresses specific pedagogical issues that relate to helping students not only to recognize the myths and values implicit within a film but also to understand how people appropriate them.
Filmmaking and World Making
Authors: Plate S. Brent 
Published: January 2009

Abstract
This chapter discusses the similar structures of religious worlds and films. It thus offers an introduction to theories and terms of religious studies through the popular medium of film. Drawing on film theory, the chapter indicates some of the ways film re‐creates the world through cinematography, mise‐en‐scène, editing, and other production elements. By drawing on theorists of religion such as Peter Berger, William Paden, and Nelson Goodman, the chapter goes on to show how religions achieve similar world‐making strategies by setting apart particular objects and periods of time through the telling of stories and the gathering together of people focused on one thing. By paying attention to the manner in which films are constructed, we can shed light on the ways religious myths and rituals are developed and vice versa.
Making Saints
Authors: Duffin Jacalyn 
Published: January 2009

AbstractThis chapter presents the history and role of miracles in the canonization process since reforms of the Council of Trent to the late twentieth century. The existing literature on this topic and on medical miracles in general is reviewed. A brief description of the sources and methods for the book appears here and a longer presentation is found in appendix A. Special attention is devoted to the writings of physician Paolo Zacchia and of Pope Benedict XIV (Prospero Lambertini).
The Doctors
Authors: Duffin Jacalyn 
Published: January 2009

AbstractThe canonization process always sought the input of doctors wielding the most up-to-date diagnostic and therapeutic methods. Over time, the average number of physicians involved steadily increased. Consultants sometimes argued over the diagnosis or management. Local experts were invoked to ascertain the physical condition of the supposedly cured patient, or to comment on the extraordinary nature of the events. The average number of medical experts also increased through time.The investigation annoyed some doctors; others were defensive, especially when the testimony was elicited many years after the cure. Originally a question about the religious practices of witnesses was a key part of their testimony. Eventually, medical witnesses were not required to be practicing Catholics; some were Protestants or Jews. In all cases, the doctors’ testimony was sought for its scientific content and clinical expertise. Miracles take place when the doctor is surprised by the outcome of desperate situations.
Conclusion
Authors: Duffin Jacalyn 
Published: January 2009

AbstractUntil recently, modern physicians rarely were able to dignify the role of spirituality in health care by making it part of scientific study. Pastoral care may have always been welcome and respected, but it lay outside the realm of what was considered scientific. With the advent of randomized controlled trials, some investigators have brought the claims of spiritualists to the scrutiny of science. This rapprochement of medicine and religion reminds us that the two realms may depart from radically different premises, but they have many similarities in focus, conception, and practice. Both medicine and religion are ancient semiotic endeavors. They seek to detect (diagnose?) the “reality” of metaphysical entities behind individual suffering: disease, sin, health, redemption, miracle, and holiness. The objects of this medical and religious identification are not immutable, three-dimensional things, waiting to be unearthed like potsherds in an archeological dig. They are ideas formulated through science and/or theology to explain suffering and to console misery. As a result, diseases, sins, health, redemption, healing, and miracles are contingent on time and place. They change more than do human suffering and the responses to it. The illness experiences of individuals are co-opted by the epistemic frameworks of medicine and religion to bolster and advance their projects. But sickness, healing behaviors, and death are part of a longue durée of cultural pluralism. In our time, the greatest impetus for the continued work of the medical saints is the positivistic posture of medicine itself.
From Tocqueville to the War on Terror
Authors: Hicks Douglas A 
Published: January 2009

AbstractThis chapter examines the role of religion in American civic life from the time Alexis de Tocqueville visited the early United States until September 11, 2001. It focuses on an array of historical images for how Americans in their diversity can—and should—come together in public life. Tocqueville called religion the first of America’s political institutions, due to the religious nature of many voluntary associations, but he was limited in assuming Christianity was the common denominator. Israel Zangwill and Horace Kallen offered opposing images — the melting pot and cultural pluralism, respectively — but they each also spoke of an American symphony. Will Herberg introduced the “triple melting pot” of Protestant, Catholic, and Jew, and Lyndon Johnson gave the most vivid picture of America as the home of immigrants from every corner of the world. None of these images can fix the current challenges, but they do help show some imaginative, alternative visions.