Rethinking Diakonia and Transforming Our World

This article analyzes how ecumenical diakonia contributes to a critical view of the power dimension of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). At the same time, it presents both the opportunities and the challenges the SDGs provide in rethinking diakonia and diaconal praxis. The commitment of the global community to the SDGs signifies a new context for diaconal praxis at local and international levels. In this article, power relations and the priority of the marginalized are presented as key concerns for rethinking diakonia in the current context. A model for diaconal reflection, based on perspectives from development studies and theology, is suggested as a tool for an interdisciplinary rethinking of diakonia aiming at renewed praxis in the context of the SDGs.     

Introduction: The Role of Process Metaphysics in Our World of Science

This article applies the analytic rigor of philosophy to the vexed topic of business strategy, and uses the objective, public evidence of business strategy as an existence proof for the possibility of free will and purpose in the private realm of subjective intentionality. The first part distinguishes three types of intentionality in philosophy—purposive intentionality, referential intentionality, and the problematic intentionality of a godlike, miraculous “inner intender.” After rejecting this third type of intentionality, and noting that its rejection saves the first two types of intentionality from guilt by association, the second part draws parallels with three types of strategy in business: purposive, referential, and godlike. The first defines the goals and objectives of a company; the second picks out and targets consumers in market driven strategy; and the third, with the help of philosophical reflections, demands a rethinking of the function of leadership without reliance on a single, godlike leader. In the third part of this article, the existence proof from the public world of business is used to shed light on the possibility of intentionality in the private world of subjective intentionality. Finally, the article draws conclusions for its three audiences: for the philosophers, with credit to Nietzsche who saw it all, a greater clarity about intentionality and free will; for business people, greater clarity about the importance of purposiveness and strategic intent; and for business philosophers, a demonstration showing how—through strategy and intentionality—we can both create value and give meaning to the lives of our employees, ourselves, and our customers.     

How Causal Probabilities Might Fit into Our Objectively Indeterministic World

We suggest a rigorous theory of how objective single-case transition probabilities fit into our world. The theory combines indeterminism and relativity in the “branching space–times” pattern, and relies on the existing theory of causae causantes (originating causes). Its fundamental suggestion is that (at least in simple cases) the probabilities of all transitions can be computed from the basic probabilities attributed individually to their originating causes. The theory explains when and how one can reasonably infer from the probabilities of one “chance set-up” to the probabilities of another such set-up that is located far away. We thank Tomasz Placek for his significant help via an extensive and instructive correspondence, Thomas Müller for numerous eye-opening conversations and for his corrections to and comments upon a long sequence of drafts, both Placek and Müller for pre-publication sharing of their results, and Christopher Hitchcock for a number of suggestions.     

Technology,Phenomenology and the Everyday World: A Phenomenological Analysis on How Technologies Mould Our World

Technology always provides a new perception of the world. However, it is not clear when technology produces “mere” new informations and when it provides something more such as a production of new objects in our world which start to “live” around us. The aim of this paper is to study how technology shapes our surrounding world. The questions which we are going to answer are: Is it really adding new objects to our world? If yes, does every technology have this potentiality? We are going to tackle the problem using a phenomenological and post-phenomenological approach focussing our attention on the perceptual level. Using Husserl’s philosophy we will study how technology are deeply involved in our perception and, thanks to post-phenomenology and its concept of “embodiment relations,” we will be able to determine which kind of technologies have the potentiality to change our surrounding world introducing and producing new objects in it.     

海纳百川为我所用

2007年7月21日至23日,本刊邀请了马来西亚、印度、德国和台湾、香港以及内地的20多名学者,于山西省太原市举行"卫生保健体制改革比较研讨会".     

The Doors of Reception: Commentary on Paper by Stephanie Lewin

This discussion on Stephanie Lewin's “Parallel Identification: A Shield Against the Assault of Traumatic Jealousy” addresses the challenge of introducing new concepts and revising previous conceptual understandings while maintaining a balance between innovation and appreciation of the work of previous theorists. In the course of considering Lewin's notion of parallel identification the subjects of internalization, the nature of internal space and its relation to psychic reality, the role of unconscious models of therapeutic action, and the oscillating tension between the selected fact and the overvalued idea are explored and discussed in terms of their relevance to both development and clinical analysis.     

The Role of Concurrent Feedback in Learning to Walk Through Sliding Doors

Concurrent feedback is defined as information about performance given to participants during the execution of an action. This article investigates whether concurrent feedback is beneficial or detrimental to the learning of an ecologically relevant task. Eighteen participants were asked to walk through a virtual corridor and they practiced over 1110 trials to adjust their walking speed so as to pass through sliding doors that opened and closed at a frequency of 1 Hz. Concurrent feedback informed them about the possible need to accelerate or decelerate. Performance of participants who received concurrent feedback on 66% of the practice trials (on average) did not differ significantly from performance of participants who did not receive concurrent feedback. Furthermore, participants of both of these groups significantly outperformed participants who received concurrent feedback on all practice trials. These results are discussed in relation to the perceptual-motor mechanisms that underlie the control of the action. Also discussed are implications for future research, including the use of self-controlled feedback and the use of multisensory training programs.     

Doors for memory: A searchable database

The study of human long-term memory has for over 50 years been dominated by research on words. This is partly due to lack of suitable nonverbal materials. Experience in developing a clinical test suggested that door scenes can provide an ecologically relevant and sensitive alternative to the faces and geometrical figures traditionally used to study visual memory. In pursuing this line of research, we have accumulated over 2000 door scenes providing a database that is categorized on a range of variables including building type, colour, age, condition, glazing, and a range of other physical characteristics. We describe an illustrative study of recognition memory for 100 doors tested by yes/no, two-alternative, or four-alternative forced-choice paradigms. These stimuli, together with the full categorized database, are available through a dedicated website. We suggest that door scenes provide an ecologically relevant and participant-friendly source of material for studying the comparatively neglected field of visual long-term memory.     

Culture: The song beyond words

The paperarises from Pakeha attem pts to dealwith bicultural responsiveness in Aotearoa, New Zealand, and represents the application of a social constructionist conceptual framework to practical issues faced by counsel brsworking around cultural difference. It seeks to de‐construct some of the assumptions made in discourses around difference through expbration of the language through, and by which, we make cross‐cultural connections. Readers are invited to consider the relationship of text to ethos, and the relationship of the words we use to the space between the words. It is suggested that the power of this in‐between space, this chora (Kristeva, 1980), is related to the expression of culture. The paper aims to present a challenge to those who at times wonder about the ethics and efficacy of their counselling profession in relation to their desire to create a betterworld — in particular in redressing the inequities which invariably exist between different cultures. It is proposed that counselling as a discourse technology is a powerful tool for change. However, as a marketable technology, forms of discourse need constant monitoring since certain forms of language can be both colonised and colonising. Colonisation, with its implications of dominance and exploitation, is seen as incompatible with counselling values. Consideration is given to three aspects of discourse worthy of consideration for those working for change: ethos, individual ownership and nominalisation.     

The object beyond objects and the sacred

In both Freud's and Winnicott's thoughts regarding our psychological origin, there is the assumption of a given relationship which precedes all human relations. I refer to Freud's primal father and Winnicott's primary ideal object. I have chosen to call the object of this primordial relation “the object beyond objects” and to reflect on this as the psychological basis for an individual's faith in God. By examining what both these authors have to say concerning the sacred and the individual's way of relating to it, I feel that I am also able to describe maturation processes in the believer's relationship with God.     

The World in Theology

This article focuses on the activity of French Protestant theologian Georges Casalis as a co‐editor of the French journal Christianisme social (Social Christianity) in the turbulent period between 1965 and 1970. The journal reflected the conflicts of the times on issues such as relations with Eastern Europe, Christian–Marxist dialogue, the new impulses coming from revolutionary movements of the South, and the events of May 1968.     

The evaluation-behavior link: Direct and beyond valence

The present research tests the hypothesis that affective stimuli automatically trigger approach/avoidance tendencies. A first experiment showed that in a vigilance task participants responded faster with an approach behavior (i.e., arm flexion) to happy words than to sad words and faster with an avoidance behavior (i.e., arm extension) to sad than to happy words that were presented outside of conscious awareness. These findings were replicated and extended in a second experiment. In this experiment, emotion words presented outside of conscious awareness were responded faster by arm flexion when they were associated with approach than when they were associated with avoidance, irrespective of their valence. Conversely, emotion words associated with avoidance were responded faster by arm extension. Globally, these findings suggest that the implicit perception of affective stimuli automatically triggers the behavioral responses that are associated with them.