What can it mean to know?

This paper offers a critique of the prevailing epistemological assumptions which undergird modern Pastoral Care and Counseling education. By drawing upon emerging insights in Transpersonal Psychology and Consciousness disciplines, along with the ontological perspectives of Martin Heidegger and John Macquarrie, the attempt is made to reclaim the modes of knowing of William James and Anton Boison. This paper includes practical and concrete examples of how one supervisor is attempting to put a new paradigm into practice.     

Dissociating viewpoint costs in mental rotation and object recognition

In a mental rotation task, participants must determine whether two stimuli match when one undergoes a rotation in 3-D space relative to the other. The key evidence for mental rotation is the finding of a linear increase in response times as objects are rotated farther apart. This signature increase in response times is also found in recognition of rotated objects, which has led many theorists to postulate mental rotation as a key transformational procedure in object recognition. We compared mental rotation and object recognition in tasks that used the same stimuli and presentation conditions and found that, whereas mental rotation costs increased relatively linearly with rotation, object recognition costs increased only over small rotations. Taken in conjunction with a recent brain imaging study, this dissociation in behavioral performance suggests that object recognition is based on matching of image features rather than on 3-D mental transformations.     

Between Satan and Harry Potter: Legitimating Wicca in Finland

This article explores how Finnish Wiccans use different strategies to legitimate their religion in a situation where the media and authorities have labelled the movement in negative terms, as satanic, an offshoot of the recent Harry Potter boom or as a non-religion. The study shows how Finnish Wiccans negotiate their self-identity and their identity vis-à-vis the larger society by using discourse that portrays their religion as a natural choice and a true religion, in opposition to the prevailing public discourse. While unified in their sentiments concerning biased media coverage, for example, the study shows how some of the legitimation strategies used by the Finnish Wiccans also function as divisive elements. This in turn implies that outward pressure is a considerable factor affecting the future of Wicca in Finland.