The fundamental and the brute

Philosophical Studies - This paper distinguishes bruteness from fundamentality by developing a theory of stochastic grounding that makes room for non-fundamental bruteness. Stochastic grounding...     

Essays: RELIGIOUS MEDICAL ETHICS: A Study of the Rulings of Rabbi Waldenberg

This article seeks to examine how religious ideas that are not the focus of a particular halakhic question become the crux of the ruling, thereby molding it and dictating its bias. We will attempt to demonstrate this through a study of Jewish medical ethics, based on some of the rulings of one of the greatest halakhic decisors of the previous generation: Rabbi Eliezer Yehuda Waldenberg (1915–2006). Rabbi Waldenberg molds his rulings on the basis of a religious principle asserting that the legitimacy of any medical procedure is qualified and limited. Rabbi Waldenberg rejects certain accepted medical practices, including plastic surgery, in vitro fertilization, and organ transplants. Even if these procedures are regarded by other halakhic decisors as being legitimate, for Rabbi Waldenberg they are ethically and religiously improper, and therefore they are halakhically forbidden.     

Psychologische Mess- und Testverfahren

The use of psychological assessment methods is flawed by incorrect assumptions of their capacity. Some of these assumptions are discussed. It is argued that psychological tests are necessary to expand the database for expert reports about the impact of mental disorders on work and different levels of functioning. Tests help to protect psychological assessments against errors and chance bias. With respect to levels of functioning, examples of German tests and questionnaires are given. Test-based information requires objective validation methods and should not be subordinated to an intuitive assessment strategy.     

Synchronizing movements with the metronome: nonlinear error correction and unstable periodic orbits.

The control of human hand movements is investigated in a simple synchronization task. We propose and analyze a stochastic model based on nonlinear error correction; a mechanism which implies the existence of unstable periodic orbits. This prediction is tested in an experiment with human subjects. We find that our experimental data are in good agreement with numerical simulations of our theoretical model. These results suggest that feedback control of the human motor systems shows nonlinear behavior.