In a series of essays, Miss Rand expounds her "Objectivist Ethics." Man will discover, if he is sufficiently rational, those goals and values which are peculiar to him alone, i.e., those which will enable him to survive, and which require complex thought processes. The result of this search is that the moral man is he who achieves his maximum happiness; relationships, whether economic or emotional, are to be based on trade, and no interests conflict if they are viewed in a (...) properly wide context. The essays are quite readable, although not so arresting as Miss Rand's novels; however, the ethics collapses when it is applied to a populous society whose environment is either agriculturally poor or highly mechanized. Given these conditions, if a man views his interest from the limited standpoint of Objectivism, there is a necessary conflict of interests.—J. M. B. (shrink)

This book attempts to prepare the non-philosopher for the study of contemporary philosophical works. After a discussion of the course of science after Copernicus, Mr. Prosch turns to an exposition of, first, the metaphysical and epistemological positions of the British empiricists and Kant and, second, the ethical and political positions of Hobbes, Locke, Hume, Adam Smith, Kant, Rousseau, and Hegel. His discussion of Marxism, pragmatism, analytical philosophy and existentialism is written from a neutral position. The book may be too technical (...) to serve its purpose, but it is a well-organized and clear attempt.—J. M. B. (shrink)

It has become increasingly clear that there is a vast array of microorganisms on and in the human body, known collectively as the human microbiome. Our microbiomes are extraordinarily complex, and this complexity has been linked to human health and well-being. Given the complexity and importance of our microbiomes, we struggle with how to think about them. There is a long list of competing metaphors that we use to refer to our microbiomes, including as an “organ” containing our “second genome,” (...) as a “symbiont” in the human “holobiont,” and as an ecological “community” in the human “ecosystem,” among others. Each of these makes different assumptions about the fundamental biology of the human-microbe system, with important implications for how we choose to study microbiomes, and the therapies we envision for correcting microbiome-linked disorders. We believe that it is time to move beyond metaphors, and we propose a scientifically pluralist approach that focuses on characterizing fundamental biological properties of microbiomes such as heritability, transmission mode, rates of dispersal rates, and strength of local selection. Such an approach will allow us to break out of the confines of narrow conceptual frameworks, and to guide the exploration of our complexity as chimeric beings. (shrink)

Viewed in the light of the remarkable performance of ‘Watson’ - IBMs proprietary artificial intelligence computer system capable of answering questions posed in natural language - on the US general knowledge quiz show ‘Jeopardy’, we review two experiments on formal systems - one in the domain of quantum physics, the other involving a pictographic languaging game - whereby behaviour seemingly characteristic of domain understanding is generated by the mere mechanical application of simple rules. By re-examining both experiments in the context (...) of Searle’s Chinese Room Argument, we suggest their results merely endorse Searle’s core intuition: that ‘syntactical manipulation of symbols is not sufficient for semantics’. Although, pace Watson, some artificial intelligence practitioners have suggested that more complex, higher-level operations on formal symbols are required to instantiate understanding in computational systems, we show that even high-level calls to Google translate would not enable a computer qua ‘formal symbol processor’ to understand the language it processes. We thus conclude that even the most recent developments in ‘quantum linguistics’ will not enable computational systems to genuinely understand natural language. (shrink)

In a reflective and richly entertaining piece from 1979, Doug Hofstadter playfully imagined a conversation between ‘Achilles’ and an anthill (the eponymous ‘Aunt Hillary’), in which he famously explored many ideas and themes related to cognition and consciousness. For Hofstadter, the anthill is able to carry on a conversation because the ants that compose it play roughly the same role that neurons play in human languaging; unfortunately, Hofstadter’s work is notably short on detail suggesting how this magic might be achieved1. (...) Conversely in this paper - finally reifying Hofstadter’s imagination - we demonstrate how populations of simple ant-like creatures can be organised to solve complex problems; problems that involve the use of forward planning and strategy. Specifically we will demonstrate that populations of such creatures can be configured to play a strategically strong - though tactically weak - game of HeX (a complex strategic game).We subsequently demonstrate how tactical play can be improved by introducing a form of forward planning instantiated via multiple populations of agents; a technique that can be compared to the dynamics of interacting populations of social insects via the concept of meta-population. In this way although, pace Hofstadter, we do not establish that a meta-population of ants could actually hold a conversation with Achilles, we do successfully introduce Aunt Hillary to the complex, seductive charms of HeX. (shrink)

We formulate and analyze the dynamics of an influenza pandemic model with vaccination and treatment using two preventive scenarios: increase and decrease in vaccine uptake. Due to the seasonality of the influenza pandemic, the dynamics is studied in a finite time interval. We focus primarily on controlling the disease with a possible minimal cost and side effects using control theory which is therefore applied via the Pontryagin’s maximum principle, and it is observed that full treatment effort should be given while (...) increasing vaccination at the onset of the outbreak. Next, sensitivity analysis and simulations (using the fourth order Runge-Kutta scheme) are carried out in order to determine the relative importance of different factors responsible for disease transmission and prevalence. The most sensitive parameter of the various reproductive numbers apart from the death rate is the inflow rate, while the proportion of new recruits and the vaccine efficacy are the most sensitive parameters for the endemic equilibrium point. (shrink)

Business theory and management practices are outgrowths of basic economic principles. To evaluate the proper place of ethics in business, the meaning of ethics as defined by economic theory must be assessed. This paper contends that classical economic thought advocates a nonethical decision-making context and is not functional for a modern complex, interdependent environment.

A quarter of a century ago, a group of scientists and conservationists introduced ‘biodiversity’ as a media buzzword with the explicit intent of galvanizing public and political support for environ...

Loop regions in proteins have traditionally been described as ‘random coil’, although they are known to adopt well‐defined conformations in most globular proteins. In this contribution we summarize the results of detailed analysis of the structures and sequences of these loop regions in proteins of known three‐dimensional structure. We also describe how these results can be used as an aid to protein design, modification and modelling.