Biosemiotic Questions

This paper examines the biosemiotic approach to the study of life processes by fashioning a series of questions that any worthwhile semiotic study of life should ask. These questions can be understood simultaneously as: (1) questions that distinguish a semiotic biology from a non-semiotic (i.e., reductionist–physicalist) one; (2) questions that any student in biosemiotics should ask when doing a case study; and (3) still currently unanswered questions of biosemiotics. In addition, some examples of previously undertaken biosemiotic case studies are examined so as to suggest a broad picture of how such a biosemiotic approach to biology might be done.

Legal Rights in Human Bodies, Body Parts and Tissue

This paper outlines the current common law principles that protect people’s interests in their bodies, excised body parts and tissue without conferring the rights of full legal ownership. It does not include the recent statutory amendments in jurisdictions such as New South Wales and the United Kingdom. It argues that at common law, people do not own their own bodies or excised bodily material. People can authorise the removal of their bodily material and its use, either during life or after their death, for medical or scientific purposes. Researchers who acquire human bodies, body parts or tissue pursuant to such an authority have a right to possess and use them according to the authorisation they have been given, but their rights fall short of full ownership because they are limited in the way that they can use the material. The legal rights of researchers who develop intellectual property and biological products from excised human tissue can be adequately protected by existing common law principles without the need for a new legal principle that people own body parts and tissue removed from their bodies.

Hierarchical Categorical Perception in Sensing and Cognitive Processes

This article considers categorical perception (CP) as a crucial process involved in all sort of communication throughout the biological hierarchy, i.e. in all of biosemiosis. Until now, there has been consideration of CP exclusively within the functional cycle of perception–cognition–action and it has not been considered the possibility to extend this kind of phenomena to the mere physiological level. To generalise the notion of CP in this sense, I have proposed to distinguish between categorical perception (CP) and categorical sensing (CS) in order to extend the CP framework to all communication processes in living systems, including intracellular, intercellular, metabolic, physiological, cognitive and ecological levels. The main idea is to provide an account that considers the heterarchical embeddedness of many instances of CP and CS. This will take me to relate the hierarchical nature of categorical sensing and perception with the equally hierarchical issues of the “binding problem”, “triadic causality”, the “emergent interpretant” and the increasing semiotic freedom observed in biological and cognitive systems.

Hennigian Phylogenetic Systematics and the ‘Groundplan’ vs. ‘Post-Groundplan’ Approaches: A Reply to Kukalová-Peck

The recent contribution by Jarmila Kukalová-Peck on Hennigian phylogenetics and hexapod limb evolution is critically evaluated.

Individual optimization efforts and population dynamics: a mathematical model for the evolution of resource allocation strategies, with applications to reproductive and mating systems

We develop a formal framework for the optimal allocation of limited resources that includes and clarifies the interplay between individual optimization and the resulting effects at the population level. As an example, in regard to the evolution of sexual recombination, the paradox of the twofold cost of sex is avoided by distinguishing between the evolution of recombination and the subsequent emergence and stability of different mating types as a result of individual optimization within a population that benefits from recombination.

Leitlinien zur molekulargenetischen Diagnostik: Fragiles-X und Fragiles-X assoziiertes Tremor/Ataxie Syndrom

Ohne Zusammenfassung

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Advertising and the Predation Loop: A Biosemiotic Model

The basic premise of biosemiotics as a discipline is that there are elementary processes linking signifying strategies in all forms of animate life. Correspondingly, the discoveries of biosemiotics should, in principle, be capable of revealing new insights about human signification. In the present article, I show that this is in fact the case by constructing a biosemiotic model that links advertising strategies with corresponding structures in animal predation. The methodological framework for this model is the catastrophe theory of René Thom. The end result is a revised understanding of an ostensibly cultural phenomenon that demonstrates its continuity with signalling processes conventionally associated with the natural world.

The rise and fall of the adaptive landscape?

The discussion of the adaptive landscape in the philosophical literature appears to be divided along the following lines. On the one hand, some claim that the adaptive landscape is either “uninterpretable” or incoherent. On the other hand, some argue that the adaptive landscape has been an important heuristic, or tool in the service of explaining, as well as proposing and testing hypotheses about evolutionary change. This paper attempts to reconcile these two views.

Individual variability of behavioural responses by Wandering Albatrosses (Diomedea exulans) to human disturbance

Sub-Antarctic Marion Island has had a permanent research station for 50 years and the islands Wandering Albatrosses have been intensively studied for 20 years. The reactions of breeding birds to approaches by a human on foot were recorded. Three response variables were calculated: intensity of vocal reaction (IVR), intensity of non-vocal reaction (INR) and overall response index (ORI). At 5 m from the nest, twice as many birds stood and/or vocalised as at 15 m. Nearest neighbour distance, age and gender did not explain individual variability of responses. Study colony birds had higher IVR scores than non-study colony birds; birds at colonies closest to the station had the highest ORI scores. A better breeding record was associated with lower IVR and ORI scores, but a causative relationship remains to be demonstrated. A minimum viewing distance of 25 m is recommended for breeding Wandering Albatrosses.

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The Semantic Morphology of Adolf Portmann: A Starting Point for the Biosemiotics of Organic Form?

This paper develops the ideas of the Swiss zoologist Adolf Portmann or, more precisely, his concept of organic self-representation, wherein Portmann considered the outer surface of living organisms as a specific organ that serves in a self-representational role. This idea is taken as a starting point from which to elaborate Portman’s ideas, so as to make them compatible with the theoretical framework of biosemiotics. Today, despite the many theories that help us understand aposematism, camouflage, deception and other phenomena related to the category of mimicry, there still is a need for a general theory of self-representation that would re-synthesize evolutionary, morphogenetic and semiotic aspects of the surface of organisms. Here, Adolf Portmann’s concept of self-representation is considered as an important step towards the biosemiotics of animal form.

Teaching Evolution with Historical Narratives

This paper focuses on evolution as a unifying theme in biology education. Our aim is to argue that the different topics taught in secondary school biology classes should be enriched with and linked together by means of accounts of the history of life. We named this approach a “natural history perspective” on biology education. An essential aspect of the natural history perspective is the claim that evolutionary history forms the context for the development of an understanding of evolutionary processes. While there are some indications that a natural history perspective can function as a context for understanding micro-evolutionary processes, more research is called for.

Sexual selection and mate choice in evolutionary psychology

The importance of mate choice and sexual selection has been emphasized by the majority of evolutionary psychologists. This paper assesses three cases of work on mate choice and sexual selection in evolutionary psychology: David Buss on cross-cultural human mate preferences, Randy Thornhill and Steve Gangestad on the link between mate preferences and fluctuating asymmetry, and Geoffrey Miller on the role of Fisher’s runaway process in human evolution. A mixture of conceptual and empirical problems in each case highlights the general weakness of work in evolutionary psychology on these issues.

Common Ground: Risk, Scarcity, and Shared Resources in Goan Agriculture

In the Indian state of Goa, communally owned agricultural land has persisted through indigenous state rule, colonial occupation and postcolonial liberation. We show that in Goa, and indeed elsewhere in the world, communally owned land provides protection against scarcity, risk, and state revenue demands in wet rice agriculture. When wet rice agriculture is the primary agricultural activity, communally owned land is an effective way to utilize resources. These findings add to the literature that challenges the inevitability of the tragedy of commonly owned resources.

The problem of adaptive individual choice in cultural evolution

This paper tries to explain how individuals manage adaptive individual choice (i.e., the decision to acquire a fitter than average behavior or idea rapidly and tractably) in cultural evolution, despite the fact that acquiring fitness information is very difficult. I argue that the means of solving this problem suggested in the cultural evolution literature largely are various types of decision rules employing representations of fitness correlated properties or states of affairs. I argue that the problem of adaptive individual choice is best solved where some of these learning rule representations are socially transmitted and some are biologically transmitted.

The nature of developmental constraints and the difference-maker argument for externalism

One current version of the internalism/externalism debate in evolutionary theory focuses on the relative importance of developmental constraints in evolutionary explanation. The received view of developmental constraints sees them as an internalist concept that tend to be shared across related species as opposed to selective pressures that are not. Thus, to the extent that constraints can explain anything, they can better explain similarity across species, while natural selection is better able to explain their differences. I challenge both of these aspects of the received view and propose a hierarchical view of constraints.