All Things in Mind: Panpsychist Elements in Spinoza, Deleuze, and Peirce

Benedict de Spinoza, C.S. Peirce, and Gilles Deleuze delineate a trajectory through the history of ideas in the dialogue about the potentials and limitations of panpsychism, the view that world is fundamentally made up of mind. As a parallel trajectory to the panpsychism debate in contemporary philosophy of mind and cognitive psychology, this approach can inform and enrich the discussion of the role and scope of mind in the natural world. The philosophies of mind developed by Deleuze and Peirce are Spinozistic in their natural monism but move beyond Spinoza to explain mind as a part of the natural world in semiotic terms.     

Three Types of Semiosis

The existence of different types of semiosis has been recognized, so far, in two ways. It has been pointed out that different semiotic features exist in different taxa and this has led to the distinction between zoosemiosis, phytosemiosis, mycosemiosis, bacterial semiosis and the like. Another type of diversity is due to the existence of different types of signs and has led to the distinction between iconic, indexical and symbolic semiosis. In all these cases, however, semiosis has been defined by the Peirce model, i.e., by the idea that the basic structure is a triad of ‘sign, object and interpretant’, and that interpretation is an essential component of semiosis. This model is undoubtedly applicable to animals, since it was precisely the discovery that animals are capable of interpretation that allowed Thomas Sebeok to conclude that they are also capable of semiosis. Unfortunately, however, it is not clear how far the Peirce model can be extended beyond the animal kingdom, and we already know that we cannot apply it to the cell. The rules of the genetic code have been virtually the same in all living systems and in all environments ever since the origin of life, which clearly shows that they do not depend on interpretation. Luckily, it has been pointed out that semiosis is not necessarily based on interpretation and can be defined exclusively in terms of coding. According to the ‘code model’, a semiotic system is made of signs, meanings and coding rules, all produced by the same codemaker, and in this form it is immediately applicable to the cell. The code model, furthermore, allows us to recognize the existence of many organic codes in living systems, and to divide them into two main types that here are referred to as manufacturing semiosis and signalling semiosis. The genetic code and the splicing codes, for example, take part in processes that actually manufacture biological objects, whereas signal transduction codes and compartment codes organize existing objects into functioning supramolecular structures. The organic codes of single cells appeared in the first three billion years of the history of life and were involved either in manufacturing semiosis or in signalling semiosis. With the origin of animals, however, a third type of semiosis came into being, a type that can be referred to as interpretive semiosis because it became closely involved with interpretation. We realize in this way that the contribution of semiosis to life was far greater than that predicted by the Peirce model, where semiosis is always a means of interpreting the world. Life is essentially about three things: (1) it is about manufacturing objects, (2) it is about organizing objects into functioning systems, and (3) it is about interpreting the world. The idea that these are all semiotic processes, tells us that life depends on semiosis much more deeply and extensively than we thought. We realize in this way that there are three distinct types of semiosis in Nature, and that they gave very different contributions to the origin and the evolution of life.     

The ecology and management of mammal invasions in forests

Populations of invasive wild mammals have contributed significantly to the total unwanted impacts of biological invasions. They are known to impact forest ecosystems globally, but reviews summarizing this information are currently lacking. Here we (1) review the ecological characteristics of mammal invasions in forests; (2) characterize the range of ecological impacts on forest communities and the economic consequences of those impacts; (3) review what is known about interactions between the impacts of invasive mammals and other drivers of global change; and (4) consider the complex ecological and socio-economic challenges of simultaneously managing multiple invasive mammals and native biota affected by them. The unwanted impacts of invasive herbivores and predators are intensifying in many parts of the world and the need to manage their impacts to prevent further loss of indigenous biodiversity and damage to productive assets is greater than ever. However, management needs to be conducted within appropriate social, cultural, ethical, and animal welfare frameworks. Achieving effective management of populations of mammals invasive in forest ecosystems will require the filling of many knowledge gaps, including: better understanding their impacts; strategic options and tactical solutions for managing them; and achieving social licence to operate.     

中西方森林游憩者生态行为影响研究——基于解说驱动机制视角

森林生态系统作为游憩经济系统的基础,保持生态结构完整是森林旅游协调发展的前提,但生态功能的发挥并非为旅游活动自然结果,很大程度有赖于游憩者的环境保护行为。选取加拿大班夫国家公园和中国张家界国家森林公园为问卷调研地,以解说驱动机制视角对森林游憩者生态行为影响进行研究,旨在运用相关分析、结构方程模型实证检验中西方森林游憩者生态行为生成的内在关联。结果表明:形成森林游憩者生态行为的过程逻辑定式为"生态知识-生态体验-生态态度-生态行为";1中西方森林游憩者生态知识、生态体验、生态态度与生态行为均存在正向相关;2森林旅游解说对中西方森林游憩者生态知识、生态体验、生态态度、生态行为均具有正向影响。     

Communicating old-growth forest through an educational trail

This paper describes the experience of developing an educational trail inside an old-growth beech forest in central Italy. In the last 150 years local people exploited this stand almost exclusively for recreational purposes and now the beechwood has acquired new ecological value after having reached old-growth status. Despite the cultural-historical importance of the site, there is a substantial lack of knowledge about this magnificent stand among members of the public, who have no tools to understand its dynamics nor to accept those structural changes related to its natural evolution. Tourist facilities were restored at the site, according to non-restricting criteria, and an educational program was developed in order to promote a shared comprehension of old-growth forests, their ecological processes and value, the services they provide, and to increase tourist awareness toward this fragile ecosystem. We discuss the educational role ecotourism might potentially hold in western developed countries to link the public with the scientific world, educating people about nature, while preventing negative impacts on natural environments. Even if the importance of local communities in conservation of natural resources has been widely recognized by a number of conservationists, public involvement, particularly in forest conservation and management, still represents a difficult challenge, since it requires the implementation of a common understanding about forest ecosystems, forest goods and forest services. The educational trail inside the beech forest of Monte Cimino may represent a low impact strategy for preserving forest aesthetic functionality, limiting potential damages to the forest while increasing its importance for nature conservation.     

On the Diversity of Environmental Signs: a Typological Approach

Environmental signs as physically manifested signs that we and other animals perceive and interpret in the natural environment are seldom focused on in contemporary semiotics. The aim of the present paper is to highlight the diversity of environmental signs and to propose a typology for analysing them. Combining ecosemiotics and the pragmatist semiotics of C. Peirce and C. Morris, the proposed typology draws its criteria from the properties of the object and the representamen of the sign, and of their relationships. The analysis distinguishes eight basic types of environmental signs and provides examples of these from the natural environment. The typology also integrates existing concepts of environmental affordances, ecofields, phonetic syntax, sign fields, ecological codes, meta-signs and others. In addition to basic types of environmental signs, compound environmental signs are discussed with three types of these distinguished: (1) environmental meta-signs; (2) ecological codes; and (3) environmental-cultural hybrid signs. Further study of compound environmental signs could lead to reconceptualising relations between linguistic and pre-linguistic semiosis.     

Phenolic glycosides of the Salicaceae and their role as anti-herbivore defenses

Since the 19th century the phytochemistry of the Salicaceae has been systematically investigated, initially for pharmaceutical and later for ecological reasons. The result of these efforts is a rich knowledge about the phenolic components, especially a series of glycosylated and esterified derivatives of salicyl alcohol known as “phenolic glycosides”. These substances have received extensive attention with regard to their part in plant-herbivore interactions. The negative impact of phenolic glycosides on the performance of many generalist herbivores has been reported in numerous studies. Other more specialized feeders are less susceptible and have even been reported to sequester phenolic glycosides for their own defense. In this review, we attempt to summarize our current knowledge about the role of phenolic glycosides in mediating plant-herbivore interactions. As background, we first review what is known about their basic chemistry and occurrence in plants.     

Shedding light on shade: ecological perspectives of understorey plant life

Shade, in ecological sense, is not merely a lack of light, but a multi-faceted phenomenon that creates new and complex settings for community and ecosystem dynamics. Tolerating shade therefore affects plants’ ability to cope with other stressors, and also shape its interactions with surrounding organisms. The aim of this broad review was to map our current knowledge about how shade affects plants, plant communities and ecosystems – to gather together knowledge of what we know, but also to point out what we do not yet know. This review covers the following topics: the nature of shade, and ecological and physiological complexities related to growing under a canopy; plants’ capability of tolerating other stress factors while living under a shade – resource trade-offs and polytolerance of abiotic stress; ontogenetic effects of shade tolerance; coexistence patterns under the canopy – how shade determines the forest structure and diversity; shade-induced abiotic dynamics in understorey vegetation, including changing patterns of irradiance, temperature and humidity under the canopy; shade-driven plant–plant and plant–animal interactions – how shade mediates facilitation and stress, and how it creates differentiated environment for different herbivores and pollinators, including the role of volatile organic compounds. We also discuss the ways how vegetation in understorey environments will be affected by climate change, as shade might play a significant role in mitigating negative effects of climate change. Our review shows that living under a shade affects biotic and abiotic stress tolerance of plants, it also influences the outcomes of both symbiotic and competitive plant–plant and plant–animal interactions in a complex and dynamic manner. The current knowledge of shade-related mechanisms is rather ample, however there is much room for progress in integrating different implications of the multifaceted nature of shade into consistent and integral understanding how communities and ecosystems function.     

Virgin forests in Romania and Bulgaria: results of two national inventory projects and their implications for protection

Despite extensive forest destruction in the Middle Ages and later intensive commercial forest management, remnants of virgin forests remained spared in some Central, Eastern and South-Eastern European countries. These virgin forests are the last examples of original forests in this part of Europe. That is why their protection becomes an important issue of current European forestry and nature protection policy. But the knowledge about the location and the area of virgin forests in these countries is incomplete up till now. This article has the prime goal to present a conceptual framework what virgin forests might be (“A conceptual framework for defining of virgin forests” section). Based on this framework, a working methodology has been tested in Bulgaria and Romania (“Results of the two national projects in Romania and in Bulgaria” section and further). For this reason two projects have been carried out by the Royal Dutch Society of Nature Conservation (KNNV) in close co-operation with the Forestry Institutes in Romania and in Bulgaria. The results of these projects are described in general terms and further analysis in the future is necessary to describe specific features like forest structure and spatial heterogeneity of these forests. Based on the results of the inventory, principles of sustainable protection and management of the mapped virgin forests were defined and described in the research reports. The usefulness of the inventory became evident already during the EU pre-accession period of both countries while preparing the NATURA 2000 network. The remaining virgin forests of temperate Europe are an inexhaustible source of ecological information about biodiversity, structure, natural processes and overall functioning of undisturbed forest ecosystems. Their research will reveal information which can be used for ecological restoration of man-made forests which are degraded through intensive forestry practices over the last centuries. The last virgin forests of temperate Europe represent an irreplaceable part of the natural capital of Europe and are worth to be protected by law. Their last remnants in South-Eastern and Eastern Europe are endangered by commercial activities. A full inventory of remaining virgin forests in all countries of temperate Europe is a matter of highest urgency. A representative selection of virgin forest sites should be declared by UNESCO as World Heritage Sites.     

Population momentum and the demand on land and water resources

Future world population growth is fuelled by two components: the demographic momentum, which is built into the age composition of current populations, and changes in reproductive behaviour and mortality of generations yet to come. This paper investigates, by major world regions and countries, what we know about population growth, what can be projected with reasonable certainty, and what is pure speculation. The exposition sets a frame for analysing demographic driving forces that are expected to increase human demand and pressures on land and water resources. These have been contrasted with current resource assessments of regional availability and use of land, in particular with estimates of remaining land with cultivation potential. In establishing a balance between availabilty of land resources and projected needs, the paper distinguishes regions with limited land and water resources and high population pressure from areas with abundant resources and low or moderate demographic demand. Overall, it is estimated that two-thirds of the remaining balance of land with rainfed cultivation potential is currently covered by various forest ecosystems and wetlands. The respective percentages by region vary between 23% in Southern Africa to 89% in South-Eastern Asia. For Latin America and Asia the estimated share of the balance of land with cultivation potential under forest and wetland ecosystems is about 70%, in Africa this is about 60%. If these were to be preserved, the remaining balance of land with some potential for rainfed crop cultivation would amount to some 550 million hectares. The regions which will experience the largest difficulties in meeting future demand for land resources and water, or alternatively have to cope with much increased dependency on external supplies, include foremost Western Asia, South-Central Asia, and Northern Africa. A large stress on resources is to be expected also in many countries of Eastern, Western and Southern Africa <br>     

Autistic autobiography

Autism narratives are not just stories or histories, describing a given reality. They are creating the language in which to describe the experience of autism, and hence helping to forge the concepts in which to think autism. This paper focuses on a series of autobiographies that began with Grandin''s Emergence. These are often said to show us autism from the ‘inside’. The paper proposes that instead they are developing ways to describe experience for which there is little pre-existing language. Wittgenstein has many well-known aphorisms about how we understand other people directly, without inference. They condense what he had found in Wolfgang Köhler''s Gestalt Psychology. These phenomena of direct understanding what other people are doing are, Köhler wrote, ‘the common property and practice of mankind''. They are not the common property and practice of people with autism. Ordinary language is rich in age-old ways to describe what others are thinking, feeling and so forth. Köhler''s phenomena are the bedrock on which such language rests. There is no such discourse for autism, because Köhler''s phenomena are absent. But a new discourse is being made up right now, i.e. ways of talking for which the autobiographies serve as working prototypes.     

Folk Food Webs and the Role of Praxis in Substantive Ecological Knowledge

In the second half of the 20th century, investigations of indigenous environmental knowledge have been the subject of broader anthropological debates over how knowledge and experience are formed. Many such approaches have focused on environmental nomenclature and taxonomy, or what Roy Ellen has called “formal lexical knowledge” (1999). Such knowledge is readily available to an ethnographer and also more easily transmitted through language between subjects. These characteristics of formal lexical knowledge have led to considerable attention given to differences in environmental knowledge between cultures and have possibly resulted in the inflation of the efficacy of language in forming knowledge. However, if a different form of environmental knowledge is examined are there differences that emerge within communities and other processes beyond symbolic systems that shape knowledge? To address these questions, individuals in two Balinese agricultural communities were asked to construct food webs by linking photos of plant and animal species according to ecological interaction. The results showed significant variation in subjects’ knowledge by gender, which corresponds to labor experience in Balinese wet rice agricultural systems. By shifting attention toward emic models of ecological interactions, this article attempts to demonstrate (1) that environmental knowledge differs within a single community; and, (2) the role of labor experience or praxis has in forming environmental knowledge.     

Desert ant navigation: how miniature brains solve complex tasks

This essay presents and discusses the state of the art in studies of desert ant (Cataglyphis) navigation. In dealing with behavioural performances, neural mechanisms, and ecological functions these studies ultimately aim at an evolutionary understanding of the insect's navigational toolkit: its skylight (polarization) compass, its path integrator, its view-dependent ways of recognizing places and following landmark routes, and its strategies of flexibly interlinking these modes of navigation to generate amazingly rich behavioural outputs. The general message is that Cataglyphis uses path integration as an egocentric guideline to acquire continually updated spatial information about places and routes. Hence, it relies on procedural knowledge, and largely context-dependent retrieval of such knowledge, rather than on all-embracing geocentred representations of space.This revised version was published online in July 2003 with corrections to the text of the sections "Skylight compass" and "Path integration".     

Resilience and Alternative Stable States of Tropical Forest Landscapes under Shifting Cultivation Regimes

Shifting cultivation is a traditional agricultural practice in most tropical regions of the world and has the potential to provide for human livelihoods while hosting substantial biodiversity. Little is known about the resilience of shifting cultivation to increasing agricultural demands on the landscape or to unexpected disturbances. To investigate these issues, we develop a simple social-ecological model and implement it with literature-derived ecological parameters for six shifting cultivation landscapes from three continents. Analyzing the model with the tools of dynamical systems analysis, we show that such landscapes exhibit two stable states, one characterized by high forest cover and agricultural productivity, and another with much lower values of these traits. For some combinations of agricultural pressure and ecological parameters both of these states can potentially exist, and the actual state of the forest depends critically on its historic state. In many cases, the landscapes’ ‘ecological resilience’, or amount of forest that could be destroyed without shifting out of the forested stability domain, declined substantially at lower levels of agricultural pressure than would lead to maximum productivity. A measure of ‘engineering resilience’, the recovery time from standardized disturbances, was independent of ecological resilience. These findings suggest that maximization of short-term agricultural output may have counterproductive impacts on the long-term productivity of shifting cultivation landscapes and the persistence of forested areas.     

Ecological considerations for using dipterocarps for restoration of lowland rainforest in Southeast Asia

The lowland dipterocarp forests of Southeast Asia support a substantial proportion of the world’s biodiversity. They are of considerable environmental and economic value at the local, regional and global scale, providing many goods and services to a growing population. The forests of this region are among the fastest disappearing in the world and restoration is urgently required. This paper provides a review of the ecological constraints to restoration of lowland dipterocarp forest in Southeast Asia. It focuses on the production of planting stock, the significance of site-species matching and post-planting site maintenance. It identifies gaps in our knowledge and highlights priority areas of research. Adopting a long-term view is essential for restoring as well as conserving the dipterocarp forests of Southeast Asia. An immediate strategy for the conservation and management of dwindling genetic resources of these important timber species is essential. This will provide the foundations for sourcing seed and production of planting material for longer term restoration. The importance of species-site matching, mycorrhizal fungi and post-planting maintenance for restoration are apparent. Financing is a major limiting factor to dipterocarp forest restoration. Trading in carbon, private finance and environmental markets afford considerable opportunities for restoring these forests providing their total value is recognised. Despite the wealth of ecological knowledge we already have for scientifically-informed forest restoration, without the backing of governments and corporate stakeholders, forest restoration will not gain the urgently required momentum.     

The persistence and conservation of Borneo’s mammals in lowland rain forests managed for timber: observations, overviews and opportunities

Lowland rainforests on Borneo are being degraded and lost at an alarming rate. Studies on mammals report species responding in various ways to habitat changes that occur in commercial forestry concessions. Here we draw together information on the relationship between the ecological, evolutionary, and biogeographic characteristics of selected Bornean non-volant mammals, and their response to timber harvesting and related impacts. Only a minority of species show markedly reduced densities after timber harvesting. Nonetheless there are many grounds for concern as various processes can, and often do, reduce the viability of wildlife populations. Our review of what we know, and of current understanding, helps predict mammalian dynamics and subsequent mammal-induced ecosystem changes in logged forests. We identify groups of mammal species that, although largely unstudied, are unlikely to tolerate the impacts associated with timber harvesting. On a positive note we find and suggest many relatively simple and low-cost ways in which concession management practices might be modified so as to improve the value of managed forests for wildlife conservation. Improving forest management can play a vital role in maintaining the rich biodiversity of Borneo’s tropical rain forests.     

Camera trapping surveys of forest mammal communities in the Eastern Arc Mountains reveal generalized habitat and human disturbance responses

Large-bodied mammals are a rich and diversified faunal group in tropical rainforests. However, knowledge on community size and composition, and on species’ distribution and ecology remains often scant and inadequate against their chronic status of threats. We used camera trapping to detect mammals in the forests of the Eastern Arc Mountains (EAM) of Tanzania, a world renowned region for biodiversity comprised by a series of distinct and ancient mountain ranges partially covered in moist montane forest. We conducted surveys from 2003 to 2011 in eight of the 12 mountain blocks in Tanzania, and, through an overall sampling effort of 11,500 camera days, we detected 43 species. We normalized species richness and species’ detection events by effort, and used these metrics to assess the effect of habitat and human disturbance variables. We found that rarefied richness is positively affected by forest area at the block level, and that richness at forest patch level is also affected by forest area as well as surrounding human density (negative effect). For a subset of 17 species, we found consistent patterns of avoidance or tolerance of human disturbance and forest edges, and increased occurrence in areas at higher elevation, matching the historical forest loss that in most mountains occurred at lower elevation. Our study provides ecological insights that are novel for most species and sites, and reveals a general trend of negative impact of human disturbance on both community size and species’ relative abundance. Increased protection of the EAM forests in Tanzania is of urgent importance for the persistence of diversified mammal communities.     

Signs of the Self: An Exploration in Semiotic Anthropology

Peirce's general theory of signs, or semiotic, as he called it, yields a theory of the self that sees it both as the object and the subject of semiotic systems. From this viewpoint, the locus, unity, and continuity of the self will be found in the systems of signs that constitute the dialogues between utterers and interpreters of the signs. Personal identity, in this theory, is also a social and cultural identity and is not confined to the individual organism. Peirce's anti-Cartesianism, which denies intuitive and introspective knowledge of the self, derived that knowledge from the fallible inferences we all make from the observations of external facts, including the signs of the self. This laid the foundation for a semiotic psychology as well as for a semiotic anthropology. [self, semiotic anthropology, personal identity, C. S. Peirce]     

Salal Harvester Local Ecological Knowledge, Harvest Practices and Understory Management on the Olympic Peninsula, Washington

Despite growing interest in traditional and local ecological knowledge for conservation and resource management, the role of migrant resource users is largely unexplored. Challenging many assumptions about what constitutes “local knowledge,” migrant and immigrant harvesters of non-timber forest products on the Olympic Peninsula, Washington possess useful ecological knowledge of overstory–understory relationships and how forestry practices affect understory biological and commercial production. Harvesters of salal (Gaultheria shallon), a shrub used in the multi-million dollar floral greens industry, were interviewed in Mason County, Washington in 2001–2003. Interviews revealed that harvesters possess different kinds of resource management knowledge depending on whether they are experienced harvesters or more recent newcomers to the area. These differences may also correlate with differences in their harvesting practices. Understanding how resource management knowledge differs between experienced and newcomer harvesters can inform forest managers in their efforts to develop effective management and permitting policies for floral greens and other non-timber forest resources in the Pacific Northwest of the United States.