Toward a bio-ethological 4E linguistics: Language as life in mind and behavior

Disturbances (e.g. fires, floods, windstorms, landslides and tsunamis) are ubiquitous throughout the world. Many social and ecological systems have resilience mechanisms to accommodate and recover from such events. Yet, in an era of directional climate change, adaptation (rather than recovery to the same state) may be the most logical path. In such cases, disturbances, while often unwelcome, may function as opportunities for change.We synthesize the literature on disturbances and adaptation to climate change for both ecological and social systems, attempting to find commonalities and situations where disturbances present adaptation opportunities. We also identify three major characteristics of systems that may drive differential potential for success going forward: their overall richness of actors, their functional overlap in diversity, and their temporal rate of change.Social systems are better positioned to successfully take advantage of disturbance‐generated opportunities to adapt when they support collaboration of diverse interests and engage in pre‐disturbance response planning to seize opportunities when they arise. Ecological systems are well‐positioned for adaptation when they are diverse, populated with species that are tolerant of post‐disturbance environments, and when life‐history traits are well‐matched with the temporal and spatial distribution of those disturbances.Social systems with a lack of planning and inclusive participation and where powerful actors are resistant to change are less able to take advantage of disturbances as adaptational opportunities; ecological systems that are less diverse (spatially and in regards to species composition), especially those dominated by late successional species, are similarly constrained. Overall, we find that disturbances can create opportunities for adaptation when the ecology and social systems are aligned but there are also many situations where this is not true, depending on initial conditions, temporal pace of disturbance and system characteristics.Policy implications. Disturbances, while damaging and often catastrophic in the short term, present climate adaptation opportunities because they can spur reorganization towards climatically suitable systems. Policy makers and advocates should carefully consider current social and ecological conditions, specifically how they will reorganize post‐disturbance, and explore the options available to prepare and take advantage of (inevitable) future disturbances.

Linking Social and Ecological Systems

This paper is about a puzzle. The puzzlement is a result of reviewing a large number of articles and reports of research on behavior from both genetic and environmental perspectives. Because empirical study of behavior is not study of behavior in general, but of some specific behavior, my own study of this research has concentrated on research on two behaviors: aggression and sexual orientation. I was drawn to the work on aggression by accounts of several conferences on the biology of aggression that took place in the mid-1990s in the United States. These, especially one hosted by the University of Maryland, sparked a storm of protest, both from within the academy and from without. Sexual orientation was chosen in order to have another behavior for comparison, and because it, too, has been an active area recently. My own interest in reviewing this body of work was to understand the dynamics of critical interaction among scientists advocating or employing different approaches to the same problem. Behavioral research provokes a great deal of critical interaction, both in the general public and among scientists, even as many researchers go on about their own business, producing studies employing their own preferred methodologies. Thus, it has seemed a good site for this investigation.1

It is widely acknowledged that ecosystems often cannot be considered as separated from social systems, but that they should rather be seen as interacting, cross‐scaled, coupled systems operating on multiple temporal and spatial scales. Humans have an increasing impact on ecosystems worldwide, while at the same time ecosystems are of critical importance for the functioning of human systems through ecosystems services. Often the term “social ecological systems” is used in approaches that consider ecological and social systems as integrated systems. This paper aims to contribute to clarification of the different relationships between social and ecological systems. The focus is on the social side of ecological restoration and conservation, in particular on participation, indigenous knowledge, governance, and ethics. It is concluded that in restoration and conservation of social ecological systems more attention should be paid to the role of social systems and conditions on which ecosystems depend. It implies awareness of the importance of engaging stakeholders and fostering public debate and deliberation.

PDF HTML阅读 XML下载 导出引用 引用提醒 国家重点生态功能区生态-经济-社会系统耦合协调的动态演化——以新疆阿勒泰地区为例 DOI: 10.5846/stxb202111213281 作者: 作者单位: 作者简介: 通讯作者: 中图分类号: 基金项目: 新疆维吾尔自治区自然科学基金青年项目（2021D01C107） Dynamic evolution of ecological-economic-social system coupling coordination in national key ecological function areas: Take the Altay region of Xinjiang as an example Author: Affiliation: Fund Project: 摘要 | 图/表 | 访问统计 | 参考文献 | 相似文献 | 引证文献 | 资源附件 | 文章评论 摘要:探究国家重点生态功能区生态-经济-社会系统耦合协调的演化特征，对实现可持续发展目标、建设美丽中国有重要意义。运用耦合协调模型、剪刀差方法、耦合度模型以及VAR模型对2007-2019年阿勒泰地区EES系统耦合协调度的动态演化进行分析。结果表明：（1）2007-2019年阿勒泰地区整体耦合协调度呈现不断上升趋势，由2007年的中度失调（0.271）向2019年的轻度失调（0.371）演进，生态系统与经济系统、社会系统的发展水平呈现"X"型变动趋势，经济系统与社会系统持续上升，而生态系统略微下降。（2）经济系统与社会系统、生态系统与社会系统演化速率的剪刀差在2014年以后出现较大幅度的波动，而生态系统与经济系统演化速率的剪刀差趋于稳定态势，生态系统与经济系统、经济系统与社会系统的耦合度呈现出由无序到有序的初始过渡。（3）由脉冲响应函数及方差分解可得，阿勒泰地区EES系统耦合协调水平的提升是三系统共同作用的结果，前期主要由社会系统、经济系统驱动，后期主要依赖生态系统的改善。研究表明：国家重点生态功能区应着重减轻经济系统对社会系统和生态系统的胁迫强度，进而实现三者的协同发展。 Abstract:The national key ecological function areas in the western region are not only fragile in ecological environment, but also lagging in economic development and social public services. In the past several decades, the contradiction between ecology, economy, and society caused by human behavior has aroused widespread concern. Therefore, exploring the evolution characteristics of ecological-economic-social (EES) system coupling and coordination degree in the national key ecological function areas is of great significance for achieving sustainable development goals and building a beautiful China. In this paper, we use the coupling coordination model, scissors difference model, coupling degree model, and vector autoregressive model (VAR model) to explore and analyze the dynamic evolution of the coupling coordination degree of the EES system in the Altay region from 2007 to 2019. The results show that:(1) from 2007 to 2019, the overall coupling coordination degree of the Altay region in Xinjiang showed a rising trend, which was evolving from a moderate imbalance (0.271) in 2007 to a mild imbalance (0.371) in 2019. The development level of the ecological system and the development level of the economic system and the social system presented a trend of "X". Specifically, the development level of the economic system and the social system continued to rise, while the ecological system decreased slightly. (2) The scissors difference in the evolution rate of "the economic system and the social system" as well as "the ecological system and the social system" fluctuated significantly after 2014, while the scissors difference in the evolution rate of "the ecological system and the economic system" tended to be stable. The coupling degree of "the ecological system and the economic system" and "the economic system and the social system" showed an initial transition from disorder to order. (3) According to the analysis results of impulse response function and variance decomposition, the improvement of the coupling coordination degree of the EES system in the Altay region was the result of the interaction of the three systems. To be specific, in the early stage, it was mainly driven by the social system and the economic system, while in the late stage, it mainly depended on the improvement of the ecological system to promote the coupling coordination degree of the EES system. The research showed that the national key ecological function areas should focus on reducing the stress intensity of the economic system on the social system and the ecological system in the future, so as to achieve the coordinated development of the three systems. 参考文献 相似文献 引证文献

In this paper we compare 10 established frameworks for analyzing social-ecological systems. We limited ourselves to frameworks that were explicitly designed to be used by a wider community of researchers and practitioners. Although all these frameworks seem to have emerged from the need for concepts that permit structured, interdisciplinary reasoning about complex problems in social-ecological systems, they differ significantly with respect to contextual and structural criteria, such as conceptualization of the ecological and social systems and their interrelation. It appears that three main criteria suffice to produce a classification of frameworks that may be used as a decision tree when choosing a framework for analysis. These criteria are (i) whether a framework conceptualizes the relationship between the social and ecological systems as being uni- or bidirectional; (ii) whether it takes an anthropocentric or an ecocentric perspective on the ecological system; and (iii) whether it is an action-oriented or an analysis-oriented framework.

Our human-dominant world can be viewed as being built up in two parts, social and ecological systems, each consisting of multi-level organizations that interact in a complex manner. However, there are knowledge gaps among those interactions. In this paper, we focus on studies filling two types of gaps in the socioecological system, some of which are case studies in the East Asia region and others are discussed in a more general context. First, we address the gaps between different levels of organizations in ecological systems, namely, (1) the importance of plant trait plasticity in bridging evolution and ecology, (2) linking primary producer diversity and the dynamics of blue carbon in coastal ecosystems in the Asia–Pacific region, and (3) research direction of climate change biology to fill the gaps across evolution, community, and ecosystem. Also included is (4) the gap between ecological monitoring programs and theories, which also addresses the potential of citizen science. Second, we illustrate the gaps between ecological and social systems through ongoing development of an ecosystem management framework, i.e., ecosystem-based disaster risk reduction. Finally, we summarize the benefits of filling the gaps for ecologists and society.

BackgroundEcosystem services (ESs) are fundamental to ensuring human well-being and sustainable development. However, the complex nonlinear relationships between ESs and social systems are still not fully recognized at present. Here, we used a comprehensive indicator framework, a coupling coordination degree (CCD) model, and a GeoDetector model to measure the CCD and development level of ESs and social systems in Sanmenxia City, Henan Province, China from 2000 to 2020, analyze the spatial patterns and temporal variations of their development, and quantify the influence of 15 factors on the spatial heterogeneity of their CCD.ResultsWe observed that the increase of social system development level in Sanmenxia City was higher than that of ESs’ provisioning capacity. From 2000 to 2020, the ecosystem service index value of Sanmenxia City increased by about 25%, while the level of social system development increased by 118.9%. The coordination between ESs and social systems improved by 25%, indicating that their relationships were shifting from trade-offs to synergies. Lushi County (one of the six administrative regions of Sanmenxia City) had the highest level of CCD, but the overall coordination remained relatively weak in Sanmenxia City, and none of the six administrative regions achieved a high level of coordination. CCD was influenced by multiple interacting factors, with topography and land use patterns being the primary drivers.ConclusionsOptimizing the spatial layout of ecological space, agricultural space, and urban space based on natural geographic patterns can be an effective way to improve CCD. Accordingly, we identified the impacts of potential barriers on sustainable development and provided multiple possible effective actions. Our findings deepen the knowledge and understanding of the “human-nature relationships”, which are of great significance in promoting the synergistic development of social and ecological systems.

Why do humans have language at all and how did we become language users? These are central questions in language evolution, but no general consensus exists on the answers, nor even on what methods to use to find answers. This is a complex topic that requires input from many disciplines, including, but not limited to, linguistics, evolutionary biology, palaeoanthropology, neurobiology, archaeology, cognitive science, and primatology. Nobody is an expert in all these areas, and experts in one area sometimes overlook needed input from other areas. Consensus does not even exist among linguists on what language is—opinions range from the physical speech acts themselves to language as an abstract social communication system to language as computational machinery in the individual and to language as an innate species-defining, genetically encoded capacity of humans. These different views of language imply very different evolutionary explanations. At the same time, all of these perspectives have some validity; the speech acts do occur, language use does take place in a social context, the individual language user does somehow produce and parse sentences, and human babies are born with a predisposition for language learning that ape babies lack. The disagreements are mainly a matter of emphasis, namely which aspects are regarded as of primary interest, requiring explanation. The preeminent linguist of the early 20th century, Ferdinand de Saussure, focused on the first two perspectives with his distinction between parole (speech acts) and langue (the social system). The preeminent linguist of the late 20th century, Noam Chomsky, focuses instead on the latter two, especially the computational machinery, and he regards the first two as not worthy of a linguist’s attention. But neither focus is adequate on its own; a viable theory of language evolution must be able to explain all aspects of language, notably both the evolution of the language capacity that resides in each human brain and the evolution of the human social context in which language is used. No generally accepted theory exists today. Instead of a single accepted theory, the field of language evolution is awash with a multitude of different models, scenarios, and hypotheses about how things might have happened. To make matters worse, something of a paradigm split exists in the study of language origins. The split is largely along the line between Saussure and Chomsky mentioned above. To put it simply, those researchers who use the label “biolinguistics” try to explain the origin of Chomsky’s computational machinery (see Biolinguistics) whereas most work on language evolution is concerned with explaining the origins of Saussure’s langue, language as a social system; the latter is here called “mainstream evolutionary linguistics.” Language evolution is not, however, about the origin of individual languages (English, Chinese, etc.). Sometimes “language evolution” is used to refer to diachronic language change in recent times, as studied by historical linguists, and an evolutionary perspective can indeed be fruitful in this area. But this article does not cover that kind of language evolution, except peripherally in Cultural Evolution.

An extreme disturbance event is one in which any of its component disturbance forces and their interactions with affected systems have dimensions and responses that exceed the known range of variation expected of those parameters. If the exposed system does not respond or exhibits a low level response to an event, the event was not extreme to the exposed system, regardless of the dimensions of its disturbance forces. Extreme disturbance events are complex and require disaggregation to improve understanding of their effects. The areas affected by extreme events and the duration of the events are related but involve many orders of magnitude in terms of area affected and duration. One way to compare events is through a common and objective unit of measure such as energy. A comparison of ten extreme events in terms of their power and total energy delivered per unit area revealed a broad range of values among them. The power of events ranged 8 orders of magnitude and the total load per unit area ranged 14 orders of magnitude. Each event had different points of interaction with exposed ecosystems. When exposed to the same extreme event, the response of social systems is different from the response of the ecological systems. Also, social systems recovered quicker to a category 3 hurricane than did ecological systems. Both social and ecological systems have the capacity to evolve, adapt, innovate, and develop novelty in response to the selective pressure of extreme events.

Research on carrying capacity, aiming at maintaining the limited ability of the Earth’s life supporting system to sustain human development, requires a comprehensive and ecosystem-based approach to monitor and assess the localized sustainability of coupled social and ecological systems. A definition termed the ecosystem-based carrying capacity of island (EBCCI) was developed in this paper of which the indices of fundamental and realized carrying capacities of island (FCCI and RCCI) were highlighted to emphasize the inter-dependencies between social systems and ecological systems. In order to avoid the difficulties and uncertainties of direct assessment, the related assessment model was established on the basis of synthetic evaluation of inherent and external factors affecting the EBCCI. The southern Miaodao Archipelago (SMA) located in the intersection of the Bohai Sea and the Yellow Sea, China, was taken as a typical example to acquire integrated recognition of the island ecosystem and its carrying capacity so as to discuss its sustainable development. The index scores of FCCI and RCCI in the SMA were 0.818 5 and 0.712 9 out of 1.0, respectively, with acceptable uncertainties. The results showed a relatively well capacity to sustain progress and relatively well realization of the carrying capacity of island ecosystem, owing to a well capacity of ecologically regulating, general performance of both ecologically supporting and resource provisioning, and a relatively high level of social supporting system. The study implied that it was critical to optimize the inter-dependencies and to sustain the relative balance between social systems and ecological systems so as to improve the RCCI and further facilitate the sustainability of SMA. The approach proposed in this paper provides a powerful tool which is well applicative to the regional level of an oceanic island or archipelago to study the sustainable development and can be further popularized to the coastal zone.

The spatial dimension of banking markets is often discussed in the banking and finance literature, but neglected in empirical studies of behavior by depository institutions. As Anselin and Griffith (1988) point out, neglect of spatial aspects of economic behavior is not unusual, even by those working in regional science. Traditional depository institution regulatory policy, based on a structural analysis of local markets, generally operates under the assumption of the U.S. banking system as a collection of segmented markets versus an integrated national banking system. From this perspective, banks and thrifts in local regions have little or no effect on the pricing decisions of firms operating in other localities. In the deregulated banking environment of the 1980s, some bank retail deposit markets may be better characterized as operating in such a way as to generate spatial effects. As of October 1983, all depository institutions were permitted to offer competitive market rates on interest-sensitive deposits, including retail certificates of deposit (CDs). In turn, many institutions, particularly large banks, have used national advertising and brokers to attract large retail (insured) deposits from other regions. With greater deregulation and competition for deposit funds and increased reliance of banks on interest-sensitive deposits, significant spatial effects in the deposit-rate setting decisions of banks across regions might be expected. The presence or lack of spatial effects in regional bank markets is important to bank managers, analysts, and regulators in terms of defining relevant markets and measuring the competitive effects of greater deregulation.KeywordsAdjustment CostSpatial Weighting MatrixRate OfferCrisis EventDeposit LevelThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

Not-for-profit organizations experience crises just as for-profit organizations do. However, the managerial leadership behavior required in a notfor-profit organization may differ from that required in a for-profit organization. Since the terrorist attack of September 11, the managerial leadership behavior required in a crisis has received a lot of attention. Many different people are providing managerial leaders with advice on how to act during a crisis. Although the advice may be useful, a great deal of it is based on anecdotal evidence or personal opinion, not empirical findings. In fact, there is little empirical research on the managerial leadership behavior required in a crisis situation. Yukl and Van Fleet (1982) did the seminal work on this topic, but their findings are limited to military participants, with combat as the crisis situation. More recently, Peterson and Van Fleet (2003) reported findings for the for-profit sector; however, this study is the first to examine the not-for-profit sector. We find that whereas all three participant groups desired a few specific managerial leadership behaviors, there are also differences and shifts in priorities among groups. The implications of these findings, limitations to the study, and future research are also discussed.

An Empirical Study of Behavior on Overconfidence and Cell Phone Plan Selection―Questionnaire Survey with Hypothetical Question―

This study summarises the information provided by the Member States in their annual voluntary reports on their experience and progress concerning cooperation on fraud and error in the reference year 2016, as provided for in Decision H5 of the Administrative Commission for the Coordination of Social Security Systems. The Member States’ reports have been analysed with the aim of identifying several elements. First, particular attention goes to the steps taken throughout the year to prevent and combat fraud and error in the field of EU social security coordination. Secondly, the aim of the country reports was to identify specific problems in implementing the EU coordination rules which may lead to, at least risks of, fraud and error. Thirdly, an outline is provided of the steps taken to promote compliance by institutions and healthcare providers with the coordination rules and to provide information to citizens, in the field of benefits in kinds. Fourthly, the report notes good practices, lessons learned and remaining issues or concerns when dealing with crossborder cooperation and information exchange within the framework of Regulations (EC) No 883/2004 and (EC) No 987/2009 on the coordination of social security systems. Fifthly, the report summarises the examples of or proposals or suggestions for measures to improve the overall tackling of fraud and error in the field of social security coordination which National Contact Points (NCPs) can operationalise without the need for changes to national or EU law. Also some additional remarks, made by a few Member States, are inserted at the end of this report. Finally, the report contains an Annex I (National legislation relevant to preventing and combating social security fraud and error within the framework of Regulations (EC) No 883/2004 and (EC) No 987/2009 on the coordination of social security systems, including the relevant definitions of fraud and error and penalties and sanctions that apply) and an Annex II (Inventory of bilateral agreements and bilateral cooperation arrangements with other EU or EEA Member States entered into for the purposes of combating fraud and error within the framework of Regulations (EC) No 883/2004 and (EC) No 987/2009 on the coordination of social security systems).