Modern Wild Faunal Resource System Management
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| Fig. 1. Writing and thinking can be done in sequence, as a string of pearls. Writing is almost impossible to do with overlaps and relations (see hypertext) but thinking often can be in this form, that of the rosebud. |
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This chapter, as others, cannot be positioned properly within this book, course, or web site because it is both beginning and end. I need to discuss models before I discuss validating them, but I need to discuss fundamental models before I do modeling. It is beginning and end and does not fit well the conventional hierarchy and pattern of much writing, the newspaper inverted pyramid cousin.
Students have often expressed difficulties with applied systems ecology because it, as presented, lacked order (I presume the a, b, c order of freshman biology and chemistry) and see it more as being placed as if by magic near the center of a large industrial conference and exhibition hall. There are pathways and units, but no required order. You may go anywhere, see it all, probably make some inefficient turns, return to some exhibits, and only glance at others. I presume there are some who would sit trembling in such an exhibition hall and wait for an assistant; some who would find the entrance and start there because it was so labeled. In this book, the chapters are little more than groups of ideas, like groups of types of equipment in the exhibit hall. If this book were computer-stored, the best use may be from a menu which (the index) accesses sections and topics as needed - as if a body were "beamed down" instantly to selected exhibits within the hall.
Before I evaluate an idea, verify an observation, or decide on anything, I need to have a concept of knowledge. I need the concept to create a model - words, physical, computer. How do we know what we are to model is right? The emphasis is not on the rightness of modeling (whether we should and whether the technique is proper), but on how we know ... anything. How we know is the subject matter of epistemology (Cunningham 1958; Stroll 1967).
Epistemology is one of the four major problems of philosophy, i.e., metaphysics, logic, axiology, and epistemology (Fay and Tiblier 1967, Stroll 1967, Cunningham 1958), Figure 2. It is the theory of knowledge or the science of the methods and grounds of knowledge, especially its limits and validity.
To the ecosystem designer confronted with the prospects of a high dam that will block a major elk migration, the question to be asked is not "What is my duty?" but "How can I know what is my duty?" Next, the person's question may be: "How do the advocates know of the rightness of their proposal?" He or she may thus aid in providing the criteria for judging an answer.
To the systems-oriented person familiar with constraints, linear programming, and multi-dimensional concepts, the definition of epistemology as human credibility space will be meaningful. It has also been called modern analytical philosophy. Ecosystem designers do not have to become epistemologists and master the substance, structure, and tools of that endeavor. Rather, epistemology provides the most fundamental, perhaps most exciting creative base for skepticism and theoretical development imaginable. It can provide a new awareness, one that creates pressures for rigorous and analytical thought and a compulsion to ask at each step in design some yet more fundamental question. Designers need to insist that what they know they really know. They need to become less involved with whether ecosystem principles and statements are true and more involved with how they are true.
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| Figure 2. The four major problems or domains of philosophy. They are highly interactive. Areas of specialty lie along the relational lines and surfaces. |
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The four major problems of epistemology are:
I am wed to a positive response to the last question, although more pragmatically and personal-empirically than idealistically. "Significance" in number 4 is partially meaningful simply if mistakes are prevented. Significance is a measure of the intimacy with which knowledge is tied to the active realization of human objectives. Failure to engage knowledge of ecosystems in an epistemological struggle can result in protecting an egocentric professional and world view, thus losing (or never gaining) significance. Failure to join the intellectual struggle, it seems to me, is the reproachful materialization of: "I like things as they are," or "Do not confuse me with the facts, especially with the factors that determine their factuality." Neglect of epistemology sponsors a barrage of guesses about the nature of reality. Neglect produces the chaos in which one opinion is as good as another. Neglect and the resultant chaos generate a very apparent pseudo-scientific dogmatism in ecosystem work that is closed, defensive, and often out to create a rationalistic monopoly.
There is need to pay increasing attention to epistemology in a period when the scientific community or public no longer seriously raises the question of how will a technological hurdle be crossed, only when: when the brilliance of the scientific method blinds people from dark questions about science and the creation of knowledge; when the truth of ecology for people and nature remains private knowledge. Ecologists, trained in the scientific method, rarely understand that they have been captured by induction, one epistemological base. It now seems that an alternative is available. Hardly one alternative, the proposal rejects the concept of a best or perfect base and states a multi-perspective truth premise. It is called heuristic convergence and it has eleven bases or positions from which truth may be sought or perceived.
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| Figure 3. Eleven major perspectives are possible in perceiving truth. Just as less than half a sphere can ever be seen from one point, so too is it necessary to attempt to see an idea or system from several points or over time to gain full (or sufficient) knowledge of the whole. |
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Authority
This is knowledge based on a power figure, some fount of truth. This is knowledge asserted by the expert or virtually an undisputed source. It may also be a group authority such as expressed in a creed. Primitive examples are the medicine man or wise person of the tribe. A modern example is the authoritative text.
Although limited, authority it is a way to know. People who have worked afield for years as trained observers know an enormous amount. It is very sad to see environmental agencies not capture this knowledge when these people retire. Depending on self-prepared publications is totally inadequate.
While it may be good, authority is weak as a base because it cannot handle the prophet, the spurious observation (i.e., the sensory base discussed later), the wrong reason, and it cannot discriminate between authoritative groups. Parental authority is enough to make many people leery of this base, but then on second thought ...
A sub unit of authority is privilege. "How do you know her salary is that much?" "I know, I am her supervisor." Not necessarily experts, some people have special access to information that others do not.
Other
A modest escape valve, there are probably means other than those listed and discussed here of knowing. These may include those insights induced under drugs and sickness and brain cell implant. This may overlap the private base. Overlapping is not uncommon throughout this analysis. Such knowledge gained may be repeated or repeatable but only in a limited way.
Knowledge of presence or place is said to be gained in unusual ways, perhaps electromagnetism, as in migrating birds, or by some total, innate, multi-sensory comprehension of conditions, including impending attack and "imprinted" conditions of early childhood.
Genetic
Insects emerge, and some exist as adults for a very short period, perhaps only a few days. They know what to eat, in what patterns to behave, how to reproduce, and how to avoid some predators. Other organisms, including people, have some innate knowledge transmitted within the genetic code. The more dependent an animal is upon its parents, upon learning, the less information, knowledge for life, seems imparted in the code.
Private
There are people who claim to have had very personal, perhaps un repeatable experiences. They know something but how they know is private to them. It is perfectly sufficient, but its source is unavailable. Metaphysical experiences (revelations) are one of the grounds of private knowledge. The person having knowledge asserts to the question of "how?": "I just know!" The knowledge is uninvestigatable. The knowledge held is almost un discussable. As Bendall asserted: The notion of truth presupposes the notion of inquiry.
The environmental designer knows that it is inappropriate to discuss facts. I avoid using the word, suspecting there are none. The discussible dimensions are how do you know the facts? How were they determined? Let us discuss their factuality.
Sensory "Seeing is believing" is a well known phrase but upon reflection, it is only true for the trained observer and then it is limited. The variation in courtroom testimony about what has been seen is convincing of its limitations. Training of behaviorists, scientists, and law enforcement officers is notable because a sensory base can be improved. "How do you know?" "I sensed it!"
People learn to improve their sensory perception with eye glasses, hearing aids, microscopes, etc. Most of the technology of environmental sampling is designed to improve the sensory perception of the ecosystem. The perfect observation cannot, however, overcome the bad sampling strategy or bad research design. A sensory epistemology is limited also because of limited sensory ability, training, equipment, etc. It is also limited because of communication. An uncommunicated observation (or one poorly done) is private knowledge.
A blind-folded person smelling burnt hair and touched with an ice cube will "know" he has been burned! It is almost impossible to have a pure stimulus. The context of the stimulus provides its meaning. To know based on sensory perception requires knowing the context.
The empiricists (e.g., Hume, Berkley, Locke) went to the world to learn to see and gain knowledge. The struggle, unabated, is between knowing what to observe (having a structure, organization, or model as a means of assembling sensory perceptions and thus avoiding "noise" and the entropy of information systems) and being aware of the dangers that such a model, a concept, may cause you to observe the wrong thing or in the wrong way. The structure (or context), not the sensory experience, may be flawed.
The sensory apparatus itself is limited. Being hit in the head, a person might exclaim: "I saw a blinding light!" This could occur in the dark. Drugs produce altered states that either reduce or enhance senses (e.g., guard dogs search better when given certain drugs). Dreams are often so real that people report events that have never occurred.
Contextual
Not the physical context but the language context is one basis for knowledge. This is knowledge based on tacit, continuing agreement among users of a language. We assume people know what we mean by "hard," "soft," "pain," (see papers in Stroll 1967), or "wet." We may know what " carrying capacity" means because of the way it is used. Under close examination, many of these phrases and words disappear (or should do so) because they are weak, incomplete, and imprecise. This epistemological base is weak because a process for agreeing on the language is usually lacking; the users change in knowledge and need for the words, and the words themselves are mere models, codes ... almost by definition a representation and thus not all truth.
Coherence
There is knowledge based on how well something fits with the rest of knowledge. We know that water does not run up hill, the sun always rises. Woodpeckers do not dig holes in sand dunes. I know that! It fits with everything else that I know. This base is strong because it is related to a large fund of knowledge, but it fails to be able to establish the truthfulness of that fund.
"How did you know that instrument would work?", asks the student. "It just made sense that it would , based on size, shape, design, price, reputation of the company , and reported prior use of similar equipment." ("Reputation" is precisely related to coherence)
"How do you know your proposed technique will work", asks the skeptic? "It has never been tried before; I just know!" Not private knowledge (but possibly), this is a display of the coherence base.
A large fund of knowledge is key to this concept. Starting at an arbitrary point, a garbage pile called knowledge could be built. Starting is not arbitrary, however. Coherence overlaps strongly, as do others, with authority, contextual, and induction bases.
Pragmatism
The environmental and ecological field is full of pragmatists. The epistemological test is whether something is useful or whether it works. It usually includes concepts of efficiency (high output per unit input) or effectiveness (high specifically-stated, desired output per unit input). Knowledge exists if it serves to cope with people and the environment.
How to define "it works" is a looming problem (How is this known?). What works for some people or during a period may not work for others or in a later period. "I know I will not get sick after boiling and eating these old beans" may work today, may be highly satisfying, but deadly tomorrow.
Pragmatism may be sufficient in local situations, but does not accommodate events in the tails of the normal curve. It cannot handle rapid change or the new interactions that arise when a factor is added to a system. In general, when pressed, the epistemologist must shift to another base.
Induction
This is the classical "scientific method," Baconian, and flows from hypothesis through test to conclusion. The last stage, publication or presentation, is usually omitted, but it is essential as a feedback loop for review and correction. The knowledge base is a small system with a conclusion, a knowledge statement, being the objective. This procedure is logical, flows well, and the evidence is that it works (note the epistemology of an epistemological base). Knowledge is based on processing evidence to arrive at a conclusion.
This base may fail because of the sensory nature of much evidence used.
I interviewed many professors before leaving a university and asked what should be gained from a Ph.D. degree. The most memorable answer: two major things (1) how to ask answerable questions, and (2) the nature of evidence. The latter is a major difficulty of the inductive approach to knowledge.
Equally difficult to resolve are infrequently occurring events (e.g., earthquakes) and some for which evidence cannot be gained due to moral or other reasons. What is inside the church cornerstone? Knowledge must await the church destruction. Can a person recover from a bite of a rabid animal on the shoulder? Can a person get rabies by aspirating air from a cave with rabid bats? The answers await immoral experiments. Some experiments are too costly to perform; some systems are too sparse to study except in some weak inductive manner (cf. endangered species); some populations are so variable that no conceivable experimental design will produce a conclusion other than that more studies are needed. The mark of experience and education, the evolution of a coherent epistemology augmenting the inductive, is to see the general in the truly unique.
Correspondence
Also called deduction, this epistemological base is one of knowledge based on tests of reality usually made against standards. Often considered a process of reasoning from the general to the particular, it is the converse of induction which seeks general rules, premises, and descriptors. Language and mathematical models are examples of general representations of knowledge. Languages and mathematics are model-building media. How well models represent reality is a qualitative aspect of this base. A picture or painting is true, faithful, or accurate to the degree it corresponds to that which it represents.
To perceive anything is to form a mental image of it. This is true for a sensory experience or some entirely mental activity, perhaps of some previously unseen relationship among ecosystem components. Truth is an expression of the accuracy of the replica or model in the mind to the things outside of the mind. Every abstraction, every model, is in part a falsification because of what is omits. Melden (1967:246), in a discussion of how humans know anything, said, "Our trouble is that in our doings, of whatever sorts these may be, we must focus our gaze". Validity of models will be discussed later. It is clearly an analysis of the truthfulness of the model. Not computer models, but communicated expressions of the model in the mind are the topic here. Without communication, the model is private.
Correspondence becomes the major issue in deciding how well results of questionnaires about perception of scenery, willingness to pay for recreation and importance of objectives reflect reality. These are models. How well they represent the human mind and the fundamental decision making process remains an important question.
"Practice what you preach" is an exhortation for correspondence. An advocate of population control for improving the environment better not have 10 children! (But perhaps they know better than anyone.) This is true for the individual as well as for the nation. A policy statement for the world must correspond well with national policy, and more importantly, with perceptions of the behavior of the nation suggesting the policy.
Correspondence in personal and agency life may be seen in three dimensions. At any time, a person or agency may locate themselves within this space (Figure 4).
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| Figure 4 Individuals may conceive of themselves as located at some point or region (the cloud) in three-dimensional space. Life expression is very much a function of how a person perceives themselves in the present and in the future as they may achieve their potential. |
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The perception of what a person, group, organization, agency, etc., may become, may itself be flawed, and either excessive (beyond any practical levels of attainment) or conservative. Resolution of these differences is in the literature of "human potential," of ethical behavior, of humanism, and of course theology as it may relate humans to their god-concept. Within psychology these concepts are discussed as "cognitive dissonance;" in marketing they are discussed in relation to what a buyer wants, needs, and feels he or she deserves.
Heuristic Convergence
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| Figure 5. Major knowledge systems and the classical epistemological roots of knowledge leading to an alternative proposal. |
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If all bases have strengths but to varying degrees, all are recognized within the literature of epistemology, all have some utility, but all have weaknesses, then it may be useful to those who search for truth to see them as a knowledge system. For each particular bit of knowledge they may be used in different ways to assess its truthfulness. This involves taking multiple approaches to knowledge sequentially, simultaneously (cf. Ackoff 1962), or interactively focusing on the truthfulness of a thing. An optimization may be performed. This is a search in a non-linear truth-space. It is likely to progress over time, blocked here, advancing with a discovery, retreating there with a refutation or error correction. It is a continuing, satisfying uncertainty. Different workers will use different epistemological bases; they will be used in different mixes, with different weights. There is a continual solidification, unification, and discovery ongoing, an heuristic process, converging on truth. It is a truth search with negative converging on truth. It is a truth search with negative feedback. This action is an entropy minimizing effort, for "to know" is negentropic. To inquire is temporarily and probably entropy-maximizing. There must be feedback along with it if it is to have survival value. The action creates a new epistemological base.
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| Figure 6. An alternative view of heuristic convergence as an optimum search across a surface. The dimensions are related well to those that define a resource. |
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I know this is how we know (a most perplexing statement).
How is the state of knowledge quantified? Surely it is more than know, not-know, a one or zero decision. I recommend not using the word "fact" except in the most general conversation because a fact has a connotation of certainty. Given the limitations in all of the epistemological bases, it would seem that complete certainty is unattainable. [There are people who state belief in a particular god, or god-concept and ascribe that belief as being 100 percent certain. This often represents a private epistemological base though other bases may be used in convincing others of that certainty.]
It is very useful to discuss how certainty may be quantified in terms of probability. A range of casually-used words and phrases may be quantified as a means to think about certainty, aid in its discussion and study, and help the designer interpret what clients say or know about their objectives and the conditions of their ecosystem.
Possible means that the probability of occurrence or of truth being greater than zero. This word opens the door for discussion ...usually about the probability of the thing discussed. Tentative warranted certainty is truth. Certainty is not demanded by critical intelligence as a necessary condition for rational belief. Belief is a key word in epistemology. It is within the middle ground between things possible and levels of probability. "I believe x is true" (e.g., that tree height is strongly related to tree diameter), "Do you believe in trees?" is an absurd question and will usually result in no response or requests about what trees can do or how they may be used to solve a problem or block, defeat, or ride-out a situation. Belief in something (other than in a god or gods) is a statement about its condition or status. It is also a statement about the believer's perceptual apparatus. It may be an expression about the dynamics of something, especially its stability.
Beliefs are related to objects, events, processes and states (status) - the structure, dynamics, and relations of general systems. For objects, just any old x, a representative statement is "I have a belief about x." Note that beliefs about objects must be about one or more of the parts or dimensions of that object and they are usually expressions of the utility of or benefits people can obtain from or with the object. For events, a statement is "I believe that x will occur." For processes, "I believe that something (like transpiration) is occurring." For status or state, "I believe the animal is dead."
When a person says, "I am certain" then the probability level is (or should be) for a precise communicator, 1.0. I have not done studies but my perception is that general current usage suggests probability levels of:
These are statements about the certainty of knowledge, the certainty of belief statements. This range of certainty is from less than zero (the singular condition of false, not degrees of falseness) to 1.0, which is certainty. The zero condition is a state of non-belief, total abstinence of commitment to a belief statement.
Since certainty seems unlikely to be reached, say only about 0.9999, then this still leaves room for rejection (i.e., 1.0 - 0.9999). This is not zero, however. The negative cannot be proven. Other means need to be found to reject something, to say: "I am certain x is false." "I know the sun will not come up tomorrow!", "I know the species has been extirpated!" are negative belief statements. They cannot be proven at the time they are stated. Belief statements are formulated so that expressions of certainty may be made about them.
An epistemological system may be conceived. The objective is to amass and maintain truth. The process is heuristic convergence. The inputs are of all types - the literature, senses, experts, experimental observations, results of models. The feedback is the continual scrutiny and evaluation and discarding of conclusions and belief statements or the revisions of the belief levels assigned to each that remains. Storage of knowledge, now in books, art, photographs, song, and other forms, is undergoing a revolution (e.g., electronic computer storage) and needs attention. The comprehensive, efficient, secure, storage subsystem(s) needs to be designed and created. The network from idea or observation to belief statement and its revision or replacement often needs to be stored because the network itself may provide knowledge for the knowledge system itself.
For the practicalists or pragmatists who would poopoo philosophy, let their emphasis on " Why epistemology?" be:
Not the least of the reasons for a life-long study of epistemology or taking the stance of an epistemological inquirer is that it may revise the concept of science and thus, the mastery of it and its evolving, next-best thing.
Perhaps there is another epistemological base, that of place. A squirrel does not jump when a leaf falls beside it. It knows its terrain and actors. It dodges hawks, it ignores leaves. Short-lived insects know their places, but that can be called a genetic base. A wilderness traveler sleeps soundly; the tenderfoot awakes at any hoot, every scurry in the leaves, every fire brand collapse, every rock roll in the stream. From biology we gain an alternative concept of how animals know anything, and that is "imprinting." The duckling knows its parent. A duckling brought from an egg incubator imprints on a child or adult and behaves toward it as it might to its parent. There is evidence that birds and insects also "imprint" on spaces and structure. They return to the same nesting area; they build the same nests; they use the same nest-size holes. Wood ducks, raised in boxes return from migration to nest in boxes. Progeny of wasps having built paper nest on wires on the ground return to the same wires. Migratory fish imprint on the chemical characteristics of their original streams. Perhaps place is an element of cover. People grow up in grasslands; they "love the plains" and express discomfort at living among mountains. Mountain people tolerate, but express ad nauseam, coastal living, but long to return. They know their place; they feel uncomfortable out of it. Not proven; I suspect a type of low-level, residual, humanoid imprinting.
I visited northeastern China in 1989 and knew the place. I felt at home in the forest, though everything else was different. The species were different than those I knew, but the families and genera of plants were similar. The farms were the same. I could relate easily; I was familiar with the total, the "surround", a spatial gestalt. I knew the place. I knew what to expect. I did not feel at risk. I suspected that I could never feel comfortable in Senegal. Everything seemed different. I could not predict what was behind each tree, beneath the river surface, or what had caused the disturbance on the ground surface.
A student of mine took me to the Rann of Kutch in northwestern India, a vast frightful coastal salt desert. He was at home there. He loved the place; he knew it well. Place may be a way to know.
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