[MD] Step two

[Ant McWatt]

Thanks for that last post Arlo and especially for that phrase "shared attention".  That's a nice "intellectual tool" that you discovered there.  Anyway, I always tended to think until quite recently - like Dan? - that social patterns are more ephemeral than inorganic & biological patterns but, of course, the latter two levels (being concepts by postulation a la FSC Northrop) are also mediated.  That is they are NEVER directly observed either; just inferred.  It's a subtle SOM habit (certainly for a Westerner) to think of rocks and trees and all the other inorganic & biological patterns as somehow being MORE real than social & intellectual patterns but Northrop shows us this is scientifically & logically incorrect.  This is why I think the MOQ perspective - though unnatural at first for someone brought up in an SOM dominated culture - is a more coherent and therefore BETTER one to hold. IMHO.

In other words, you have various phenomena in what Northrop termed the "indefinite aesthetic continuum" or EXPERIENCE (as defined in LILA; not your typical first year undergrad SOM philosophy book JC which will tend to define it as "subjective"!) and we construct (or at least try to construct) concepts that can help us deal with living WELL in this "aesthetic continuum" that we all find ourselves existing in.  

Best wishes,

Ant


P.S. Like Jan-Anders and Dan, I have also found Henry Miller's "BIG SUR" book a REALLY well written book.  The "character" that Miller plays in this book reminds me quite a lot of the John Sutherland that we met on the 2006 ZMM film trip actually.  Half the time I'm thinking "Oh no Miller, why an earth are you talking at length to that eccentric guy/weirdo over there for?"  But this open mind of Miller's serves him well.  For a start, he really gets underneath most of the characters he meets (from alll "walks of life" and, in consequence, learns some interesting about himself & the wider world for doing so. A high quality book indeed!


Arlo Bensinger commented to Dan Glover, August 11th:

[Dan earlier]
If you are talking about the MOQ, then social patterns have nothing to do with groups of individuals.
 
[Arlo]
I this this is right. On all the MOQ levels we can see 'individual' patterns and 'groups' of patterns. This is why I think what we are looking for (in locating the catalyst-agent from which social emerges from biological) is 'shared attention' (which, to clarify, can occur even with one body present). Obviously, there is an evolution of complexity within the social level, just as within the biological level (amoeba to human body), so the earliest, simplest social patterns would have consisted of brief, simple moments of 'shared attention', while on the other end of the level we see the complex social patterns underlying such activities as the World Cup (and probably at this complex level we see also an interplay or co-presence of both social and intellectual patterns). 
 
[Dan]
Social patterns cannot be seen. They exist in the mind, not in physical reality.
 
[Arlo]
I'm going to disagree with you here. Or I think I am. Maybe its just the wording. But I'd say social patterns exist 'in the activity'. I think juxtaposing 'mind/physical reality' here reinstates an S/O view I know you don't hold. And so, I'd say, we most absolutely can see social patterns. I recently saw a beautiful one that won the World Cup for Germany, but really I see them around me all the time. We are awash in social patterns, to the point where I'd say its almost hard to NOT see them.
 
[Dan]
No matter how closely you examine the man you will find nothing to lead you to believe that he is President of the United States.
 
[Arlo]
Well, no, if you are suggesting looking for a social pattern by looking on the biological level. But let me watch five people engaged in their genuine activity and I'll tell you right away which on is President of the United States. So, yes, microscopes are useful tools for making biological patterns more visible. But here you're just suggesting the wrong tool for the job. 
 
The basis for social patterns is, IMHO, "activity" (in the Russian sense; purposeful, agenic, semiotic, mediated). And the root, the carbon atom, for activity is shared attention. 


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