[MD] Step two

[Dan Glover]

Ant, Arlo,

On Mon, Aug 11, 2014 at 5:38 PM, Ant McWatt <antmcwatt at hotmail.co.uk> wrote:
> 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.

Dan:
That is not quite what I intended to infer... though I can understand
why it is easy to think so. Social and intellectual patterns are every
bit as 'real' as rocks and fish but they exist as agreements, so to
speak. Corporeal and ephemeral have more to do with the traditional
subject and object way of thinking, in my opinion.

Ant:
> That is they are NEVER directly observed either; just inferred.

Dan:
Strictly speaking, that is so. However, to make the MOQ a bit more
'digestible' it seems necessary (to me) to take what we might call
baby steps in leading those who are hungry for a more expanded way of
viewing reality through the basics.

Ant:
> 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.

Dan:
Absolutely. Thus to my way of thinking it profits us to use subject
and object metaphysics in outlining the MOQ as long as it is
understood why we are doing so.

>Ant:
> 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.

Dan:
Well, we could well say that experience defined is no longer
experience, but otherwise I agree.

>
> 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!

Dan:
P.P.S.
It isn't often that a book speaks to me like Big Sur... I am glad you
enjoyed it too!  I stumbled across another little gem that some of you
may have read called The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho which I would
highly recommend... a short and easy read yet filled with profundity.

Onward...

>
>
> 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:
I suppose it all depends on the definition of 'seeing.' As Ant brought
up, all patterns are 'seen' as representations in the mind. I would
say that 'seeing' a game is dependent upon underlying assumptions that
are at work in all phases of our culture.

>
> [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.

Dan:
Right... that was what I was attempting to get across to Jan... that
the boundary between biological and social in the MOQ is one of
physicality vs non-physicality, in a subject and object sort of way.

[Arlo]
> 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.

Dan:
Exactly... I agree. Still, you would be using underlying assumptions
built into our culture in establishing which person is POTUS. If we
were to take a tribesman from some obscure corner of the globe and
drop him into a White House meeting he would probably think they were
all crazy as loons.


>  [Arlo]
> 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.

Dan:
I can go along with that, sure.

Thanks, Ant and Arlo!

Dan

http://www.danglover.com