[MD] Step two

[ARLO JAMES BENSINGER JR]

[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.

[Arlo]
So is 'seeing' a red blood cell under a microscope. Or 'seeing' a quark in a particle accelerator. If you took a person who had never seen a microscope, or had no idea what it was, and who had a culturally variant understanding of the human body, and you took him/her and told him to look into a microscope, s/he'd have no understanding of what s/he was looking at. All tools are cultural tools, and all depend on cultural assumptions, as you suggest. So, certainly, in this same way someone who had never seen a soccer match, or has never seen any organized sport, would probably not see the same social patterns that I would. This is, of course, exactly like the "green flash of the sun". 

All I am suggesting is that ALL levels are visible, but you have to be looking with the right tool. But, yes, all tools require cultural familiarity. 

[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]
Right, I think we are in agreement, Dan. Certainly an un-western-enculturated tribesman would not know how to use our 'activity' lens to see our social patterns. In the same way you or I would not be able to see his cultures social patterns with our 'activity' lens (this was, largely, Kluckhohn's point as referenced in LILA). But I think this extends to all tools, tools for examining all four levels require understanding or awareness of the cultural assumptions and 'knowledge' underlying that tool. 

By the way, I think we can see intellectual patterns as well, but here we can't use the 'activity' lens, we need a new tool, and I'd argue that semiotic/symbolic 'recursion/self-reference' is one lens we can use to examine intellectual patterns. Only saying this because I don't want the intellectual level to feel left out in all this. 

[Ant]
Thanks for that last post Arlo and especially for that phrase "shared attention".  That's a nice "intellectual tool" that you discovered there.

[Arlo]
I think it works nicely as the emergent-catalyst for social patterns. In the same way that you can find carbon atoms at the base of all biological patterns, I think you can find shared attention at the base of all social patterns. I think the idea works well within the MOQ's framework of levels, as the question of 'how did social life emerge from biological life?' was exactly the question Tomasello was considering.

As an aside (mostly), I think that those operating within the general mindset of sociocultural theory present a strong overlap with the MOQ as this tradition specifically adopts a biological->social->intellectual evolutionary trajectory (even if they lack the MOQ's Quality-based ontology), whereas most others seem to work from a biological->intellectual or biological->consciousness perspective. Sociocultural theory has heavily informed 'activity theory' (which, to be fair, has its heart now in Scandinavia). This is why when I say 'activity' I mean it in the Russian (and now heavily Scandinavian) sense defined as purposeful, agenic, semiotic, mediated.

[Ant]
P.S. Like Jan-Anders and Dan, I have also found Henry Miller's "BIG SUR" book a REALLY well written book. 

[Arlo]
With so many accolades appearing on this list, I've added this book to my queue. :-)