[MD] Step two

[Jan Anders Andersson]

Thanks for that piece of chewing gum Arlo. I’ll put ”shared attention” on my to-do list.

btw
Football and other team sports can be considered as instruments for evaluating social patterns of ”shared attention”, isn’t it? 

Jan-Anders



12 aug 2014 x kl. 09:54 skrev ARLO JAMES BENSINGER JR <ajb102 at psu.edu>:

> [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. :-)
> 
> 
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