[MD] Step two

[ARLO JAMES BENSINGER JR]

[DMB]
I haven't read Tomasello but it sounds like a description of intersubjectivity in its earliest stage of development, the seed that would eventually grow into a common cultural space, a mental space, so to speak.

[Arlo]
Yes, I think that's right. Tomasello's main inquiry was in where/how the sociocultural emerged from the biological. I don't recall that he uses the term "intersubjectivity", but from what I understand, yes, intersubjectivity is what emerges from shared attention (which is rooted in the biological).

[DMB]
It sounds like something wolves and chimpanzees could do to some extent.

[Arlo]
Right, although Tomasello's focus is on human phylogenetic evolution, and he'd likely argue that the leap from biologically-enabled "shared attention" to semiotically-mediated activity (social behavior) in humans was really his area of inquiry. As you know, I do think we see non-human species near the biological/social boundary, but I would agree with Tomasello that this is requires evidence of shared attention.

[DMB]
I guess the difference really shows up in the fact that culture grows and evolves whereas the social behavior of canines and primates is relatively fixed.

[Arlo]
Right. Its the transition from phylogentic evolution to sociocultural evolution that is unique to the human species. As Alexander Luria might have said, 'we don't just use tools, we improve them and they share our activity'. 

[DMB]
We can pretty well discern the difference even in the history of our species. Stone tools were used for a million years before any innovations began and then - all of a sudden - there was an explosion of new tool designs. And with that came all kinds of new social behaviors involving ritual and art, or at least decoration.

[Arlo]
Exactly. 'Humans' appear around 2 million years ago. For most of that time, evolution was still strictly biological. Little changed in the activity of humans. Then, around 200,000 years ago, the slow progression of biological evolution lead to the emergence of the neural mass that enabled shared attention. From this point on, social evolution has been rapid. Human activity changed more in the past 200,000 years than in the previous 1.8 million years. And this sociocultural evolution has been on a exponential curve. Canine activity is pretty much the same today as it was 2 million years ago. And this was precisely Tomasello's point, and I think Pirsig's as well, social patterns evolve (as do all patterns), and we can see/trace/study this evolution just like we can see/trace/study biological and inorganic patterns.