[MD] Sociability Re-examined

[ARLO JAMES BENSINGER JR]

[Craig]
Consider a lion pride where the lionesses hunt & bring the catch back to the male lion to eat first. This is social (in the sense that ants & bees are social insects but moths aren't).

[Arlo]
Not according to my view, not according to Tomasello's view. Sociality requires purposeful, semiotic, mediated activity. What you are describing is instinctual. Think of it this way, have you ever seen a lioness and a lion argue about who's going out to make the kill? Again, the "shared attention" of Tomasello (I really wish you'd read it to help avoid these misconceptions) is biological, but it is the first 'step' up the ladder to sociality. Sociality is not instinct, and it is not instinctual coordination. It is not responding to pheromone trails. 

[Craig]
But Pirsig does not consider it 3rd level because it lacks something that on earth only human interaction has.

[Arlo]
Ultimately, I believe, this is an untenable proposition. If you make the jump from biology to sociality so extreme as to include 'only humans', you can't account for the transition at all. Its just some magical thing that appears out of nowhere on top of human physiology. 

What Tomasello offers is an ability to define not only human behavior as social, but to account for the border, and to provide a language for talking about ALL social patterns. So far, it is the most comprehensive lens for talking about social patterns because it applies as equally and as correctly to the earliest human dyads as well as the most complex human cities.

But, of course, I freely admit Tomasello introduces non-human social behavior, but again, this is not any coordinated animal behavior, only that which (1) is built of the recognition of the 'other' as a similar agenic being, and (2) is mediated and purposeful. Only a very small strata of (mostly) primate behavior even touches upon this, and even then we are talking (in the MOQ) about simple social patterns very near the bio/socio border. Modern human social activity is, of course, highly evolved social patterns that, in turn, border the socio/intellectual divide.

[Craig]
That is, is there an example of humans acting in a social manner but which is not on the 3rd level? 

[Arlo]
All 'social' behavior is 3rd level. If you are going to define a 'social level' that does not include all 'social' patterns, then you're off on a track that I have little interest in. Are there 'biological' behaviors that are not 2nd level? Inorganic behavior that is not 1st level? That's just getting quite absurd, IMO.

[Craig]
If so, then we could consider what would need to change to make it a case of the 3rd level.

[Arlo]
All the thoughts I've introduced require nothing to change, other than admitting some rudimentary or proto non-human sociality near the bio/socio divide. Other than that, shared attention, and "activity" (again, in the Russian sense of agenic, purposeful, semiotic, mediated) allows us a lens to understand sociality without resorting to all kinds of illogical or absurd leaps. It is supported by archeology, by anthropology, by evolutionary physiology, it explains not just ontogeny (growth and maturation of the child) but also phylogeny (growth and evolution of the species).