[MD] Sociability Re-examined

[ARLO JAMES BENSINGER JR]

[Craig]
I did read the Wikipedia article on Tomasello, where he seems to agree with Pirsig that humans have a capacity that non-humans (on earth) don't. This capacity could be the divide between the 2nd & 3rd levels.

[Arlo]
Yes, Tomasello certainly agrees that human have a capacity that non-human species do not. This is central point of Vygotsky's (which Tomasello is working from). One of Tomasello's main arguments is that human social patterns (as semiotic, mediated activity) have the capacity to evolve, while the primitive social activity of certain sufficiently advanced primates near the bio/socio do not evolve (either ontologically or phylogeneticially). This is why I (and this comes from the same socio-cultural tradition) focus on 'activity' that is semiotic, mediated and purposeful as the best lens to view social patterns. 

The borderlands are not as troubling to me, and I do allow for them to be not laser-etched lines when examined closely, and this is why I don't worry about demanding every possible non-human activity be absolutely defined out of the social level. By the time we are talking about semiotic, mediated, purposeful activity within a modern cultural milieu, we are talking exclusively about human behavior anyway. Bringing up rudimentary non-human social patterns is like bringing up algae or lichen when you are talking about the complexity of human physiology. Both are biological patterns, but lichen (many varieties) remains unevolved since the paleozoic whereas the physiology of the modern human is long path of evolution, especially neural evolution. Anyway, I think this is creating disagreement where there really isn't (or shouldn't be) any. 

[Craig]
The following is the handout of Bratman's talk at Stanford.  I hope it is of some value even without the talk itself.  [Beware, the format might be garbled in transmission.]

[Arlo]
The talk appears to be recorded and available as a podcast (http://upload.sms.csx.cam.ac.uk/media/1737335). 

Its interesting, although I still think there are important (to me) differences between Tomasello and Bratman. It's probably not worth elaborating this here, but if you get the chance to read "The Cultural Origins of Human Cognition", I think you may start to see them too. There are a number of others working around this common term (e.g., joint attention, collective intentionality) that may, or may not, have the same theoretical foundations. Tomasello, to my interest, is explicit in working within the socio-cultural theoretical framework, and is true to Vygotsky's cultural-historical psychology.

Anyway, thanks for the information, overall I think this 'lens' does provide us with the best way to look at sociality, to explain the emergence of social patterns out of biological (neural) patterns, to account for social patterns across the evolutionary spectrum (the simplest to the most complex) and to explain phylogenetic, historical and ontogenetic development.