Hey gary,
In discussing the various levels you said this:
>3rd level: The interaction of me observing you can be described at this
>level. Why am I there? Am I breaking any laws of the human culture that we
>belong to, such as 'trespassing, 'invasion of your privacy' , 'acting as a
>peeping Tom'? All of these questions are describing my actions on this
>human cultural and public, communal, collective level. The newspaper, the
>house, the chair are presumably all products that David purchased. The act
>of purchasing is a social interaction. The idea that David can purchase
>and own those objects are a social level construct. The language the words
>on the newspaper is written in is a human cultural collective invention.
First I'd like to say that I agree with you in almost every respect. You
miss one small thing in my opinion that is important. Each level is not
only based on the one before it, but made out of it, or rather, made out of
units of the greater level. The entire human race (biology) is made out of a
small portion of the inorganic level. Societies are made out of a small
potion of the human race. The social then, although containing interaction,
cannot be limited to that. Inside each individual exsists a reflection of
the greater social pattern which is woven to form higher level thoughts.
Not only does the social level include you watching david, but it also
includes the structure of language which exsists inside david.
Please forgive my use of the great ultimate metaphor to describe something
other than the great ultimate. The social is the moon, the intellectual is
ripples in individual bodies of water. Each puddle, ocean, etc. relects the
moon within itself, but distortion on the surface weave the light in to much
more complex patterns.
Maybe its not a big point, but it helps in consistancy. The inorganic level
is huge but made up of many many atoms, the biological level is vast but
made up of many bodies, the social level is large but made up of individual
units which must be included in every body of the biological. these units
are difficult to vislize, but they are mores, standards and languages which
indeed exsist inside every person but are not thoughts and although they can
be thought about, those thoughts are 4th level and not 3rd.
Your view had the social as alone "out there", with inorganic, biological
and intellectual all much more solid things "inside" humans. But
interaction is definately key as an aspect of the social, dont get me wrong.
Elliot
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