This chapter focuses on the third of the four propositions which are explored throughout Part II:

1. (i) There are logical relationships between components of the Cultural System (CS).

2. (ii) There are causal influences exerted by the CS on the Socio Cultural (S-C) level.

3. (iii) There are causal relationships between groups and individuals at the S-C level.

4. (iv) There is elaboration of the CS due to the S-C level modifying current logical relationships and introducing new ones.

The previous chapter was not entirely unpeopled but it was completely lacking in social interaction. It dealt only with the relations between groups and the ideas they held and not their relationships with other people. The main concern was to demonstrate that social groups confronted two completely different kinds of situational logic depending on the Systemic properties of their beliefs, that is, their contradictoriness or complementarity. In other words the existence of orderly or conflictual relations at the CS level was held to condition S-C action in very distinctive ways.

However, it was never suggested that the logical state of affairs in the Cultural System causally determined the extent of Socio-Cultural integration – a proposition only a downwards conflationist could endorse. On the contrary it is maintained that orderly or conflictual relations at the S-C level can show a significant degree of independent variation from those characterizing the CS at any time. In short, S-C integration does not mirror CS integration. Although the former is indeed conditioned by the latter, it also has its own dynamics which need to be examined.

These are the subject of the present chapter: however, I am going to be theoretically selective about them.