Your OP was structured along the lines of "wouldn't it be nice if we did it that way?" which sort of came across as a wish that we all did it that way. I was responding to that aspect of the post.
My response to a "Hey, how are you doing?" greeting is to provide some feedback to the person about how I'm doing. I reply to the question with a word or two that indicates my general state of being at the time. "Great!" "Lousy." "Meh." I don't launch into an explanation, but do offer some information in my reply to that.
That's lovely, but the question "Hey, how are you doing?" is still a phatic statement unless the speaker actually intends it as an invitation to expound upon your condition. Your response of "great," "lousy" or "meh" is also phatic unless you intend it to initiate a conversation about your state of being.
Even if you
do intend it that way, and even if the initial speaker
does sincerely ask the question, that the idiom itself is still phatic regardless of a few occasional anomalies.
Same thing when I exchange greetings with a Spanish-speaking friend. We converse in Spanish. If a question is part of the greeting, I respond with a brief answer to that question. Communication takes place. Is it phatic? That depends. Not always. Sometimes the greeting and How are you doing question evolves into a conversation. Sometimes not. It depends.
Well, yeah. If an actual exchange of information occurs, then it's not phatic, and we can spend all day coming up with goofy exceptions (if a spy's code-word is "hello," then it's not a phatic statement because it conveys the information that he's the contact, etc.), but it's not about those few outliers. The statement in general, casual use is a phatic statement.
I am confident that "I see you" would be the same after the initial novetly (very quickly) wore off.
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