>
> As I've said (more than once), "self-determination" in the sense I'm
> using the term means what Hegel calls a "will proper" and a
> "universal will". A "will proper" is:
>
> "(a) pure indeterminateness of the Ego, which as such has no
> limitation or a content which is immediately extant through nature
> but is indifferent towards any and every determinateness. (b) The Ego
> can, at the same time, pass over to a determinateness and make a
> choice of some one or other and then actualize it."
>
> The idea is inconsistent with this:
>
> > the narrow hypothesis that societies,
> > psychology, and "thought" are constrained and guided by our biological
> > make-up
>
> Moreover, what remains within the limits set by "our biological make-
> up" understood in this way isn't open to self-determination in the
> above sense. Our biological make-up in combination with our
> "environment" produces pure determinateness (as opposed to "pure
> indeterminateness") of the ego and so leaves no opening within which
> the ego "can ... make a choice of some one or other
> ['determiniteness'] and then actualize it."
>
> On 6/7/06, Ted Winslow <egwinslow at rogers.com> wrote:
Ted
What in the world pure indeterminedness? You might as well stick with "self-determination." It doesn't add anything to say that one is the other. What in the the world is "pure determinedness"? As far as I can tell neither add anything to the conversation.
Ted, as far as I can tell nothing that you wrote has any effect on whether or not you can accept sociobiology or not. What you say and quote does not explain "self-determination" at all or why biological constraints on psychology are inconsistent with choice. "Pure indeterminednes" is simply another way of saying what you said before -- "self-determination" with a less plausible name. It doesn't tell me what "pure indeterminedness" is, or looks like. I ask for a description and explanation and you give me a non-definition definition which only serves to make things less understandable. Neither does its opposite "pure determinedness" make anything more descriptive of understandable. It is a level of abstraction that has nothing to do with "the narrow hypothesis that societies, psychology, and "thought" are contrained and guided by our biological make-up." The fact that we don't have sonar and can't perform echolocation the way bats do, is a biological constraint on our make-up and on our way of thinking. The fact that all human languages that we know of have "container words" with certain semantic qualities is a biological pathway or "guide" to our conceptualization. These constraints and pathways are neither "pure determinedness" nor "pure indeterminedness." They are irrelevant to the level of abstraction you use to choose to dismiss concrete biological constraints or pathways.
When you say biological constraints are "inconsistent" with the idea of human choice-making, you are saying this simply by fiat. There is nothing inconsistent at all between biological constraints and some notion of choice. Recently I was reading a generally marxist study of Shelley ("Radical Shelley" by Scrivener) and I came across this sentence, which I quote only as an indication that others can accept human agency and determination within a marxist framework. "To consider human agency important, as I do, is not to dismiss determinant factors (determination, as Raymond Williams and E. P. Thompson remind us, means "establishing limits", not causing effects)," I would argue that unless there are biologically and of course sociologically constrained "rules" for human thought and society then there simply can be no freedom in these areas of any kind. But this is a general philosophical argument that I would leave aside, since again I don't think it matters in the context of human biological evolution. You seem to be caught in the antinomies of determinism/indeterminism, self-determinism/determinism which I think might be interesting questions but which don't effect good theories and reasonable speculations on human society and biology.
Either humans are biological organisms or they are not. If they are not biological organisms then you must reject the post-Hegelian science of evolutionary biology. Either the brain/mind is a biological organ or it is given by the gods or falls from heaven. You either work from the model that the mind/brain and homo sapiens are part of the biological world or you are one variety or another of an idealist. In which case you can simply leave off quoting Marx. Frankly, I think that idealism and materialism as terms are irrelevant to good research in these areas. But it is necessary to understand homo sapiens as part of the world and try to work within a point of view of a naturalistic methodology. If we try to look at homo sapiens as part of the world then there is no other choice but to accept that humans, along with other animals are somehow (we don't always know how) constrained by biology. If you don't accept this then what ever conversation we have with each other must take place as a religious or metaphysical debate about "free will" or "determination". Such things are a matter of belief, and I can discuss them with you, but then whatever you or I say simply has no effect on what ever evolutionary ruminations any of us may have. (If you believe that the universe is all made up of little bits of indeterminate information anyway you can be a completely deterministic sociobiologist and ultimately believe that on some level everything is "Pure Indetermination". Such paradoxes are what religious and metaphysical beliefs are made of. As for me I take none of this because as far as I am concerned we are biologically constrained in such way that such paradoxes will never be resolved. I postpone ultimate skepticism and ultimate belief for latter days.)
Language is constrained biologically. Because of language and its rules we are free to use language creatively in ways that we wouldn't if all that we produced was noise. There is no "pure determinedness" in language and there is no "pure indeterminedness" in language. There is the biological growth of language that is triggered and shaped in various ways and then there is our creative use of language, which we know next to nothing about. How such notions as "pure determinedness" and "pure indeterminedness" come into it is through the backdoor of philosophical folk psychology as far as I can see.
Ted, I don't want to attack you here, but it is kind of frustrating. You avoid most of the questions I ask and answer other questions with quotes and definitions, as if we should accept the authority of Hegel and Marx a priori. In the mean time what you quote doesn't offer any explanations for the concrete issues at hand.
You can quote Marx all you wish. Take this quote; "Obviously the human eye takes in things in a different way from the crude non-human eye, the human ear in a different way from the crude ear, etc." It does not show anything at all. As far as I can tell human ears are "cruder" than bat ears; the human eye is "cruder" than the eyes of most brachiating primates; and the the human nose is "cruder" than the nose of the wolf. These are simply biologically contingent facts of the different lifeways of humans, bats, brachiating primates, and wolves.
It seems to me with these quotes from Marx you are predetermining what often are theoretical and empirical questions that must be discovered through investigation.
But I would like to try to explicate where I think you often go wrong in your replies to me even though mostly what I am getting from you are annotated quotes, so I might be wrong in my explication.
I list the following so that I can tease out a response from you not to win an argument or change your world view. I think you are confusing historical hypotheses about how we have developed as a species with other questions about our potential development in human society. So the following are a list of mistakes I think you make: 1a) You are confusing hypotheses and conclusions that we can draw from our biological-evolutionary history, as the hominid line differentiated as separate species from other primates and from each other with (1b) our subsequent cultural and social history that may have begun with homo erectus, as the archaeological evidence seems to indicate. It also seems to me that you are confusing conclusions that can be drawn from (2a) our biological, cultural and sociological prehistory, with (2b) our growing consciousness and self-consciousness as historical and social animals in the course of the last 10,000 to 12,000 since the development of complex societies and the agricultural revolution and especially in the last 3,000 - 2,500 years (a blink in biological time) with the development of historical self-consciousness. In general, the way you have phrased your answer, seems to confuse (3a) conclusions we might draw with some certainty about our historical past, both biological and "sociological", and (3b) the potential for human society in the future, i.e. what you call in Marx's rather idealistic clause, "the true realm of freedom".
Finally, you seem to fall into a functional and structural confusion, i.e. you confuse (4) biological constraints with what you have called determinism; and (5) you confuse biological capacities with how we choose to use those capacities. This final confusion between biological constraints and capacities with the creative use of our capacities is a mistake you make over and over again.
Thus when you quote Marx on vision you and he are simply confusing the biological faculty of vision, which is constrained in a way that makes us less sharp-sighted than brachiating primates, with the "use" of vision, which allows us to see and appreciate beautiful sunsets, the Pantheon, and Picasso. (For all we know other primates also appreciate sunsets and choose to observe what we call beauty, so I would leave open the possibility that they share some little bit of what most of us call with usual human ethnocentrism, "human freedom" and appreciation of beauty.)
Well sometimes effects are actually "caused." If mammals are not exposed to light within a window of opportunity they will not be able to see. If humans are not exposed to language within a certain window of opportunity they will not be able to learn a language. These are simple biological constraints on our ability to use our sense of sight or know a language. Humans simply have many biological constraints, triggers, limitations, etc., even on thought and conceptualization. If we didn't we would not be biological organisms. If this is inconsistent with what Hegel said then Hegel must be put into the trash.
It should be uncontroversial for an historical materialist that it is a simple biological fact that homo sapiens sapiens have long childhoods that require intensive care for a longer time than other primates. Also all of the evidence points to the conclusion that the length of time between birth and maturity has continually increased since the emergence of the hominid line. It is the length of time from birth to maturity that actually allows us to develop all of those facets of intellectual and mental growth, learning, socialization, etc. that we recognize as uniquely human. These are the biological constraints that "free" us to develop human cultural. But not only do these biological constraints allow for "freedom" they also require us, at some point in our evolutionary development to work and raise children with a high level of cooperation or else we in the long run we die.
If possible Ted, please explain to me instead of giving me quotes from authorities.
Jerry