You refuse to get down to specific cases because on the level of "pure indeterminedness" there are no specific cases to get down to. Thus you will not answer my specific questions and actually work through the implications of what you claim. If you are simply doing exegesis of what Hegel said and what Marx said at various times then my point is that it does not effect at all Marx's (partially failed but interesting) attempt to create a theoretical model through which we can understand history and society. It doesn't because the philosophical notions of "pure indeterminedness" and "self-determination" can be defined in any way you or I wish to make it consistent with physical theories, biological theories or historical theories.
Apparently there is nothing that I can say that can get you out of your definitional resting place.
You say:
"> The rest of what you say just repeats your mistaken idea that
> scientific materialism provides the only ontological framework within
> which to think about "nature" and "biology". Humans as conceived
> within Marx's ontology are "biological organisms"; they're just not
> "biological organisms" in the sense on which you're insisting."
In my view, there is no such thing as scientific materialism that has anything to do with the way scientific theories and models are made and tested. There is no "ontological framework" that is relevant to scientific practice one way or another, as far as I can see.
But I personally have made certain ontological choices, which I repeat, are irrelevant to how any scientific theory may be developed. Thus, if for me, what ever we call "free will", "self-determination", etc. is a special (and perhaps contingent ) case of mental development in the course of biological evolution, and if for you "self-determination" is outside of the make-up of "biological organisms", that is fine. But that is a matter of world view and belief.
What you seem to believe about science and materialism has not been true in practice, at least since, Newton. As a matter of intellectual history both Hegel and Marx were in part reactions to the crisis of materialism brought about by the failure of mechanistic materialism as exhibited in Newton's theories. They each tried to present solutions to the crisis of materialism. Hegel's solution was idealistic and Marx's solution was an attempt to reconstruct materialism on another level. But this is a matter of intellectual history that does not effect the specific cases of sociobiology or what ever we think we can show is consonant with the biological basis of human cooperation.
There is simply no "ontological" framework of any kind that can have any effect on science one way or another, or that can be attributed to science one way or another. This is partially because of how narrow scientific theories really are, how little they explain, and how heterogeneously they can be interpreted when brought to serve ideological purposes beyond their narrow interpretations. One only needs to look at the half-dozen or so interpretations of quantum mechanics to see that any "ontological" interpretation can be made to fit with q.m. The same is true of biological theories.
Now I am one of those people who thinks that Hegel can be happily ignored and the 1844 manuscripts could disappear and we can still learn something important from Marx's view of history and society. I also think that most of what Marx wrote in the 1844 manuscripts are only relevant to the way he attempted to revise Hegel. But as I said before I think that literary exegesis is irrelevant to the matter.
Frederich Engels stated in his preface to "Origins of the Family":
"According to the materialistic conception, the determining factor in history is, in the final instance, the production and reproduction of the immediate essentials of life. This, again, is of a twofold character. On the one side, the production of the means of existence, of articles of food and clothing, dwellings, and of the tools necessary for that production; on the other side, the production of human beings themselves, the propagation of the species. The social organization under which the people of a particular historical epoch and a particular country live is determined by both kinds of production: by the stage of development of labor on the one hand and of the family on the other."
Now I think that Engels does not show very much felicity in his way of connecting biological history with the history of human societies, but basically "the production of human beings themselves" is the aspect of the world that biology and evolutionary theory and, in some part, sociobiology, attempts to cover. As all theories partially fail, so do biological theories. As all theoretical models are narrow and can only explain a very small portion of reality, so the same is true of biological theoretical models. But basically in the thought of both Marx and Engels there is an acceptance that we are products of biological evolution and development and that what ever qualities and capacities that humans exhibit are within the compass of our biological history and development. What ever ontological framework you choose, it does not effect my view that it is very easy to integrate a view of the world that accepts sociobiological insights with a view of the world that accepts Marx and Engels (non-teleological) views of human history.
But once again none of the above actually helps to explain your original statements nor how they effect my original observations on sociobiology. So please go back to the original exchange:
__"Kropotkin does three things
"1) He offers a critique of Huxley and his soft critique of Spenserian "social Darwinism".
"2) He makes claims that cooperative examples taken from nature can provide a different point of view on evolutionary natural selection.
"3) He concludes that examples from this natural view shows that humans are a cooperative species and this supports his politics.
His critique of Huxley and his critique of "fundamentalist Darwinism" are still interesting. Leftists and philosophers of science can learn from his critiques. Further, that Kropotkin assumes a perspective that we would call today "evolutionary psychology" and "sociobiology" shows that one does not have to be a "rightist" of any sort to think that some form of cooperative democracy (anarchism, socialism) are compatible with natural human capacities.
But I think the optimism of his assumed conclusion in (3) was wrong and makes the same mistake that many social Darwinists made and many "right wing" sociobiologists made. "___
You replied by quoting Hegel:
__"Any ontology that has no logical space for the ideas of a "will proper" and a "a universal will" also has no logical space for Marx's idea of a "true realm of freedom". The latter actualizes the former.
"The Will Proper, or the Higher Appetite, 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." (Hegel, The Philosophical Propaedeutic, p. 2)
The "Universal Will" is "the Will which is Lawful and Just or in accordance with Reason." (Philosophical Propaedeutic p. 1)"__
You have not explained one bit why Kropotkin's view or my views have anything at all, to do with ontology. There is nothing that your reply has to do with my original statement that I can see. You don't explain; you don't give concrete examples.
As far as I can see there is all the logical space in the world for ideas of pure will or "indeterminateness of the Ego" because these ideas have what ever meaning you choose to give them and therefore can fit into any logical space you want to put them. So if I choose to say the mental is a special case of the biologiical, this is a matter of world view that only explains how I think it is best to investigate the world. If I accept your terms (or Hegels, but not in Hegel's spirit) I can extent my statement.... If "free will" exists then I take it as a special case of the mental which is probably a special case of the biological which is probably a special case of the physical. This is not determinism in any sense.
Jerry