Your contradiction is simply a matter of your own definitions and nothing else. You don't define "determinateness" in any way that matches the world and you don't define indeterminateness in any way that matches the world. You don't define Ego in anyway the matches the what we know in the world.
Oh, Ted, this is so much double talk. Quite frankly I am disappointed. All that you say is that the Ego is nothing therefore it can't be biological. (You might as well say that the "Mind" is "not a thing" and therefore can't be biological, or a quark is not a thing and therefore can't be physical, or the human heart is full of the love of Christ and therefore cannot be the same organ that we share with so many other vertebrates.) You also say that self-determination is not determination; the biological is a form of determination, and since the Ego can't be determined it can't be biological, etc., etc. It is all perfectly circular and perfectly meaningless.
We have biological limits and an "infinite" number of choices within those limits. You don't deal with the notion that there is nothing necessarily determinate about saying that we exist within limits yet have an infinite number of choices within those limits. You don't even seem to understand what is being said, but I don't know because you keep on avoiding the issue with your purely definitional contradictions. But here is an example commonly used by Chomsky: There are only certain ways that we can make meaningfully understood sentences through human language. There are rules that limit our expressions in human language and if we violate those rules then we make less and less sense. Just because their are "biological" "limits," that doesn't mean there can't be infinite expression, creativity, and choice within human language.
So, personally I have no idea what you mean by "Ego" or how you are using it. The way you seem to be using Ego is a meaningless abstraction, or a Nothingness. But what we call our human make-up has limits and within those limits there are many, probably infinite possibilities. Where is the contradiction? Except your definitional contradiction there is none. You, with the aid of Hegel, are simply making all of this up a priori and imposing it upon a reality that you have already determined.
Your definitional contradictions don't apply here. But it is interesting to discuss where such artificial paradoxes come from historically.
Hegelian dialectics occur ed at a time before a number of mathematical revolutions. It was not understood at all, when Hegel was writing, how a limited brain/mind could produce an infinite number of expressions. In truth we still don't fully understand most of the complications of biological systems in these matters. But in Hegel's time even much simpler matters were not understood. It wasn't understood how an operation with a defined group of initial conditions and a definite set of rules could produce an infinite number of solutions. These are rather "simple" results of computation and don't even reach complex systems. As far as biological systems are concerned we don't even know how complex they are. The old Hegelian terms of determinism and indeterminism (in the way Hegel used them) don't even apply to simple problems that we only began to understand in the middle of the 19th century. How they can apply to biological systems, I don't know.
One thing dialectics was meant to do was to solve the paradox that vulgar mechanistic materialism had produced. The idea that a limited physical entity (the human mind-brain, the rules of language) could produce an infinite number of expressions (human creativity, human choice, language use) was considered impossible at the beginning of the 19th century. This led many people into one version or another of dualism. The mind was considered infinite and "contentless" and the body as mechanistic. Vulgar materialism was dealt its final blow by Newton, which showed that the universe was not a clock and "contact mechanics" was very unlikely if not impossible. Idealism simply solved the dualism problem but left problems of its own which Marx tried to solve by bringing Hegel to ground again. We now know that limited systems, with "determined" initial conditions, and set rules can produce infinite sets. If we know this is true with something as simple as an algorithm why is it surprising to think that complicated biological systems (bees, bats, humans) that we know so little about can exhibit surprising "properties" such as choice and free will? Biological systems that may be initially "determined," can produce "indeterminateness."
Ted, you are stuck in a 19th century view of determinism. All of that old rubbish does not apply here. Your notions of "determinism" don't even apply to physical systems from what we know from current theories of physics, so I don't know why you insist on using an such notions for biological organisms. You pretend to know, exactly what the "will" is, what choice is, when in fact it is just a marker for deep complexities that we are not even able to define. It is only through the limits of the biological system, it is only through the "limitations" placed on "the ego," it is only through our "biology" that the whole infinite range of human choice is available. There is no contradiction. Once again your contradiction is definitional and your definitions have nothing to do with the cases at hand. You don't define ego. You don't define determination. You don't define self-determination. For you the Ego is a contentless nothing that allows you to have an escape hatch and avoid any concrete discussion of what actually is or may be in the world.
Jerry Monaco
> so you can't escape the inconsistency to which I pointed by defining
> "pure indeterminateness" "any way you or I wish to make it consistent
> with physical theories, biological theories or historical theories".
>
> Any concrete human act, e.g making coffee, typing a word in an e-
> mail, can be used to illustrate what's meant by indeterminateness of
> the ego passing over to a determinateness through the ego making a
> choice of some one or other possible determinateness and then
> actualizing it.
Speaking a sentence may be a "non-determined act", and, depending on circumstances, a human choice..... But the sentence cannot be spoken without the biological possibility of language, the biologically evolved brain structure that creates language, and the biological organ that is language. Once again you misunderstand basic distinctions between rules/limits and possibilities/choices. Just because their are rules and limits does not mean that possibilities and choices are determined in the pre-Newtonian sense that Hegel constantly uses the word, determination.
So you create paradoxes from definitions but you don't even deal with the very paradox of the whole notion of of self-determination. Without agreeing with Galen Strawson's conclusion, you might as well read this to see some of the permutations. http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/strawson_g01.htm
(Btw, read Hegels own writings on Newton to see how wrong he gets physics and physical theory. Just because these mistakes on "determination" were once made doesn't mean you have to perpetuate it.)
> Ted
>
>
>
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>
-- Jerry Monaco's Philosophy, Politics, Culture Weblog is Shandean Postscripts to Politics, Philosophy, and Culture http://monacojerry.livejournal.com/
His fiction, poetry, weblog is Hopeful Monsters: Fiction, Poetry, Memories http://www.livejournal.com/users/jerrymonaco/
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