In your view are chimps and bonobos conscious species beings? Are they in any sense self-determined? How about homo erectus? How about lemurs? How about bees or dolphins?
We don't know what "free will," "self-determination," is when talking in terms of scientific theories. We can't even form a proper hypothesis to make sense of such notions. This does not mean that they don't point to something that I am willing to accept. It only means that they cannot as yet, if ever, be a part of "theoretical knowledge." They are shrouded in mystery and that is all we can say. (I think they are shrouded in mystery for reasons of our biological limitations, but this is only a guess that I derive from some of Bertrand Russell's and Chomsky's speculations.) Terms such as "will proper" are irrelevant to evolutionary theory at this point and I think will always be irrelevant to science. Terms such as "universal will" are almost meaningless in many cases, but I don't have too strenuous of an objection to them, I just don't think that such terms are at all helpful to any thoughts about biology.
Just because Marx wrote it in 1844 doesn't mean that it is consistent with what we have discovered about the world sense then. The terms that Marx used were simply terms he had at hand. Let me say that the Marx and Engels who speculated about the world in 1848 were not the same Marx and Engels who learned much from Darwin (even thought they often got it wrong) in the 1850s. The Engels of the "Anti-During" can be said to be a proto=sociobiologist and a proto-evolutionary psychologist in the broad sense of those terms. But let me caution again Engels misunderstood many key facets of evolutionary theory.
As far as I can see there is not contradiction between Marx's basic insights into human history and the narrow hypothesis that societies, psychology, and "thought" are constrained and guided by our biological make-up and thus to some large extent are a result biological evolution. We do not know what those biological constraints on society are; we do not know in any way that can provides us with a deep descriptive and explanatory theory or theoretical model.
Nothing can substitute for admitting how little we know in these matters. Neither Hegel nor E.O. Wilson.
Jerry Monaco
On 5/30/06, Ted Winslow <egwinslow at rogers.com> wrote:
> Arash wrote:
>
> > "Will proper" and "universal will" may be vital for realizing the
> > "true
> > realm of freedom" Marx formulated, but that doesn't mean they are
> > essential for cooperative democracy, socialistic or anarchistic,
> > which is
> > what Jerry was refering too.
>
> The might be true. To demonstrate it, though, you would have to show
> how the idea of "cooperative democracy" can be consistently
> elaborated in terms of an ontology that excludes "choice" and
> "purpose" as determinants of human action.
>
> > Also, was Marx really consistent about this
> > point, he talks about a "species character" for creative work,
> > isn't that
> > a kind of determinism?
>
> It's a kind of determinism that allows human action to be self-
> determined in the sense I mentioned. The term "species-being" means
> a being with the capability of actualizing a "will proper" and a
> "universal will".
>
> "The practical creation of an objective world, the fashioning of
> inorganic nature, is proof that man is a conscious species-being --
> i.e., a being which treats the species as its own essential being or
> itself as a species-being. It is true that animals also produce.
> They build nests and dwelling, like the bee, the beaver, the ant,
> etc. But they produce only their own immediate needs or those of
> their young; they produce only when immediate physical need compels
> them to do so, while man produces even when he is free from physical
> need and truly produces only in freedom from such need; they produce
> only themselves, while man reproduces the whole of nature; their
> products belong immediately to their physical bodies, while man
> freely confronts his own product. Animals produce only according to
> the standards and needs of the species to which they belong, while
> man is capable of producing according to the standards of every
> species and of applying to each object its inherent standard; hence,
> man also produces in accordance with the laws of beauty."
> http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/labour.htm
>
> 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/
Notes, Quotes, Images - From some of my reading and browsing http://www.livejournal.com/community/jerry_quotes/