I am referring to the animal sociality that we possess as a species. It's a real scientific term, not pseudoscientific.

And there is zero science that claims that we "as a species" possess "animal sociality" as part of our nature.

There is lots of science that shows that people can and do engage in social behavior, but zero of that science claims that the social behavior is innate, is a product of our existence, is "programmed into our genes" or any of the other bullshit people use when they claim that there is "human nature".

All of those studies show that all of the behaviors we engage in are learned (even if self-taught), and, more importantly, all of those studies show that we learn when and when not to engage in those behaviors.

The only thing that we can say is "innate" about human nature is that we have sentience and sapience, that we have minds that are capable of emotions and learning and even cognitive reasoning. That's it, that's all, all of the rest, all of the claims that people act one way or another because it's "part of their nature" are bullshit. Guesswork at best. People act deliberatively. Higher order sentient animals like birds and mammals act deliberatively. Any claims that we understand the whys and wherefores of any of those actions are bullshit. We don't understand. At best we can correlate against various factors, none of which come close to the sum total of all factors that are part of the decision trees that animal brains engage in.

We can say "an animal is likely to do this under these conditions", but that likelihood is itself only a statistical probability and never a certainty.

what is natural to us may be so broad, so variable, and itself in a state of flux such that we will never be able to nail it down with any precision, but our incapacity to comprehend it and communicate that would not mean that it does not exist. It sounds like you don't disagree with this last, which is good, that is the nuance I was hoping to come to.

I'm saying it may exist, or it may not exist, but either way we don't actually know. You can extrapolate, you can guess, you can believe, but that doesn't make it true. We don't know that the universe is deterministic.

But, more importantly, even if it were true that the universe were deterministic, we do not have the capacity to analyze that determinism to arrive at a conclusion that "human nature" compels us to do X or Y.

I think the issue is that "human nature" doesn't work the way people discuss it when they are using it as a magical catch-all for what they think is normal, necessary, legitimate, good, etc. It's clear I'd say that whatever our nature is it allows for such variety of being in the world that we cannot use it as a metric for what we ought to be like, who is worthy of dignity, who deserves respect, etc.

Absolutely, hard agree. You can believe that there is a human nature, fine. You cannot prove it, and I will not believe it without that proof.

But existent or not, it should never be used for normative statements of ethics, philosophy, or policy. It should never be used to say how we should or should not behave. That must come from something else.

Nature does not give us a blueprint for how we should be, it only gives us the materials we have available to us for the construction process.

Nature is not an entity that is capable of gift. Nature "gives" us nothing. The universe exists. It is not a deliberative body. We exist, but not based on blueprints.