Materialism

[BillHoyt]

Strange that people only ever complain about quoting other people who are expressing views in opposition to what most people in these forums believe. I wonder why that could be?

Subject / Motive shift. The subject is the copyright infringement.

Cheers,

 

[Interesting Ian]

UcE said:
I've been there and done it for five years. It was nice (well, except when you did it too much). I just don't think it's a new facet of science that will let us throw off the oppressive yoke of scientism.

You know, you probably can meditate just fine, as long as you don't use one of those whacky concentration techniques.

~~ Paul

I just hate sitting there and doing nothing. Not for me!

 

[Interesting Ian]

Paul,

A work is implicitly copyrighted. Modern law provides for copyright protection even without an explicit notice. (BTW, the chapter 1 I viewed through Amazon did have an explicit notice. )

Unless the pdf you viewed gives explicit permission to copy large sections of the work, you can't assume such permission has been granted.


Cheers,

You really are a complete DICKHEAD aren't you???

SCUMBAG

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Well, so much for meditation curing the problems of the world. I can't get any of the nonmaterialists to do it!

Bill, you're probably right about the implicit copyright, although I have worked with publishers who effectively removed the copyright from sample chapters for purposes of review. I think I'll ask Oxford, just for the heck of it.

You really are a complete DICKHEAD aren't you???

SCUMBAG

~~ Paul

 

[Girl 6]

Yes, please just provide a link to the source. I would rather be on the safe side regarding intellectual property.

I would edit it, but I'd like UCE to have the right to do that. I've sent UCE a PM regarding this.

thanks!
G6

 

[Girl 6]

You really are a complete DICKHEAD aren't you???

SCUMBAG

Ian!!!

G6

 

[Interesting Ian]

Yes, please just provide a link to the source. I would rather be on the safe side regarding intellectual property.

I would edit it, but I'd like UCE to have the right to do that. I've sent UCE a PM regarding this.

thanks!
G6

Utterly preposterous. I'd refuse if I was Geoff.

 

[BillHoyt]

Utterly preposterous. I'd refuse if I was Geoff.

You know, Ian, flip your biases about for a second and think about this. Here I am, working to protect the copyright of an author whose views I abhor. An author whose views you and UcE admire. And what is your response to that effort? To imply I have ulterior motives, to shout profanities at me and to encourage UcE not to comply with the law.

The irony, I'm sure, eludes you.

Cheers,

 

[Guest]

Bill, there is no copyright in the PDF file of the first chapter. I think Oxford wants people to quote it.

UcE, what I don't like about the final section is that I cannot tell where it transitions from the opinion of writers on scientism to the opinion of the author himself. It starts with statements like
and
which make it sound even-handed. The author doesn't say if he agrees with this definition of scientism or whether he thinks there are many scientists who really hold this view. But by the end of the section he's talking as if he buys the whole scientism thing; he's integrated it into the overall view of science presented in the chapter. He assumes that the charicature of scientism and scientists is correct.

~~ Paul

Is this unjustified? His portrayal of scientism reads like a collection of Stimpson soundbites.

 

[Yahzi]

If we had all been p-zombies up until now, and phenomenal consciousness just turned on in the universe a second ago, we wouldn't know the difference.

Doesn't this statement render the entire concept of p-zombies useless?

The quantum physics pioneered by Max Planck reintroduced subjective human consciousness into nature, emphasizing the importance of the observer and questioning the existence of a universe made up of solid particles unconnected to human perception.

This is simply false. Collapsing a wave function requires an observer, true: but it does not require a conscious observer. You can collapse wave functions while asleep, or even dead. Rocks count as observers in quantam physics.

Cloning a human will be the quintessential experiment in studying the connection between our biology and our consciousness.

Is it possible to go through your life without ever meeting identical twins? Or, more to the point, is it possible to be this silly about cloning if you do know twins? Sadly, the answer seems to be yes: probably some of the people promoting this kind of idiocy are themselves identical twins.

 

[Interesting Ian]

You know, Ian, flip your biases about for a second and think about this. Here I am, working to protect the copyright of an author whose views I abhor. An author whose views you and UcE admire. And what is your response to that effort? To imply I have ulterior motives, to shout profanities at me and to encourage UcE not to comply with the law.

The irony, I'm sure, eludes you.

Cheers,

Oh please!! The chapter is freely available over the net. Anyone can click the link. Therefore there can be nothing whatsoever unethical about quoting the source.

Maybe it is illegal, I don't know. There are a lot of crazy laws out of there. Do you obey all of them??

No, I suspect you are whining because the autjhor is expressing a viewpoint which you find abhorrent. Don't give me all this cr@p. I find you a thoroughly obnoxious person and thick as f--k to boot.

Oh yes, and you're still quoting me out of context I see.
How dare you suggest that I am acting in anyway unethical in any shape or form!!

 

[hammegk]

Subject / Motive shift. The subject is the copyright infringement.

Cheers,

Thanks for clearing that up. Glad that your motive is not to make it as difficult as possible to disseminate any thoughts that don't agree with your Religion.

 

[Interesting Ian]

This is simply false. Collapsing a wave function requires an observer, true: but it does not require a conscious observer. You can collapse wave functions while asleep, or even dead. Rocks count as observers in quantam physics.
[/B]

oh yes? Kindly inform me how you could possibly know this.

 

[Guest]

Yahzi

Rocks count as observers in quantam physics.

So does a one-atom rock count as an observer?

"I" am an observer.

 

[Girl 6]

Just provide the link, already.

I'm not going to sit here and argue about copyright infringement and so on. Just because things are available "freely" on the web does not mean that we should blatantly assume that we can copy and paste whole sections of articles or books, etc...

G6

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

UcE said:

Is this unjustified? His portrayal of scientism reads like a collection of Stimpson soundbites.

Stimpy thinks that science can solve all of humanity's problems?

Scientism is a spectrum and the number of scientists who adhere to each point on the spectrum varies widely. The author has reduced the spectrum to one point and implied that many scientists agree with that point, with no justification of the assumption. And even if they did, what about everyone else? What about politicians, policymakers, teachers, military people, philosophers, and authors? Are they all conspiring to prevent us from studying the pithy sayings and EEGs of master meditators? This is the standard moanus groanus from people who want science to support their favorite idea, yet rail against science as a methodology incapable of investigating it.

~~ Paul

 

[BillHoyt]

Thanks for clearing that up. Glad that your motive is not to make it as difficult as possible to disseminate any thoughts that don't agree with your Religion.

Apparently you are still light in the understanding logic department.

 

[BillHoyt]

Oh yes, and you're still quoting me out of context I see.
How dare you suggest that I am acting in anyway unethical in any shape or form!!

Apparently the meaning of the entire post eluded you. I made no such suggestion. Neither did I quote you out of context.

 

[Guest]

The author has reduced the spectrum to one point
and implied that many scientists agree with that point, with no justification of the assumption.

Huh?

That chapter was all about there being FOUR different viewpoints which some people mix together. The most extreme view is scientism.

What about politicians, policymakers, teachers, military people, philosophers, and authors?

Are they all conspiring to prevent us from studying the pithy sayings and EEGs of master meditators?

No! We are talking about the scientific world in particular here. I do not think society in general is scientistic - in fact it is obvious that the reverse is true. That is precisely what the scientistic people are paranoid about.

 

[Interesting Ian]

Just provide the link, already.

I'm not going to sit here and argue about copyright infringement and so on. Just because things are available "freely" on the web does not mean that we should blatantly assume that we can copy and paste whole sections of articles or books, etc...

G6

I've already explained that I have zero interest in crazy pointless laws. I wouldn't remove it. It's as simple as that.