I leave this to the mercy of the bright people at machine nation. [link deleted - Mod, Kate P]

Open science Ireland

Literally billions of Euro have been spent on science in Ireland over the past decade. This spending is based on two absurd premises. One is that academics used to the privileges of their positions will throw all caution to the winds, give up their jobs, and attempt to commercialise discoveries made in the lab; the second is that corporations feel a need to give back. On the contrary; even in the unlikely event of discovery in the kind of
hackneyed science favored by SFI funding, academics will of course hang on to their comfy tenured positions and try and find a
middleman. The exploitation of their discoveries will then most likely be handed over to the R+D division of a giant corporation.
Experience elsewhere has shown that the taxpayer will end up paying three times for SFI and its cognates; once through the direct taxes
used to fund the lavish salaries at universities in Ireland, again for the SFI projects themselves, and finally in royalties exacted by
the corporations in any products developed. To add insult to injury, the acting head of SFI responsible for this enormous budget from
mid-2006 was someone with no scientific training or commercial experience.

Since 1997, we have had the spectacle of perhaps the least scientifically qualified government cabinet in Europe trumpeting the virtue of science to the Irish public. We are told that gargantuan spending in science is necessary to keep Ireland from the dark ages, and the failure of the policy as attested in a
2005 ESRI report prompts demands for even more spending. The spectacular failure of Medialab is just the tip of the iceberg.

There is another way, one that does justice to the authentic thirst for scientific truth that motivates Irish people as it motivates people all over the world. We are fully aware of the pressure on scientists to publish in narrow fields, and to sign away their copyright to the likes of Pergamon and Elsevier.
To adapt Pearse – The fools! They have spent all our money on a forlorn quest to develop new gadgets, and left us with the big,
interesting questions, the ones that impelled Einstein to say that a human being who has lost the ability to wonder is already half-dead.
Let us look at a few such from some of the sciences;


PHYSICS

Do the Copenhagen and ontological interpretations of wave-function breakdown reflect different psychological dispositions, or are they in principle formally
distinguishable?

Why is there so little progress to a grand unified theory that string theory is starting to be derided?


BIOLOGY

Why was Darwinian evolutionary theory accepted even before there was a plausible theory of genetics, and is this premature acceptance underlying the intelligent design debate?

Does the very limited success of the human genome project imply that we need a new theory of symbol systems in nature, encompassing gene expression all the way to natural language?


COMPUTER SCIENCE

Why cannot we parse any complete natural language after a half-century of trying?

Will quantum computing change our notion of computability?


PSYCHOLOGY

Is consciousness best regarded as a property of the cosmos, or an epiphenomenon of mental processing?

Does this also go for emotion?


EDITORIAL POLICY

Openscience Ireland will be peer-reviewed, with reviewers in turn evaluated by their peers in a weighting system before a final decision to publish or not is taken. However, scientists from anywhere who have managed to maintain copyright of their peer-reviewed material can publish it. No
copyright transfer to the publishers of Openscience Ireland is countenanced in either case.

Quote :

PSYCHOLOGY

Is consciousness best regarded as a property of the cosmos, or an epiphenomenon of mental processing?

Does this also go for emotion?

Not quite sure what you are meaning in "property of the cosmos", but brains are requred for reasoning to happen and the cosmos is required for brains to exist.

Drop me an e-mail and I will explain panpsychism - I just did some experimental neuroscience at Berkeley which leaves the door open to it

cactus flower wrote:

Quote :

PSYCHOLOGY

Is consciousness best regarded as a property of the cosmos, or an epiphenomenon of mental processing?

Does this also go for emotion?

Not quite sure what you are meaning in "property of the cosmos", but brains are requred for reasoning to happen and the cosmos is required for brains to exist.

Panpsychism - I like the sound of that. Any room for a wannabe budding PhD Mulder-type in your Department ? I wouldn't spend all my grant on drugs

Here's Rupert Sheldrake with the 'Extended Mind' lecture on GoogleTechTalks where he discusses 'the sense of being stared at'. One of my favourites. His was the idea of 'homeomorphic resonance' - these ideas could have lucrative military applications if researched properly you know ...


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnA8GUtXpXY

I notice you're based in Clare, my home county. I now live in another Blue-yellow location

Did you know that Rutgers, Stanford and UC Berkeley all offered to set up in ennis? And that the local worthies refused?

Auditor #9 wrote:

Panpsychism - I like the sound of that. Any room for a wannabe budding PhD Mulder-type in your Department ? I wouldn't spend all my grant on drugs

Here's Rupert Sheldrake with the 'Extended Mind' lecture on GoogleTechTalks where he discusses 'the sense of being stared at'. One of my favourites. His was the idea of 'homeomorphic resonance' - these ideas could have lucrative military applications if researched properly you know ...


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnA8GUtXpXY

erigena wrote:

I notice you're based in Clare, my home county. I now live in another Blue-yellow location

Did you know that Rutgers, Stanford and UC Berkeley all offered to set up in ennis? And that the local worthies refused?

Your home county too eh ? I've only recently started to re-settle in here again. Maybe. Hadn't heard that all those places had offered to grace Ennis with themselves at all. Have you a personal experience of that ? I have a vision of a Great Western University comprising bits of UCG, UL, and a chunk in between in Ennis in a Great Linear University City of Galway-Ennis/Shannon-Limerick but I doubt it'll come to pass even when I am dictator. Ennis at least could do with some sort of third level institution though I think ?

Is there much research going on into Panpsychistic Physics etc. in Ireland anyplace ? Outside of the Philosophy Departments that is.

There can never be proof of panpsychism - the point I make in the forthcoming article is that neither can the opposite be proved.

In 2006 we had all the ducks in a row for Clare; Stanford, where I was teaching, Tony Killeen (who was suppportive but had no funds) and the head of the IDA (supportive and funds). The problem was a stupid b_ lower down in the IDA who contacted Stanford directly and screwed it up. Great opportunity lost; it was to be a la Athlone/Georgia Tech

Clare is getting something soon; UL and ITT I think.

Auditor #9 wrote:

erigena wrote:

I notice you're based in Clare, my home county. I now live in another Blue-yellow location

Did you know that Rutgers, Stanford and UC Berkeley all offered to set up in ennis? And that the local worthies refused?

Your home county too eh ? I've only recently started to re-settle in here again. Maybe. Hadn't heard that all those places had offered to grace Ennis with themselves at all. Have you a personal experience of that ? I have a vision of a Great Western University comprising bits of UCG, UL, and a chunk in between in Ennis in a Great Linear University City of Galway-Ennis/Shannon-Limerick but I doubt it'll come to pass even when I am dictator. Ennis at least could do with some sort of third level institution though I think ?

Is there much research going on into Panpsychistic Physics etc. in Ireland anyplace ? Outside of the Philosophy Departments that is.

Paper just came out- it's the meditation one at

https://www.novapublishers.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=10068

No Taxpayers' money used!


More soon, if you are serious about doing some work

Auditor #9 wrote:

Panpsychism - I like the sound of that. Any room for a wannabe budding PhD Mulder-type in your Department ? I wouldn't spend all my grant on drugs

Here's Rupert Sheldrake with the 'Extended Mind' lecture on GoogleTechTalks where he discusses 'the sense of being stared at'. One of my favourites. His was the idea of 'homeomorphic resonance' - these ideas could have lucrative military applications if researched properly you know ...


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnA8GUtXpXY