For an account to be able to download the torrents, the hotmail address you provide can be completely random, since there is no confirmation needed. You can just write whatever username and password you want and then you can login immediately.

That’s the account for the site itself and to access the torrents. To have the ability for direct downloads (in contrast to torrents) i believe it’s more complicated.

yeah, even the CIA is sometimes forced to admit that it has meddled in other countries’ affairs, but only decades later, in declassified documents or through whistleblowers

It sounds weird to say that because of the influence of Chalmers, which has associated the word “experience” in everyone’s mind with “consciousness.” But, I am using the terms “experience,” “observation,” “perception,” all interchangeably, so I am saying that material reality is what you observe.

In other words, senses. You set sensations in opposition to consciousness. Also, it might be worth mentioning that I don’t know who Chalmers is.

If you think what we observe is not part of material reality, then you are a dualist, by definition, because there needs to be two substances, material reality + what you observe.

No, I am a monist. The world is one matter in motion and there’s nothing beyond matter.

The material sciences are driven by observation. If you think what we observe is “consciousness,” then all science has done is document consciousness, and there is no basis to say it has documented reality.

I don’t think there’s much difference between experiences or senses and “consciousness.” Couldn’t we just as well say we only document experiences/senses?

And then there arises a question of how the two can relate to one another at all if they are entirely different substances, and we could never answer the question because by definition, if you think reality isn’t what we observe, then you cannot observe reality at all, under any conceivable circumstances, and so you could never learn anything about it.

What we observe is reality as far as it conforms to reality. What is contained within the observation can be false. Can untruths be part of reality? I would answer yes. And it would be stupid to say that we can’t learn anything, since that would mean we couldn’t do and repeat specific actions. For example, we learn how to make video games, and we can repeat this process.

I am not sure what is specifically meant by “reflections” here. They are descriptions of reality. If that is what is meant, I agree.

I now think we are arguing for two different reasons. For me, it’s a question of epistemology. While you are just trying to reaffirm the monism of materialism and the world. By reflection I meant perception that contains bits of truths and untruths. Similar, if not the same, with descriptions.

Now when you say: ‘If you think what we observe is not part of material reality, then you are a dualist, by definition, because there needs to be two substances, material reality + what you observe.”

What are we observing according to you? Senses? So do we observe observations and/or sense our senses? Now, senses become primary rather than a more definite form of matter. The argument that we can only rely on our senses is positivism.

The material sciences are driven by observation [or, in other words, senses]. If you think what we observe is “consciousness,” then all science has done is document consciousness, and there is no basis to say it has documented reality.

One could just as easily say against you: If you think what we observe is “senses,” then all science has done is document senses, and there is no basis to say it has documented reality.

I start from a neutral stance and come to materialism because it is best justified by the empirical evidence [positivism].

But that’s the thing, we cannot be neutral, ever. Neutrality is absolute. This 100% unbiased state is impossible. “I start from a neutral stance.” Or you start from zero, which is something that cannot be done.

If a person makes claim X, we verify that in the material sciences by looking.

Looking, as in, with our eyes, is part of human senses. How we interpret these sensations is what is important here.

Indeed, if you disagree with my claim that we can perceive reality, then it is you who lose any grounding for determining the validity of claims, because no experiment could ever reach reality, as we would all always be trapped in some separate “realm of consciousness” and no experiment could ever probe anything beyond it.

Of course we can perceive reality; it would be nonsense to say otherwise. Our disagreement seems to be twofold: I believe there is no such thing as neutrality and that the process of acquiring information, that is, cognition, or observing if you prefer, cannot be neutral.

Your post and comments is a kind of a trojan horse to push anti-Hegel notions in Marxism, with the purpose of effectively eroding the integrity of dialectical materialism. That is clear with your “realm of consciousness” accusation.

I quote Roderic Day here: Conscientialism is a pejorative and ridiculing way to interpret Hegel, whereby a supernatural “World Consciousness” finds expression, like a spooky puppeteer, in historical events. Marx Against Hegel? Idealism, Materialism, and History as Liberation (Losurdo, 2010)

Mathematical models are never material reality. They are descriptions of material reality. Material reality is the thing you are already immersed in everyday, that surrounds you, where your real family members and loved ones reside, where you perform real labor, where you conduct real experiments in the real world. It is not in the mathematical abstractions, or any other kind of abstractions.

So, according to you, material reality is experience? Models or abstractions are not “material reality” but they are genuine reflections of said reality. There is no other reality than material reality and there is no reality without matter. You may as well say “material matter” or even “matter matter” instead of material reality. Yes, everything is matter and there is nothing else, but that doesn’t explain much and soon falls into tautology.

Reality is observer dependent for us simply because you cannot not be a human. Just like Lenin said that subjective is a useless term and “there are no other senses except human, i.e., “subjective” senses, for we are speaking from the standpoint of man and not of a hobgoblin.”

Another common Chalmerite talking point is that your brain plays a role in what you perceive and so what you perceive cannot be material reality, but that argument only works if you believe the brain has the magical powers to create something immaterial. What role your brain plays in what you perceive, the brain is still a material object, and those roles are still material processes, and so your perception is still an emergent phenomenon of underlying material processes, and thus is still material.

So all statements have the same validity? While the cognition process in someone who is denying human-made climate change is real, their statements are wrong and not conforming to reality. A random person on fox news saying that man-made climate change isn’t real doesn’t have the same validity to reality (or truth) than someone educated on this subject.

https://audiobookbay.lu/

I got it from there. It’s a torrent site for audiobooks. The audiobook was this one and strangely enough it was produced by amazon’s audible lol but the quality is excellent i think.