Actually, I think it can be demonstrated fairly rigorously, but not proven scientifically. There's a big gap between the two, you are right. The problem is that the burden of scientific proof can be just as circular as the phenomenological angle, because in practice if not in theory, the discipline of scientific experiment is geared around intentional falsification, and the durable replicability that is to be taken for granted in material systems. Six molecules of the same element will behave as they should in a test setup no matter whether they were originally mined in Nevada or Siberia or Punjab. They won't have any creative responses to the test setup. They won't care if they pass or do not, whether they are admired or not, or viewed skeptically or not. THey certainly won't decide to be a certain way on the spur of the moment.

To require consciousness to conform to such testing standards requires the presumption that conscious will likewise have no considerations, creative responses, decisions, etc. about the test conditions--yet thew very nature of life in conscious form is to have such considerations and percpetions. So the demand for "scientific" proof becomes self defeating by ignoring the nature of the subject. The consideration of an electron or molecule does not mnatter in the smallest degree in an experiemnt, while the consideration of awareness in an experiment on consciousness makes every difference in the world.

THis is just one of the reasons why I suggest that a third realm is in fact in play, and being hobson-jobsoned to force-fit one or the other pigeonhole while actually belonging to neither, being its on non-overlapping magisterium.



A.