Frank:

Good points. But letme clarify a coupleof my views.

Falsifiability is the standard approach for assessing a model or hypothesis. Scientists don't mess with theistic explanations, for example, because they are not falsifiable, in other words testable in such a way that they can be proven false. If they can be so tested, and the test supports the hypothesis, then that's a point for the truth of the hypothesis. Butif you can't conceive of a test which COULD falsify the proposition, then you have an unfalsifiable assertion and no way to test it. My use of "intentional falsification" was a bad choice of words. The intent is to test, and in order to test, the proposition must be capable of failing (or passing) the test.

As regards EInstein, etc., having creative responses in solving problems, I have no disagreement. But they were not testing consciousness. They were testing mass, energy, inertia, and such. I don't know for certain what tests Einstein did actually. My point was a different one: creating test scenarios for consciousness itself must take into account that it is not the constant, mindless cooperative stuff that moleculart compounds are. It is quite a challenge, therefore, to meet a standard of replicabililty in applying science to consciousness. It does not matter what the tritium in a table-top fusion experiment thinks, if there is any. IF you are testing a subject for remote viewing, itmatters a great deal.

The quantum phenomena youo refer to seem to reflect (as far as I have read) the consciousness of the experimenter as an unwitting influence int he experiment. If this is a problem in particle behaviour, it seems to me it would be a much greater one in studying consciousness.

I do not by any means think that consciousness cannot be addressed by science, but the science involved would require an understanding of the difference between insensate object study and dealing with living thought itself, THis is not beyond the broad intellectual principles of good science, but it is hopelessly out of reach of the crude material protocols most scientists are used to.

As to the brain being the origin of thought, I think this is about as likely (as I have said before) as discovering that cellphones have infinite numbers of stories hidden inside them somewhere, as an explanation as to why every time you talk on one, a new and different conversation comes out. It makes a lot of sense, because otherwise you would have to postulate some remote unseen entity connected to the phone by some invisible means, sending an invisible flow of information to it, which is really silly. The answer must be in the wires, capacitors and PCBs of the phone.

;>)

Warm regards,


Amos