hyrfilm's comments

Let the tired old irrelevant Mongo-flamewars begin!

> Claims that are non-falsifiable are not really worthy of scientific inquiry. My personal conclusion, then, is that the question of consciousness is not a useful one.

Hm - ok. Sure, non-falsifiable claims are against a typical "popperian" definition of what science is about. But then again isn't it worth asking yourself: even though a question is unanswerable at this time, might it still not be worth asking? A lot of questions that were once impossible to falsify were at one point moved from the realms of philosophy to science - like, are human character innate or is it entirely shaped by the environment. This question was at one point a purely philosophical question, now less so. Still not easily falsifiable. Actually, most questions in science don't fall in the clear-cut category of being that easy to falsify. Because it's not obvious exactly what the question means, or exactly how one would falsify it. Sure, it's easy to do it when talking about physics but that's about the only field. Take many ideas in social psychology, economics, biology or even hypothetical ideas in physics - like string theory.

Does that mean they are questions that are not "useful"?