So you're saying consciousness is bullshit? Because the point is that we don't know how to observe the difference between something that is conscious and something that isn't.

Not GP but I'd argue that whatever we mean by consciousness must at least have physical impact. Something that doesn't couldn't decide our actions in the physical world like laughing at a joke or painting a picture, and critically couldn't even be what we're referring to when we talk about consciousness as we are now.

From there I think "we don't know how" is in part down to needing advances in neuroscience, and in part down to "consciousness" being a hazy term with disagreement over definition. But for frameworks that accept the above (physicalism, interactionist dualism, ...) I do think it's in theory testable whether something is conscious for any given pinned-down definition (e.g, "are the neurons constituting internal train of thought firing"), and I would be inclined to say the frameworks that don't accept the above are indeed the more "bullshit" ones.

Science is limited by what we can falsify, which follows from what we can observe. We should attribute no normative weight to whether something should or shouldn't be scientifically analyzable. So we should always improve our means of observation, as well as our culture towards the things that are difficult or downright impossible to scientifically analyze. Science is a part of philosophy, or a derivation of philosophy with feedback. We should develop all open avenues of philosophy in the course of living.

> We should attribute no normative weight to whether something should or shouldn't be scientifically analyzable. So we should always improve our means of observation, as well as our culture towards the things that are difficult [...]

I don't mean it necessarily has to be scientifically analyzable with current technology, but it must have some impact on the physical world (even if indirect) - else it cannot be what we're referring to.

I think we need to define consciousness or soul or whatever first. In the sense of the mind, even, what is a mind? There is something that does have to have some connection to our physical actions, but how we conceptualize that thing is more open-ended. "Physical" is more accurately, if crudely put, "forces and objects we can obviously observe", but science is the very question of what we observe, so we're treading on very uncharted territory with this topic. Maybe we will one day gain access to a very different world that will seem as obvious as being able to pick up a chair.