Regardless of whether it is ultimately material in origin, as an experience in the world consciousness presents to each individual as an immaterial phenomenon – i.e. as a phenomenon the experience of which (at the irreducible level) does not in principle involve the senses. This as opposed to all other phenomena in the world, encountered via our consciousness, which present to us as a material experience – i.e. as an experience involving the senses and thus definable by measurement in sensorial terms, such measurement then acting to provide a set of criteria permitting the evaluation of theoretical models to reproduce the phenomena in terms of measurements observed.

Surely then, regarding any attempt to describe Consciousness by means of the scientific method, the obvious question would be how is it in principle that such a method could be appropriate to the description of a phenomenon that is not definable in terms of sensorial measurement? Ostensibly at least, the answer would seem to be be that there is no means by which such a method could be suited to the treatment of the question of consciousness - and further, that the inadequacies of those attempts using the scientific method to describe consciousness which have to date been made follow as a direct consequence of the irrelevance of the method to the nature of the question concerned.

In practice, no theory yet advanced purporting to account for the phenomenon of consciousness using the scientific method has managed to fully satisfy the criteria required in order to qualify as a ‘scientific theory’. Hardly surprising, since the primary requirement of a ‘scientific theory’ is that it provide a quantitative mechanism capable to reproduce the observed measurements defining the phenomenon concerned. As an example, the 19th century theory of ‘Phlogiston’, advanced before oxygen was identified, though subsequently proven to be wrong, did conform to the criteria necessary in order to meet the status of a scientific theory, in that it provided a quantitative mechanism to specifically reproduce the relevant measurements observed. As a contrast, no theory attempting to account for consciousness – even the more complex involving the ideas of Quantum Mathematics – has managed the trick of producing a mechanism to demonstrate a logical line of causal descent directly reproducing the nature of the experience of consciousness we undergo in practice.

No matter how high, on this side of the divide between the material and the immaterial, the scientific hypotheses were piled up – by what means could it ever in principle be envisaged that they would be capable to bridge one nanometre of the chasm between?