The Limits of Positivism and Materialism
I've been following this conversation in Salon as it's progressed. Basically, B. Alan Wallace of the Santa Barbara Institute for Consciousness Studies is responding to positivist/materialist critics regarding a Salon article a few months ago that profiled his field of inquiry. (You'll need to watch a brief commercial if you're not a Salon subscriber.)
As a novice meditator and fledgling Buddhist who finds that he's run head on into the limits of positivist/materialist inquiry when he investigates the self, I think Wallace has deftly and logically argued for expanding the limits of what we can and should consider when we investigate consciousness.
As we do so investigate (and I think it's inevitable that we will), it's interesting to consider how post-structuralism might inform our meta-analysis of our inquiries. Ultimately, there is no place to stand, no Archimedes lever giving us the objectivity that science seeks.
It's all impermanent, it's all suffering, and it's all consciousness. Sarvam duhkham.