Consciousness is <i>axiomatic</i>. It can neither be proved nor disproved, because all proof depends on consciousness. This is obvious on some level: you can't prove anything to a rock, but you can prove things to other people.<p>(Proof is the demonstration that the non-obvious statement being proved reduces to directly observable, and therefore self-evident, phenomena in reality.)<p>Now, having said all that, it is possible and legitimate to study consciousness. But anything that's discovered about it is only valid within the framework outlined above, because this is one of the ideas that is required for scientific inquiry to take place. (You can't explain scientific ideas to rocks, or even to the best computer programs we can come up with today.)