Question: There are many questions in philosophy of the following kind:

* Does my friend have a soul, or is my friend a zombie?
* Is the mind separate from the body, or is it the same?
* Where does the universe come from?

These questions have the property that, whatever the hypothetical answer would be, every one of your perceptions of the world is *exactly the same*.

It is a central tenet of Carnap and the positivists that one should consider such questions as meaningless, as an abuse of language. This position answers or moots most of the questions on this site. Positivism was accepted for a while in philosophy, but no longer. I am shocked by this.

Is it still considered correct that a question with no perceptible difference one way or another (like, "Are you a zombie?") is inherently meaningless? Why would anyone assign meaning to such a question?

Answer: 
Logical Positivism, seems to me a philosophy that evolved by taking the scientific viewpoint as the only legitimate way to ask meaningful questions. Its greatest failing is that its not very imaginative. Its an interesting perspective to hold for a while, but to hold it exclusively feels severely limiting.

Also, historically its not even true as to how science developed.

Leucippus came up with the atomic theory without any hope of establishing the truth of his hypothesis until 2 millenia later.

The hypothesis of a spherical Earth, established in antiquity, but not *observationally* verified until the first circumnavigation of the earth.
**"no perceptible difference one way or another"**

To the senses, "no perceptible difference". To the intellect? **Profound** perceptible differences!

Nothing to be shocked about.