ABSTRACT
One of the major requirements of a good scientific theory is that it is capable of explaining our day-to-day experiences of what happens in the world. The explanations may not always be intuitively obvious but they have to work. For example, physical theories tell us that objects that appear to us to be solid are, in fact, composed of billions of atoms separated by relatively large interatomic spaces so that solidity is, in some sense ‘illusory’. The reason why we accept these theories is that they include descriptions of forces that operate between the atoms so that they lock together into rigid structures that interact with other objects to give the property that we call solidity. Theories in psychobiology must also explain what happens in the real world, rather than just accounting for laboratory-based phenomena. The one thing that unites human beings is our experience of being conscious. Psychobiology must be capable of explaining that experience.
