ABSTRACT
This chapter examines how well the various theoretical types meet the standards expected of an ideal theory. Simple correspondence between behavior and neural measurements is often cited as a sign of theory’s validity. However, this correspondence is often based on comparisons between dimensions that may not be drawn from the same domain. Field theories are built on the analogy between the spatial and temporal properties of observed behavior and those of integrated neural activity of brain’s neurons. The compound voltages—the empirical data—used in the development of this type of theory are highly variable and differences recorded under different conditions are notoriously small. To summarize, field theories utilize easily available, but possibly irrelevant, global electrical voltages, rather than the difficult (or impossible) to record full range of individual neuronal responses. Because of the obvious conceptual misassumptions and the fragile replicability of the database, a modular localization theory of the relationship between brain and the mind is neither accurate nor empirically consistent.
