This paper argues that conceptual factors are as important as empirical factors in theory acceptance. Coherence between a new theory that is assessed for acceptance and the existing (established) theories in the same domain is among such conceptual factors. For example, a new theory about spectroscopy that does not cohere with established theories of spectroscopy is unlikely to be accepted, even if it was supported by empirical considerations. It is argued that a new theory coheres with a group of established (...) theories when it shares important elements with these theories and contains no items that conflict with their central concepts and assumptions. (shrink)

The more we rely on digital assistants, online search engines, and AI systems to revise our system of beliefs and increase our body of knowledge, the less we are able to resort to some independent criterion, unrelated to further digital tools, in order to asses the epistemic reliability of the outputs delivered by them. This raises some important questions to epistemology in general and pressing questions to applied to epistemology in particular. In this paper, we propose an experimental method for (...) the assessment of GPT-3’s capacity to generate consistent and coherent sets of outputs. When several outputs to one and the same input are very repetitive they tend to be consistent with each other, that is they do not contradict each other. But consistency does not make the set of outputs as a whole more informative than the outputs considered individually. We argue that the less informative a set of outputs is, the less coherent it is. We establish a conceptual distinction between consistency and coherence in the light of what some epistemologists refer to as a coherence theories of truth and justification. While much attention has been given to GPT-3’s capacity to produce internally coherent individual outputs, we argue, instead, that more attention should be given to its capacity to produce consistent and coherent outputs generated on a single-input-multiple-outputs basis. (shrink)

Philosophers and scientists agree that an important characteristic of theories is their internal coherence. I propose that there is a particular type of internal coherence, termed “unit coherence,” that has received insufficient attention from psychologists. When psychologists theorize about the mechanisms that bring about human behavior, the units in which the variables are expressed need to be consistent throughout the theory; this is unit coherence. The theory of reasoned action is an example of a unit incoherent theory. I explain why (...) this is so and also show how the theory can be made to be unit coherent. I also include examples of unit coherent theories to demonstrate that they are possible to have in psychology. Although the concept of unit coherence is somewhat subtle, it has surprising and far-reaching consequences. (shrink)

What is the relation between coherence and truth? This paper rejects numerous answers to this question, including the following: truth is coherence; coherence is irrelevant to truth; coherence always leads to truth; coherence leads to probability, which leads to truth. I will argue that coherence of the right kind leads to at least approximate truth. The right kind is explanatory coherence, where explanation consists in describing mechanisms. We can judge that a scientific theory is progressively approximating the truth if it (...) is increasing its explanatory coherence in two key respects: broadening by explaining more phenomena and deepening by investigating layers of mechanisms. I sketch an explanation of why deepening is a good epistemic strategy and discuss the prospect of deepening knowledge in the social sciences and everyday life. (shrink)

The difficulties of relativistic particle theories formulated by means of canonical quantization, such as those of Klein–Gordon and Dirac, ultimately led theoretical physicists to turn to quantum field theory to model elementary particle physics. In order to overcome these difficulties, the theories of the present approach are developed deductively from the physical principles that specify the system, without making use of canonical quantization. For a free particle these starting assumptions are invariance of the theory and covariance of position with respect (...) to Poincaré transformations. In pursuing the approach, the effectiveness of group theoretical methods is exploited. The coherent development of our program has shown that robust classes of representations of the Poincaré group, discarded by the known particle theories, can in fact be taken as bases for perfectly consistent theories. For massive spin zero particles, six inequivalent theories have been determined, two of which do not correspond to any of the current ones; all of these theories overcome the difficulties of Klein–Gordon one. The present lack of the explicit transformation properties of position with respect to boosts prevents the complete determination of non zero spin particle theories. In the past a particular form of these transformation properties was adopted by Jordan and Mukunda. We check its consistency within the present approach and find that for spin \ particles there is only one consistent theory, which is unitarily related to Dirac’s; yet, once again, it requires classes of irreducible representations previously discarded. (shrink)

We show that for all natural numbers n, the theory “ZF + DC $_{\aleph_n}$ + $\aleph_{\omega}$ is a Rowbottom cardinal carrying a Rowbottom filter” has the same consistency strength as the theory “ZFC + There exists a measurable cardinal”. In addition, we show that the theory “ZF + $\aleph_{\omega_1}$ is an ω 2-Rowbottom cardinal carrying an ω 2-Rowbottom filter and ω 1 is regular” has the same consistency strength as the theory “ZFC + There exist ω 1 measurable cardinals”. We (...) also discuss some generalizations of these results. (shrink)

The goal of this work is to compile the basic components for the construction of an electromagnetic field theory of consciousness that meets the standards of a fundamental theory. An essential cornerstone of the conceptual framework is the vacuum state of quantum electrodynamics which, contrary to the classical notion of the vacuum, can be viewed as a vibrant ocean of energy, termed zero-point field (ZPF). Being the fundamental substrate mediating the electromagnetic force, the ubiquitous ZPF constitutes the ultimate bedrock of (...) all electromagnetic phenomena. In particular, resonant interaction with the ZPF is critical for understanding rapidly forming, long-range coherent activity patterns that are characteristic of brain dynamics. Assuming that the entire phenomenal color palette is rooted in the vibrational spectrum of the ZPF and that each normal mode of the ZPF is associated with an elementary shade of consciousness, it stands to reason that conscious states are caused by the coupling of the brain to a particular set of normal modes selectively filtered from the full frequency spectrum of the ZPF. From this perspective, the brain is postulated to function as a resonant oscillator that couples to a specific range of ZPF modes, using these modes as a keyboard for the composition of an enormous variety of phenomenal states. Theoretical considerations suggest that the brain-ZPF interface is controlled by altering the concentrations of neurotransmitters, placing the detailed study of the neurotransmitter-ZPF interaction at the center of future research activities. (shrink)

How is it possible that a thing singled out not exist? How is it possible that two things singled out be numerically identical? How is one to understand the relationship between, say, a quality of a thing and what this quality is? And how is one to understand the relation between this quality and the thing which happens to be thus qualified? Trying to answer these four questions involves investigation of the four senses of the verb "to be," or of (...) the concepts of existence, identity, essential and accidental predication. Butchvarov’s thesis is that these four questions admit of a common answer, that the cornerstone of this comprehensive theory is an answer to the second question, and that this crucial answer depends on making some such distinction as his between "objects" and "entities." The bare bones of his argument are these: We commonly make statements of the form "a is b" where "a" and "b" are used referringly. A "material identity" statement of this form may be true. If true, it is about one thing; yet what it is about appears to be distinct things. This distinctness is not a real distinction among existents, nor does it arise solely or primarily from features of language. Butchvarov’s account is based on a distinction "of reason" between objects and entities. An entity is an existent, a constituent of the world. An object is whatever can be singled out once, and only once, in perception or imagination or in "thought". Entities as such cannot be singled out, yet they may be recognized through applications of a conceptual apparatus to objects. A material identity statement, then, states that two objects are one entity. If true, it is both about two distinct objects and about the one entity which each is. When two objects are judged to be one entity, then indiscernibility is enforced. Seeming counterexamples to the indiscernibility of identicals are explained in terms of the distinction between objects and entities. Though some applications of the concept of identity are relative to sortal characteristics, others are not. The latter are prior to the former. These primary judgments constitute the backbone of "thought" and discourse. They are governed by impersonal, nonhuman "paradigms." There are entities, of course; and there are objects, though as objects none exists. Some objects are entities, some are not. The notion of existence, like the notion of identity in its material role, is then a principle of classification, a concept. Butchvarov examines nine objections to this claim, and elaborates his distinction between objects and entities. He concludes that identifiability, hence indefinite reidentifiability, is the logically sufficient condition of applicability of the concept of existence. A statement such as "Socrates is white" is a disguised conjunction, viz., "Socrates has this color, and this color is white." The second conjunct is an "essential" statement; it says of an object singled out that it is a certain entity; or, to allow for essences of nonexistent objects, it states what entity the object would be were it an entity. An essential statement is not a material identity statement, for only one of its terms is used referringly. The essence of an object is not a property of it, for it is what the object is or would be. Whereas logically prior consciousness of objects is intentional and non-conceptual, consciousness of entities is conceptual and nonintentional; it consists in recognizing that a thing can be identified by oneself or by others. What is accidentally white, say, cannot be a material substance or bare particular; therefore it is a "cluster" of qualities. The Resemblance Theory, according to which qualities are particulars, is not a coherent alternative to the Identity Theory; therefore the qualities an individual happens to have are themselves universals. The Bradleyan critique of ontological atomism is cogent; therefore an individual is a cluster of qualities each of which depends for its "formal identity" on its being together with the rest. An individual’s having qualities is then to be understood in terms of the necessary togetherness of the qualities constitutive of it. Since in addition each of these qualities is essentially a universal, and specific universals are contingently coinstantiated, the predication in question is properly regarded as accidental. The problem of identifying quality-clusters through space and time is discussed. (shrink)

Berys Gaut has recently defended a cluster account of art. He proposes it as superior to other anti-essentialist positions. I argue that his defence of this claim is unconvincing. Not only is the cluster theory consistent with the current crop of disjunctive definitions, it is at its most plausible when seen in such terms.

Berkeley has been notoriously charged with inconsistency because he held that spiritual substance exists, Although he argued against the existence of material substance. Berkeley is only inconsistent on the assumption that his argument in favor of spiritual substance parallels the rejected argument for material substance. I show that berkeley is relying on quite a different argument, One perfectly consistent with his theory of ideas, Based on presuppositions the germs of which can be found in the thought of his predecessors in (...) the theory of ideas, Descartes and locke. (shrink)

Philosophers of science discuss whether theory selection depends on aesthetic judgments or criteria, and whether these putatively aesthetic features are genuinely extra-epistemic. As examples, judgments involving criteria such as simplicity and symmetry are often cited. However, other theory selection criteria, such as fecundity, coherence, internal consistency, and fertility, more closely match those criteria used in art contexts and by scholars working in aesthetics. Paying closer attention to the way these criteria are used in art contexts allows us to understand some (...) evaluative and developmental practices in scientific theory selection as genuinely aesthetic, enlarging the scope of the goals of science. (shrink)

A satisfactory theory of knowledge in which the shortcomings of a pure externalist account are avoided and in which the Gettier problem is solved should consist in a combination of externalist and internalist components. The internalist component should guarantee that the epistemic subject has cognitive access to the justifying grounds of her belief. And the externalist component should guarantee that the justification of her belief does not depend on any false statement. Keith Lehrer's coherence theory of knowledge as undefeated justification (...) is an example of such an internalist-externalist analysis of knowledge. But nevertheless, Lehrer's account leads to unintended results. Therefore, it is argued that a satisfactory coherence theory of knowledge must also be based on a gradual notion of systematic coherence. (shrink)

This work attempts to develop a workable formal theory of coherence that avoids the objections traditionally advanced against the earliest versions of the theory. Basically it construes the coherence theory as a criterial rather than definitional approach to truth, i.e., as furnishing a criterion rather than a definition of truth. The problem of criterion is seen as a problem not of guaranteeing but of authorizing criterion. Coherence is a criterion applying to a set of propositions that satisfies the conditions of (...) consistency and connectiveness of the systemic sort. A detailed logical machinery is developed. The pivotal concept is the notion of data as a truth-candidate, "a proposition to be taken not as true, but as potentially or presumptively true.". (shrink)

Conceptual merits of a theory are important for its acceptance. According to the traditionally held view, theory acceptance depends mainly on empirical support or confirmation. This paper argues that a new theory has also to cohere with already accepted theories to be accepted. In other words, confirmation alone is insufficient for acceptance. Coherence, like simplicity and internal consistency, is a conceptual merit. Coherence between theories, according to this paper, consists in agreement on the main concepts and mutual support. That is, (...) two theories cohere with each other when they do not differ on the principal notions and assumptions and also provide support for each other. (shrink)

This paper suggests that art cannot be defined in terms of individually necessary and jointly sufficient conditions. Instead, we propose that there are several sufficient conditions for something's being art, and that a successful definition will consist of a disjunction of minimally sufficient conditions. Our proposal owes much to the insights of Berys Gaut's ‘“Art” as a Cluster Concept’ but offers a much simpler logical formulation, which, in addition, is immune to the objections that have been raised to Gaut's account. (...) This paper agrees with Gaut's claim that there are borderline cases of art, and suggests that they arise from indeterminacy about the content of some of the minimally sufficient conditions. It is argued that this disjunctive account is superior to classical theories, resemblance-to-paradigm theories, and prototype theories of art. (shrink)

The significance of A. N. Whitehead’s contribution to 20th century metaphysics has become widely recognized. The focus on the novelty of his process ontology, however, has led to a view that isolates him from the mainstream of the tradition of Western philosophy. Hence, it is often overlooked that on the methodological level Whitehead is a pragmatist, whose much quoted indebtedness to William James is reflected in the project of his speculative metaphysics. A detailed analysis of the respective theories of truth (...) and knowledge in James and Whitehead illustrates their common methodological approach and allows us to assess the role of Whiteheadian thinking within the pragmatist tradition. James advances a form of epistemic conservatism that supplements the pragmatic idea of a concept’s cash-value with the demand for internal consistency. New beliefs have to fit in the totality of all previously accepted convictions in order to become accepted as true. James argues his case on three levels – a psychological, an epistemological and a pragmatic one – and develops a theory of truth that comprises an empirical and a rational dimension. Whitehead takes up this two-sided approach, but modifies the idea of genetic consistency into that of systematic coherence. The fundamental concepts of an ontological theory must not be isolated from each other to allow for a cosmology which is both rational and satisfies the pragmatic test of applicability. With the close relation of James and Whitehead in mind, the latter can be identified as the ‘missing link’ that bridges the gap between the so-called classical pragmatism and its more analytic versions as advanced by Quine, Lewis and Rescher. (shrink)

In this article I want to construct in a simple and systematic way an ethical theory of animal equality. The goal is a consistent theory, containing a set of clear and coherent universalized ethical principles that best fits our strongest moral intuitions in all possible morally relevant situations that we can think of, without too many arbitrary elements. I demonstrate that impartiality with a level of risk aversion and empathy with a need for efficiency are two different approaches that both (...) result in the same consequentialist principle of prioritarianism. Next, I discuss that this principle can be trumped by an ethic of care principle of tolerated partiality, and a deontological principle of basic right. These three principles represent different kinds of equality that can be applied to animal ethics. Finally, the predation problem leads to the introduction of a triple-N-principle that is related to the value of biodiversity. (shrink)

It is easy to fall for a conceptual beauty and simplicity of the coherence theory of truth. But the texts in which its foundations were for the first time explicitly developed are rich in subtleties, defying a consistent interpretation and inviting various forms of criticism. That is why the following study will take one more look at the writings of Harold H. Joachim and Brand Blanshard, in order to prove that in the analyses which they proposed there is an additional, (...) so far unrecognised element – namely the process of translation – which plays a crucial role in making their accounts valid and complete. Initially then, the article will specify how the notion of translation should be here understood. Next, key postulates of both theories will be recalled, with an indication of several potential inconsistencies which they might entail. Finally, the analysis exposes translative ground of each reconstructed model. What will be thereby underscored, is not only the interpretative depth of Joachim’s and Blanshard’s legacy, but also significance of translation for the philosophical enquiry into the nature of truth. (shrink)

Synchronic intertheoretic reductions are an important field of research in science. Arguably, the best model able to represent the main relations occurring in this kind of scientific reduction is the Nagelian account of reduction, a model further developed by Schaffner and nowadays known as the generalized version of the Nagel–Schaffner model. In their article, Dizadji-Bahmani, Frigg, and Hartmann specified the two main desiderata of a reduction á la GNS: confirmation and coherence. DFH first and, more rigorously, Tešic later analyse (...) the confirmatory relation between the reducing and the reduced theory in terms of Bayesian confirmation theory. The purpose of this article is to analyse and compare the degree of coherence between the two theories involved in the GNS before and after the reduction. For this reason, in the first section, I will be looking at the reduction of thermodynamics to statistical mechanics and use it as an example to describe the GNS. In the second section, I will introduce three coherence measures which will then be employed in the comparison. Finally, in the last two sections, I will compare the degrees of coherence between the reducing and the reduced theory before and after the reduction and use a few numerical examples to understand the relation between coherence and confirmation measures. (shrink)

Coherence is a key concept in many accounts of epistemic justification within ‘traditional’ analytic epistemology. Within formal epistemology, too, there is a substantial body of research on coherence measures. However, there has been surprisingly little interaction between the two bodies of literature. The reason is that the existing formal literature on coherence measure operates with a notion of belief system that is very different from—what we argue is—a natural Bayesian formalisation of the concept of belief system from traditional epistemology. Therefore, (...) formal epistemology has so far only been concerned with one particular—arguably not even very natural—way of formalising coherence of belief systems; it has by no means refuted the viability of coherentism. In contrast to the existing literature, we formalise belief systems as families of assignments of (conditional) degrees of belief (which may be compatible with several subjective probability measures). Within this framework, we propose a Bayesian formalisation of the thrust of BonJour’s coherence concept in The structure of empirical knowledge (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1985), using a combination of Bayesian confirmation theory and basic graph theory. In excursions, we introduce graded notions for both logical and probabilistic consistency of belief systems—the latter being based on certain geometrical structures induced by probabilistic belief systems. For illustration, we reconsider BonJour’s “ravens” challenge (op. cit., p. 95f.). Finally, potential objections to our proposed formal coherence notion are explored. (shrink)

Berys Gaut has recently articulated and defended a putatively anti-definitional ‘cluster’ theory of art. In the first part of this paper, I argue that Gaut's version of the cluster account is flawed. The key notion of ‘counting toward the application of a concept’ is formulated in such a way that a range of apparently irrelevant properties will count as criterial for the concept of art. Moreover, there does not appear to be any quick fix to this problem. I then turn (...) to an exploration of the relationship between the cluster theory and the possibility of defining art. Gaut has claimed that the truth of the cluster account would provide an independent basis for rejecting the possibility of an adequate definition of art. I argue that this is not the case. But while the truth of the cluster account is consistent with definition, I also argue that it would not entail the definability of art in any ordinary sense. (shrink)

I argue that coherence is truth-conducive in that coherence implies an increase in the probability of truth. Central to my argument is a certain principle for transitivity in probabilistic support. I then address a question concerning the truth-conduciveness of coherence as it relates to (something else I argue for) the truth-conduciveness of consistency, and consider how the truth-conduciveness of coherence bears on coherentist theories of justification.

The cluster account of art is a purportedly non-definitional account of art, inspired by Wittgenstein's notion of family resemblance, and recently defended by Berys Gaut. Gaut does not provide good reasons to think that art is not definable, and his approach to possible counterexamples to the cluster account would, applied consistently, preclude this. The cluster account's theory of error, its resources for accounting for borderline cases, and its heuristic usefulness are not impressive. Reasons strong enough to warrant accepting the cluster (...) account, it is concluded, have not been given. (shrink)

We can distinguish the evil person in two ways. One is to pick out some trait, or narrow cluster of traits, and argue that individuals are evil if they possess those traits to a sufficiently extreme degree. Call theories that characterize evil in this manner extremity views. The second method takes evil to consist in being vicious, not just in one respect, but thoroughly or consistently. Call this the consistency approach. Thus understood, evil persons lack any significant moral virtues, having (...) no “good side.” According to stronger versions of the consistency theory, evil persons lack morally redeeming qualities of even the most modest sort. They are moved and motivated little or not at all, or even perversely, by morality and the good. In this chapter I will defend such a view of evil character. Naturally, even consistency theories grant that evil involves a kind of extreme viciousness. But this is not the sort of extremity that requires having particular traits to an extraordinary degree, beyond those needed to lack virtues or redeeming qualities. Consistency theorists could require extreme vices in addition to those implied by the consistency requirement, but I will not do so. What about extremity views? Extremity of vice in the present sense concerns the degree to which someone possesses a given vice. If a person’s viciousness consists in cruelty, then that individual earns the title of evil by having cruel propensities to the highest degree: tending to perform many cruel acts, and tending to perform the cruelest acts. The extremity method appears to be the standard approach among commentators in this area. For example, Laurence Thomas claims that to have an evil character is to be “often enough prone to do evil acts” (1993, p. 82). Someone commits an evil act if the individual “delights in performing a harmful act that has a certain moral gravity to it . . . and if the person is not animated by understandable considerations” (p. 77). Similarly, John Kekes has argued that evil persons are those who are.... (shrink)

In the Corpus Aristotelicum there are two different theories of substance which apply to the sublunary world. The first theory is found in the Categories and selects the individual concrete as a primary substance. The second is found in the Metaphysics and selects the Form and the Essence as a primary substance. Most of the interpretations of modern Aristotelian scholarship claim an inconsistency. They suggest that if at all Aristotle has a theory of substance, then it is either the substance (...) theory of the Categories or the one of the Metaphysics but not both of them. The supposition of all these interpretations is that Aristotle’s theory of substance is unambiguous and that there can be only a single primary substance. These interpretations suppose that the theory of substance is applicable only to a single domain, namely to ontology.In my paper I argue that this supposition is false. I suggest that Aristotle’s theory of substance is applicable not only to ontology but also to the domain of determinology whose meaning is explained in the paper. The theory of substance of the Categories applies to ontology whereas the one of the Metaphysics applies to determinology. The two theories are consistent with each other in a way that there are two commensurate sorts of primary substance: the individual concrete as the ontological primary substance of the Categories and the Form‑Essence as the determinative primary substance of the Metaphysics.Furthermore, I claim that Aristotle’s concept of substance is manifold and flexible. The concept evolves and is expanded in the Metaphysics. It is manifold because his theory of substance has a certain structure which includes the following three criteria for selecting a primary substance: subjecthood viz. being a subject, independence and determined individuality. Aristotle’s concept of substance is flexible because these criteria do not have an absolute signification per se but are general and relative. They get a final signification when they are applied either to the ontology in the Categories or to the determinology in the Metaphysics. Their application to a certain domain establishes a theory of substance according to the domain in question and selects a primary substance according to the same domain. Aristotle’s concept of substance is flexible also because in the Metaphysics he enlarges his first concept of substance expressed by the three criteria by adding a new sort of substancehood expressed by the idion criterion. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Coherence of a Mind: John Locke and the Law of Nature*Alex Tucknessit is almost thirty years since John Dunn’s book, The Political Thought of John Locke, argued that a more coherent understanding of Locke was possible if his religious beliefs were taken to play a crucial role in his political theory.1 Since that time many scholars have expanded our historical knowledge of the role of religion in Locke’s (...) political thought.2 This article will not use a historical methodology, but will rather take the claim that religion is crucial to Locke’s thought as a starting point. When one combines this assumption with a careful reading of the Two Treatises of Government (Two Treatises), The Reasonableness of Christianity as Delivered in Scripture (The Reasonableness), and the Essay Concerning Human Understanding (Essay), significant progress in resolving many of the long-standing difficulties in Locke’s theory of natural law is possible.The difficulties are indeed serious. Prior to Locke there was a long standing theological debate about whether the laws of nature were binding because they were the command of God (voluntarism) or binding because of their intrinsic compatibility with reason (“rationalism” or “intellectualism”). There has been much dispute about whether Locke was consistently a voluntarist or not.3 Second, Locke argues in the Essay that the principles of morality are [End Page 73] capable of proof just like principles of geometry, yet Locke never produced a proof of the law of nature. In the Second Treatise the laws of nature are more asserted than defended, as if they were self-evident, yet in The Reasonableness Locke says that it is exceedingly difficult to discover the moral law through reason alone and says that no one has ever discovered the complete law of nature through unaided reason. It appears that Locke “… went on believing the arguments of the Second Treatise were plainly true even after he knew he could not properly ground them in natural law….”4Third, Straussians have been quick to point out that Locke adopted a hedonistic theory of human motivation and of good and evil, a position which seems to sit poorly with a Christian theory of natural law. Locke claimed that men5 were motivated to obey the law of nature by their perception of future pleasure or pain and that divine sanctions in the next life were necessary for the law of nature to be a proper law, yet later in life Locke admitted his inability to prove the existence of an afterlife.6 Fourth, the account of moral knowledge in the Essay seems to sit poorly with Locke’s account of natural law in the Two Treatises; his commitment in the latter to empiricism is questionable and the law of nature is presented with little argument as if it were obvious. Laslett has argued that the difficulties are so severe that Locke the philosopher of knowledge and Locke the political thinker should be kept very separate.7 This article will respond to each of these difficulties in order to show that Locke’s theory of natural law is more coherent than his critics have allowed.1. the ground of natural law: rationalism and voluntarismThe early Essays on the Law of Nature of Locke link morality to conformity with the rule of a superior; it is the will of God which provides the essential binding force of the law of nature. (ELN 183–185)8 In the Essay Concerning Human [End Page 74] Understanding, this theme continues. “I grant the existence of God, is so many ways manifest, and the Obedience we owe him, so congruous to the Light of Reason, that a great part of Mankind give Testimony to the Law of Nature”: But nonetheless many affirm these principles not “admitting the true ground of Morality; which can only be the Will and Law of a God, who sees Men in the dark, has in his Hand Rewards and Punishments, and Power enough to call to account the Proudest Offender” (Essay 1.3.6).There are, however, passages which seem to point to a more rationalist account of morality. When Locke writes in the Two Treatises that... (shrink)

We argue that the distinction between framework and interaction theories should be taken carefully into consideration when dealing with the philosophical implications of fundamental theories in physics. In particular, conclusions concerning the nature of reality can only be consistently derived from assessing the ontological and epistemic purport of both types of theories. We put forward an epistemic form of realism regarding framework theories, such as Quantum Field Theory. The latter, indeed, informs us about the general properties of quantum fields, laying (...) the groundwork for interaction theories. Yet, concerning interaction theories, we recommend a robust form of ontological realism regarding the entities whose existence is assumed by these theories. As an application, we refer to the case of the Standard Model, so long as it has proved to successfully inform us about the nature of various sorts of fundamental particles making up reality. In short, although we acknowledge that both framework and interaction theories partake in shaping our science-based view of reality, and that neither would do by itself the work we expect them to accomplish together, our proposal for a coherent ontology of fundamental entities advances a compromise between two forms of realism about theories in each case. (shrink)

Saul Smilansky’s theory of free will and moral responsibility consists of two parts; dualism and illusionism. Dualism is the thesis that both compatibilism and hard determinism are partly true, and has puzzled many philosophers. I argue that Smilansky’s dualism can be given an unquestionably coherent and comprehensible interpretation if we reformulate it in terms of pro tanto reasons. Dualism so understood is the thesis that respect for persons gives us pro tanto reasons to blame wrongdoers, and also pro tanto reasons (...) not to blame them. These reasons must be we ighed against each other (and against relevant consequentialist reasons) in order to find out what we all things considered ought to do. (shrink)

One of the principles on how to act under moral uncertainty, My Favourite Theory, says roughly that a morally conscientious agent chooses an option that is permitted by the most credible moral theory. In defence of this principle, we argue that it prescribes consistent choices over time, without relying on intertheoretic comparisons of value, while its main rivals are either plagued by moral analogues of money pumps or in need of a method for making non-arbitrary intertheoretic comparisons. We (...) rebut the arguments that have been levelled against My Favourite Theory and offer some arguments against intertheoretic comparisons of value. (shrink)

We propose that children employ specialized cognitive systems that allow them to recover an accurate “causal map” of the world: an abstract, coherent, learned representation of the causal relations among events. This kind of knowledge can be perspicuously understood in terms of the formalism of directed graphical causal models, or “Bayes nets”. Children’s causal learning and inference may involve computations similar to those for learning causal Bayes nets and for predicting with them. Experimental results suggest that 2- to 4-year-old children (...) construct new causal maps and that their learning is consistent with the Bayes net formalism. (shrink)

We used Nunez's physiologically based dynamic theory of EEG to make predictions about a clinical population of children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) known to have neuronanatomical abnormalities. Analysis of high-density EEG data (long-range coherence) showed expected age-related differences and surprising regional specificity that is consistent with some of the literature in this clinical area.

Recent studies of semantic memory have investigated two theories of optimal search adopted from the animal foraging literature: Lévy flights and marginal value theorem. Each theory makes different simplifying assumptions and addresses different findings in search behaviors. In this study, an experiment is conducted to test whether clustering in semantic memory may play a role in evidence for both theories. Labeled magnets and a whiteboard were used to elicit spatial representations of semantic knowledge about animals. Category recall sequences from a (...) separate experiment were used to trace search paths over the spatial representations of animal knowledge. Results showed that spatial distances between animal names arranged on the whiteboard were correlated with inter-response intervals during category recall, and distributions of both dependent measures approximated inverse power laws associated with Lévy flights. In addition, IRIs were relatively shorter when paths first entered animal clusters, and longer when they exited clusters, which is consistent with marginal value theorem. In conclusion, area-restricted searches over clustered semantic spaces may account for two different patterns of results interpreted as supporting two different theories of optimal memory foraging. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Martin Heidegger and OntologyEmmanuel Levinas (bio)The prestige of Martin Heidegger 1 and the influence of his thought on German philosophy marks both a new phase and one of the high points of the phenomenological movement. Caught unawares, the traditional establishment is obliged to clarify its position on this new teaching which casts a spell over youth and which, overstepping the bounds of permissibility, is already in vogue. For once, (...) Fame has picked one who deserves it and, for that matter, one who is still living. Anyone who has studied philosophy cannot, when confronted by Heidegger’s work, fail to recognize how the originality and force of his achievements, stemming from genius, are combined with an attentive, painstaking, and close working-out of the argument—with that craftsmanship of the patient artisan in which phenomenologists take such pride. In this study, it is important for us to understand, above all, the true intentions of our author, to illuminate what he thinks really needs to be said, and to surmise what is most critical for him.To get to the heart of Heidegger’s system, it seems fitting to begin with a problem that is generally familiar. We choose the problem of knowledge, a deeper understanding of which takes us to the very threshold of Heidegger’s thought. For this problem, central to modern philosophy, is one of the main obstacles of modern philosophy that Heidegger wishes to surmount. Neo-Kantianism, which takes knowledge as the philosophical problem of the first rank, is the movement against which Heidegger rebels with all his strength. We have, thus, every chance of gaining access to his thought by the main door, so to speak. Once inside the system we will try to trace its outlines, 2 reserving, for a second part of our work, the determination of Heidegger’s place in the history of ideas, especially in the phenomenological movement, as well as of his relations with the philosopher to whom he owes so much—Edmund Husserl. 31In its most general form, the problem of the theory of knowledge has a critical significance. It consists in delineating a domain where knowledge can be certain and in determining the criteria for the legitimate scope of knowledge. But this problem, as normal and as simple as it may appear, has deeper roots. That knowledge should need a criterion at all presupposes that truth is not identical to all that is known and that the course [End Page 11] of things can fail to correspond with the course of thought. “How does knowledge correspond to being?” is a more profound formulation of the problem of knowledge.But we are not going to touch anymore on the primordial phenomenon that generates the problem. The problem of correspondence between thing and thought presupposes a free activity of thought and its isolation in relation to the object. It is precisely this presupposition which renders their harmony and even their contact problematic. “How does the subject take leave of itself to attain the object?” is what the problem of knowledge, in the last analysis, boils down to. Its true source is thus the concept of “subject” as elaborated by modern philosophy. The cogito presided over the subject’s birth. The cogito was the affirmation of the privileged nature of the subject’s immanent sphere, of its unique place in existence; hence, the cogito was the specificity of the subject’s connection to the rest of reality, the sui generis nature which opens up the passage from immanence to transcendence, the passage from ideas contained in the thinking substance to 4 their “formal existence.”The concept of the subject, understood as a substance having a specific position in the entire domain of being, presents us with difficulties of two kinds. First, how do we understand this leave-taking from the self which the thinking substance brings about and which displays an entirely original aspect? Indeed, we could say that thought, in reaching out toward objects, does not actually take leave of itself, since its objects—considered as ideas and contents of thought—are, in a certain sense, already within it. In order to make sense of this paradox, Descartes... (shrink)

I here defend a theory consisting of four claims about ‘property’ and properties, and argue that they form a coherent whole that can solve various serious problems. The claims are (1): ‘property’ is defined by the principles (PR): ‘F-ness/Being F/etc. is a property of x iff F’ and (PA): ‘F-ness/Being F/etc. is a property’; (2) the function of ‘property’ is to increase the expressive power of English, roughly by mimicking quantification into predicate position; (3) property talk should be understood at (...) face value: apparent commitments are real and our apparently literal use of ‘property’ is really literal; (4) there are no properties. In virtue of (1)–(2), this is a deflationist theory and in virtue of (3)–(4), it is an error theory. (1) is fleshed out as a claim about understanding conditions, and it is argued at length, and by going through a number of examples, that it satisfies a crucial constraint on meaning claims: all facts about ‘property’ can be explained, together with auxiliary facts, on its basis. Once claim (1) has been expanded upon, I argue that the combination of (1)–(3) provides the means for handling several problems: they help giving a happy-face solution to what I call the paradox of abstraction , they form part of a plausible account of the correctness of committive sentences, and, most importantly, they help respond to various indispensability arguments against nominalism. (shrink)

Available from UMI in association with The British Library. Requires signed TDF. ;The thesis focusses on the question of the coherence of the notion of a "criterion" which has enjoyed considerable currency in the contemporary Philosophy of Language and Mind. The text is divided into three parts, each of which deals with a particular aspect of the notion of a criterion, or of theories of criteria. Part One consists of Chapters 1, 2 and 3 and explores the question of the (...) origins of the notion and of theories concerning it. Wittgenstein's later work is widely recognized as the notion's point of origin and for that reason I examine Wittgenstein's use of the term "criterion" and the philosophy of language which is the proper context of the notion as employed by that author. I then present my own account of the significance of the notion to Wittgenstein, and the role of the notion in his later thought. Part Two consists of Chapters 4 and 5 which examine the place of the notion in the contemporary Philosophy of Language and offer a critical account of much recent work in that field. Finally, in Part Three, I concentrate on the question of the coherence of the notion. The sixth Chapter deals mainly with epistemological issues of relevance but also involves some formal work together with some discussion of the ramifications of the notion, correctly understood, in the Philosophy of Mind. Chapter Seven suggests a formal, logical framework in which criterial reasoning patterns can be usefully mapped and also attempts to demonstrate an inherent flexibility of format which might allow for contrastive comparisons with other modes of reasoning. (shrink)

There are often said to be five main 'theories of truth': correspondence, coherence, pragmatic, redundancy, and semantic theories. The coherence theory of truth equates the truth of a judgment with its coherence with other beliefs. Different versions of the theory give different accounts of coherence, but in all its forms the point is to exhibit truth as an internal relation between beliefs. The pragmatic theory of truth is akin to a coherence theory of this Kantian kind. No coherence theorist need (...) deny the uncontentious claim that for a judgment to be true is for it to stand in a certain relationship, which can be called correspondence, with some state of affairs in the world. The conflict with the redundancy theory may be more apparent than real. For the redundancy theory is not a theory of what truth consists in, but a theory about the meaning of the words 'is true'. (shrink)

This paper applies a new theory of explanatory coherence to the early history of the idea of continental drift. The new theory consists of seven principles that establish coherence and incoherence relations among propositions. It has been implemented in a connectionist computer program called ECHO. Analysis of the arguments of Alfred Wegener, the first major proponent of continental drift, provided input to ECHO which evaluated the explanatory coherence of his hypotheses. ECHO has also been used to analyze the coherence of (...) the views of Wegener 's critics. The paper concludes by contrasting our explanatory coherence account of Wegener and his opposition with a decision-theoretic account recently offered by Ron Giere. (shrink)

I argue that a dual-aspect theory of consciousness, associated with a particular class of quantum states, can provide a consistent account of consciousness. I illustrate this with the use of coherent states as this class. The proposal meets Chalmers 'requirements of allowing a structural correspondence between consciousness and its physical correlate. It provides a means for consciousness to have an effect on the world in a way that supplements and completes conventional physics, rather than interfering with it. I draw on (...) the work of Hameroff and Penrose to explain the consistency of this proposal with decoherence, while adding details to this work. The proposal is open to extensive further research at both theoretical and experimental levels. (shrink)

I argue that a dual-aspect theory of consciousness, associated with a particular class of quantum states, can provide a consistent account of consciousness. I illustrate this with the use of coherent states as this class. The proposal meets Chalmers 'requirements of allowing a structural correspondence between consciousness and its physical correlate. It provides a means for consciousness to have an effect on the world (it is not an epiphenomenon, and can thus be selected by evolution) in a way that supplements (...) and completes conventional physics, rather than interfering with it. I draw on the work of Hameroff and Penrose to explain the consistency of this proposal with decoherence, while adding details to this work. The proposal is open to extensive further research at both theoretical and experimental levels. (shrink)

Ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus provided some of our most cherished assumptions about physics and ethics. He postulated an infinite universe made exclusively of atoms and void. He also treated slaves and women as equals and defined our standards of pleasure and luxury. Now David Swift turns to Epicurus for help with another significant mystery: the scientific explanation of mind. Using Epicurean ideas that our minds are in our chests and, perhaps even more radically, that meaning is understood in our sense (...) organs he re-examines and reinterprets the works of philosophers like Descartes, Locke, Kant and Mill and scientists such as Pavlov, Freud, Skinner and Rogers. Seen in the light of the Epicurean concept, Renaissance philosophy and classic scientific psychology validate a surprisingly consistent and coherent scientific explanation of behaviour. The mechanisms of meaning, knowledge, learning and remembering are explained in terms of biological reflexes. The secrets of love, hate and loyalty are revealed as non-verbal knowledge only accessible as feelings. And success, failure, criminal and other behaviours are shown to be the results of learned experience not genetic predisposition. At last we have the possibility of a plausible biologically-based general psychological theory. (shrink)

The intersection between virtue and care ethics is underexplored in contemporary moral philosophy. This thesis approaches care ethics from a neo-Aristotelian virtue ethical perspective, comparing the two frameworks and drawing on recent work on care to develop a theory thereof. It is split into seven substantive chapters serving three major argumentative purposes, namely the establishment of significant intertheoretical agreement, the compilation and analysis of extant and new distinctions between the two theories, and the synthesis of care ethical insights with neo-Aristotelianism (...) to generate a virtue ethical theory of care. In the first two chapters, I outline virtue ethics and care ethics, and argue for considerable agreement over central premises. Chapter 2 summarises the foundational commitments of care ethics, focusing particularly on their relational ontology and its links to the other ethical claims care ethicists universally ascribe to, namely particularism, partialism, the moral salience of emotions, and the rejection of hard public/private distinctions. Chapter 3 lays out the central concepts in neo-Aristotelian virtue ethics, including eudaimonism, virtue, and character traits, and drawing a number of comparisons between virtue and care ethics specifically with regard to relational ontology and the meta-ethical commitments it underpins. In addition to doing the necessary expository work for the remainder of the thesis, Chapters 2 and 3 also argue that care ethics and virtue ethics have much more in common than is typically acknowledged – the first major contribution of this thesis to the literature. Chapters 2 and 3 to provide at least a prima facie justification for pursuit of the questions I confront in the remainder of the thesis. In Chapter 4, I ask what differentiates these two ethical theories. I survey some of the differences which philosophers in either camp have identified and offer some of my own. I suggest that several of those differences either rest on misunderstandings of one ethic or the other, or that in erecting a divide between virtue and care ethics they also disunify ethics of care. I do, however, identify two differences which seem defensible. Specifically, they are that virtue ethics seems to lack an account of care, which I define minimally as a response or responsiveness to need, and that virtue and care ethics organise their meta-ethical and normative concepts differently. This chapter thus presents a second contribution to the literature: a study of the differences between virtue ethics and care ethics. It also serves to set the trajectory for the remaining chapters, where I respond to the claim that virtue ethics lack an account of care. I spend the remainder of the thesis constructing what I take to be a satisfying foundation for a virtue ethical theory of care. In Chapter 5, I offer three initially viable means of incorporating care into virtue ethics, all of which treat care as a virtue. These are the analogical approach, according to which care is analogous to an existing virtue; the additive approach, according to which care is a novel virtue; and the bundling approach, according to which care is a bundle of virtues. I also offer and evaluate reasons to reject the claim that care is a virtue, concluding that the claim is indeed a viable one so long as the concept of care is sufficiently thick, and I contend that analogical approaches, and particularly analogies with charity, outperform the others. Chapter 5 therefore serves two ends. First, it proffers a novel meta-analysis of concepts of care as a virtue, and thus makes a third contribution to the literature. In doing so, it makes an inroad into the second: the development of a neo-Aristotelian theory of care. Chapter 6 continues this project. I attempt to show how care can be construed as an act-type and a practice. I argue in this chapter that practices are a subcategory of actions, and that care qualifies as an Anscombean act-type which aims at the meeting of needs relating to the care-recipient’s flourishing. I go on to consider the implications of this account for ethics which deploy care as a moral concept, maintaining that it not only offers a better account of consequences than theories of care which include success criteria, but also that it affords us interesting insights into the distinction between ‘caring about’ and ‘caring for’ which allow us to make sense of certain tenets of neo-Aristotelianism. This represents a contribution to both discourses, since neither care nor virtue ethicists working at the intersection of their respective normative theories have delved very deeply into the philosophy of action. Chapter 7 discusses caring relations, suggesting that a virtue ethical theory of caring relations can lean on the work care ethicists have done, and adding some necessary refinements, such as a distinction between ideal and non-ideal caring relations, and a theory of caring relations as reasons for action. This final chapter also draws these three concepts of care together by arguing that virtuous caregivers who are invested in the flourishing of those for whom they care are also sensitive to the relations those care-recipients bear to their institutional environment. I argue that because they are caring participants in caring relations, virtuous agents are characteristically motivated by states of need and dependency to engage in certain sorts of conventionally political practices. In other words, the virtue or virtues of caring characteristically manifest in certain sorts of political or social practices, relating specifically to those areas of moral life. This allows us to build upon recent work in feminist virtue ethics of the sort offered by Tessman and Friedman. I also offer a novel analysis of migration, suggesting that the account of care presenting here is analytically useful both when it comes to historical cases of migration such as the underground railroads and escapes from Nazi-occupied Europe, but also for contemporary issues such as the migrations occurring in the Southern United States and in much of Europe. I thus conclude not only that virtue ethicists ought to incorporate care into their normative framework, and that the theory of care presented here is a coherent one, but that this leads us naturally into applied topics such as virtue politics. I conclude the thesis by considering some its implications and by identifying some further avenues for research. (shrink)

Several prominent philosophers of art have worried about whether Kant has a coherent theory of music on account of two perceived tensions in his view. First, there appears to be a conflict between his formalist and expressive commitments. Second (and even worse), Kant defends seemingly contradictory claims about music being beautiful and merely agreeable, that is, not beautiful. Against these critics, I show that Kant has a consistent view of music that reconciles these tensions. I argue that, for Kant, music (...) can be experienced as either agreeable or beautiful depending on the attitude we take toward it. Although it is tempting to think he argues that we experience music as agreeable when we attend to its expressive qualities and as beautiful when we attend to its formal properties, I demonstrate that he actually claims that we are able to judge music as beautiful only if we are sensitive to the expression of emotion through musical form. With this revised understanding of Kant's theory of music in place, I conclude by sketching a Kantian solution to a central problem in the philosophy of music: given that music is not sentient, how can it express emotion? (shrink)

The aim of this paper is twofold: first, I provide a cluster of theories of truth in classical logic that is (internally) consistent with global reflection principles: the theories of positive truth (and falsity). After that, I analyse the _epistemic value_ of such theories. I do so employing the framework of cognitive projects introduced by Wright (Proc Aristot Soc 78:167–245, 2004), and employed—in the context of theories of truth—by Fischer et al. (Noûs 2019. https://doi.org/10.1111/nous.12292 ). In particular, I will argue (...) that theories of positive truth are _trustworthy_, analogously to the theories of full disquotational truth. Moreover, I argue that, for a given cognitive project, _if_ the acceptance of trustworthy theories is taken to be an _epistemic norm_ of cognitive project, then one has good reasons to accept theories of positive truth over other rival theories of truth in classical logic. On the other hand, the latter theories are deemed epistemically unacceptable. (shrink)

A neglected and non-trivial problem exists for a central cluster of Strawsonian accountability theories of moral responsibility, namely those that, following Gary Watson, understand the reactive attitudes to be implicit forms of moral address, particularly moral demand. The problem consists in the joint acceptance of two claims: (a) Accountability is a matter of agents holding one another to moral demands, and (b) accountability is a view of blame and praise. I label joint acceptance of these claims the Strawsonian’s demand dogma. (...) Symptomatic of a larger tendency among responsibility theorists to focus on blame to the neglect of its positive counterpart, the demand dogma saddles the Strawsonian with an impoverished and ultimately untenable view of praise. This is because moral demand occupies a dual role on the Strawsonian's view of blame, one that it is incapable of occupying for praise. For, demands figure not only in the contents of blame responses; demand typifies the form of these responses themselves. That is, reactive attitudes of blame, unlike those of praise, implicitly make demands of their targets. The force of this problem is highlighted by considering the inadequacy of various strategies for shoehorning “demand” into our conception of praise. If reactive attitudes generally are incipient forms of moral address, praise-manifesting attitudes must communicate something other than demand. Though primarily critical, this paper invites Strawsonian responsibility theorists to give renewed attention to the foundations of the proposal that the reactive attitudes are incipiently communicative, focusing this time on the form of address that lies at the heart of praise. (shrink)

This target article presents a new computational theory of explanatory coherence that applies to the acceptance and rejection of scientific hypotheses as well as to reasoning in everyday life, The theory consists of seven principles that establish relations of local coherence between a hypothesis and other propositions. A hypothesis coheres with propositions that it explains, or that explain it, or that participate with it in explaining other propositions, or that offer analogous explanations. Propositions are incoherent with each other if they (...) are contradictory, Propositions that describe the results of observation have a degree of acceptability on their own. An explanatory hypothesis is acccpted if it coheres better overall than its competitors. The power of the seven principles is shown by their implementation in a connectionist program called ECHO, which treats hypothesis evaluation as a constraint satisfaction problem. Inputs about the explanatory relations are used to create a network of units representing propositions, while coherende and incoherence relations are encoded by excitatory and inbihitory links. ECHO provides an algorithm for smoothly integrating theory evaluation based on considerations of explanatory breadth, simplicity, and analogy. It has been applied to such important scientific cases as Lovoisier's argument for oxygen against the phlogiston theory and Darwin's argument for evolution against creationism, and also to cases of legal reasoning. The theory of explanatory coherence has implications for artificial intelligence, psychology, and philosophy. (shrink)

This paper proposes a classification of the intertheoretic relations in physics by bringing out the conditions for a relation of reduction which is eliminative, so that a theory reduced in terms of reductionism is superfluous in principle, and by distinguishing such a relation from another one based on comparison, which will be called neighbourhood of theories; the latter is a neighbouring relation between theories and is not able to support claims of eliminative reductionism. In the first part, it will (...) be argued that this differentiation between neighbourhood and eliminative reduction permits an adequate classification of the intertheoretic relations in physics. By means of this differentiation, the second part discusses reductionism and shows that there are indeed some historical examples of reduction in the aforementioned sense, but that modern physical theories are typically only neighbouring. (shrink)

Ruth Millikan has hypothesised that human cognition contains ‘consistency testers’. Consistency testers check whether different judgements a thinker makes about the same subject matter agree or conflict. Millikan’s suggestion is that, where the same concept has been applied to the world via two routes, and the two judgements that result are found to be inconsistent, that makes the thinker less inclined to apply those concepts in those ways in the future. If human cognition does indeed include such a capacity, its (...) operation will be an important determinant of how people use concepts. It will have a major impact on which concepts they deploy and which means of application (conceptions) they rely on. Since consistency testers are a selection mechanism at the heart of conceptual thinking, they would be crucial to understanding how concepts are selected – why some are retained and proliferate and others die out. Hence, whether consistency testers for concepts exist, and how they operate, is an important question for those seeking to understand the cultural evolution of concepts, and of the words we use to express them. (shrink)

Of all contemporary social theorists, Luhmann has best understood the centrality of the concept of meaning to social theory and has most extensively worked out the notion's implications. However, despite the power of his theory, the theory suffers from difficulties impeding its reception. This article attempts to remedy this situation with some critical arguments and proposals for revision. First, the theory Luhmann adopted from biology as the basis of his own theory was a poor choice since that theory has no (...) explanatory power, being purely descriptive; furthermore, that theory is fundamentally flawed since it implies that viruses are impossible. Second, Luhmann's theory of meaning cannot coherently make the social domain autonomous as he desires since Luhmann does not take into account the distinction between syntax and semantics. By introducing this distinction, making clear that social systems consist of rules, not just communications, and raising the rule concept to the same prominence in social theory as those of actor and system, autonomy can be maintained while avoiding the counterintuitive aspects of Luhmann's theory. (shrink)

Empirical evidence indicates that conscious states, distinguished by the presence of phenomenal qualities, are closely linked to synchronized neural activity patterns whose dynamical characteristics can be attributed to self-organized criticality and phase transitions. These findings imply that insight into the mechanism by which the brain controls phase transitions will provide a deeper understanding of the fundamental mechanism by which the brain manages to transcend the threshold of consciousness. This article aims to show that the initiation of phase transitions and the (...) formation of synchronized activity patterns is due to the coupling of the brain to the zero-point field (ZPF), which plays a central role in quantum electrodynamics (QED). The ZPF stands for the presence of ubiquitous vacuum fluctuations of the electromagnetic field, represented by a spectrum of normal modes. With reference to QED-based model calculations, the details of the coupling mechanism are revealed, suggesting that critical brain dynamics is governed by the resonant interaction of the ZPF with the most abundant neurotransmitter glutamate. The pyramidal neurons in the cortical microcolumns turn out to be ideally suited to control this interaction. A direct consequence of resonant glutamate-ZPF coupling is the amplification of specific ZPF modes, which leads us to conclude that the ZPF is the key to the understanding of consciousness and that the distinctive feature of neurophysiological processes associated with conscious experience consists in modulating the ZPF. Postulating that the ZPF is an inherently sentient field and assuming that the spectrum of phenomenal qualities is represented by the normal modes of the ZPF, the significance of resonant glutamate-ZPF interaction for the formation of conscious states becomes apparent in that the amplification of specific ZPF modes is inextricably linked with the excitation of specific phenomenal qualities. This theory of consciousness, according to which phenomenal states arise through resonant amplification of zero-point modes, is given the acronym TRAZE. An experimental setup is specified that can be used to test a corollary of the theory, namely, the prediction that normally occurring conscious perceptions are absent under experimental conditions in which resonant glutamate-ZPF coupling is disrupted. (shrink)