Neuroscientific Orthodoxy

The established, institutionalized set of beliefs and practices that define mainstream neuroscience—the often-unexamined assumptions about how to study the brain, what questions are worth asking, what methods are legitimate, and how findings should be interpreted. Neuroscientific orthodoxy includes commitments: that localization of function is the goal, that brain imaging is the gold standard, that animal models reveal human brain function, that neural correlates are the path to understanding, that reductionism is progress, that more data is always better, that neuroscience will eventually explain consciousness. Like all orthodoxies, it provides a research program and community identity, but it functions as gatekeeping—determining who gets funded, what gets published, which careers advance, and what questions are worth asking. Neuroscientific orthodoxy shapes not just what we know about brains but what we think it's possible to know, making certain approaches seem scientific and others "philosophical" or "unscientific."

Example: "Her research on consciousness was dismissed as 'not real neuroscience' because it didn't use imaging—neuroscientific orthodoxy, where method defines the field rather than questions. The orthodoxy's power is making its tools feel like the only tools."

Neuroscientific Orthodoxy by Dumu The Void March 17, 2026