The use of brain scans, neuroscientific language, and neuro-authority to dismiss experience, consciousness, and meaning. Neuroscientific Sophism reduces every human phenomenon to brain activity, then uses that reduction to dismiss the phenomenon itself: "love is just dopamine"; "consciousness is just neural firing"; "spiritual experience is just temporal lobe activity." It's sophistry in a lab coat: using science's authority to explain away, not explain.
"Your meditation experience is just your prefrontal cortex deactivating. Neuroscientific Sophism: using brain scans to dismiss experience. The reduction was meant to explain away, not illuminate. But the experience remains, whether or not you can see it on an fMRI."
by Abzugal Nammugal Enkigal March 7, 2026
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