For Neuroscientists

For Neuroscientists

Neuromythography is a fresh method and rich information model built atop a hyper-detailed interpretation of modern neuroscience, that attempts to bypass the obsolescent abstract psychological jargon that, we argue, hinders understanding. The coming of something like this has been long been foretold by the eliminative materialist prophets. Our expression medium of choice is myth, which is certainly not what the eliminative materialists had in mind, but represents a good comeback story for the Jungian psychoanalysts. Neuromythography is rigorous, painstaking, artful, and very serious fun, and designed to liberate neuroscience from the creaky Enlightenment-era pantheon of abstract mental nouns–"reities", if you will--that neuroscientists are constrained to.

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For a deeper dive, we invite you to preorder the book, The Neuromythographic Method. To really appreciate the problem we are trying to solve with neuromythography, we invite you to sit with the following allegory.

The summer symposium of the Terran Society of Zeta Reticuli, the home planet of the famous grey aliens, had a focus topic:

What is the Function of Tommy Karevik? 

Tommy Karevik is a fireman in Sweden. He is also the current lead singer of Kamelot, a US-based band based in Tampa, Florida, whose style is classified as European symphonic metal.  Is he a fireman or a singer? Is his presence sufficient to classify Kamelot as a European band even though it is based in Tampa? The discrete function of this human was challenging for the alien researchers to interpret.

One faction, whose adherents were categorized as occupationalists, argued that function should reflect what an entity spends most of its time doing.  They argued that the function of Mr. Karevik is to transport water to fires in order to restore local temperature homeostasis. 

Another faction, known as the kleosists (after the ancient Greek word kleos, meaning 'fame'), argued that function should reflect what an entity is best known for.  They deemed the function of Mr. Karevik to be primarily to produce harmonic vocalizations synchronized to pacing rhythms. 

A third faction, the evolutionary psychologists, argued that the evolutionary function of Mr. Karevik is to provide European symphonic metal music behaviors to the band necessary to survive in an otherwise hostile American musical environment.  These researchers were stand-up performers skilled at improvising an ad hoc origin story when handed a behavioral trait on an index card. ​Mr. Karevik was therefore simply an adaptive mechanism that sprang forth from the invisible hand of convergent evolution. 

A fourth faction, the philosophers, admonished that the entire discussion was an example of the mereological fallacy. Fires are fought by fire departments, not firemen. Bands play a band's music, not individuals. It makes no sense to ascribe functions to a particular component--Mr. Karevik--that exclusively belong to the whole.

A fifth faction argued that it made no sense to speak of the function of Tommy Karevik altogether except as a cog within a "system of interlocking, interdependent cultural logics".  

A sixth faction, who were known for theories of people that begin with the letter ‘E’, proposed to transcend Mr. Karevik himself by proposing that the fourth faction’s cultural logics were “emergent, embodied, enactive, and extended” from Society and a complex dynamic system, and that characterizing Mr. Karevik in particular was not even metaphysically possible.

A lone researcher spoke up from the back. She asked the audience, "What if Tommy Karevik just does what a Tommy Karevik does? What if we just got to know who he is by studying how he behaves in different situations, where he comes from, and who he interacts with, instead of trying to stuff him into our ill-fitting why theories? Has anyone read the Taoist Zhuangzi and his parable of Butcher Ding, and reflected upon the importance of 'cutting nature at its joints' instead of projecting our own pre-existing categories upon it?" 

The audience stared at her blankly, with dark lidless eyes.  Telepathically, the panel chair, a galaxy-renowned philosopher of science and ornithologist, called for a recess. He quietly ordered an implementation of the Hippasus Protocol, a cultural custom that the Zeta Reticulans had adopted from the Terrans. 

After much lively discussion, the symposium panel ultimately agreed upon a consensus position: more study funding was urgently needed.  In the concluding remarks, the chairperson announced the topic of next year's session:

"What is the function of the Terran brain nucleus known as the periaqueductal grey: fight, flight, freeze, fear, panic, hunting, music pleasure, species-specific vocalizations, joy, maternal behaviors, spirituality, sexual motor control, urination, or involvement in modulating flexible behaviors adaptive to dynamic environmental contexts?" 

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Have an idea for a collaboration? Neuromemex is the commercial licensing organization.

The Neuromythography Institute

The home of neuromythography

The Neuromythography Institute

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