Three Forms of Neurorealism: Explaining the Persistence of the “Uncritically Real” in Popular Neuroscience News

Abstract

Neuro-realism is a widely cited concept describing a textual phenomenon in popular science news wherein brain research uncritically validates or invalidates the "realness" of particular beliefs or practices. Currently, no research on neuro-realism examines the variable rhetorical roles of such statements, that is, how they support specialized arguments or enhance social functions across genres of public communication. This article details the nuances of neuro-realism, arguing that neuro-realism is much more than a singular textual phenomenon but a flexible rhetorical vehicle manifesting in at least three forms: commonsense, judicial, and rational. Each form serves a larger argumentative purpose, and each can be consistently linked to a popular news subgenre, illuminating how neuro-realism's stunning lack of criticality proves permissible and reproducible in popular science publications.

Stream your brain! Speculative economy of the IoT and its pan-kinetic dataveillance

“…Although this actuator customizability is what enables the headset producers to promise all these future “solutions” only with less than fifteen sensors on a single headset, none of user-customized EEG applications currently work as seamlessly as Fitbit or Apple Watch does. However, for many individual EEG users, these customization experiences could still be the proof of “neuro-realism” (Gruber, 2017), the belief that there are hidden realities in their brains correlatable to any internal and external events they experience. Furthermore, through the headsets’ wireless transmission of brainwaves, this belief about a brain’s unexamined potentials can expand even to those never actualizable by a too-restricted human body and its hardwired sensorimotor responses but available through these cloud-based IoT devices, for instance, the remote control of a machine by using one’s brainwaves only.…”

Toward a Critical NeuroArt for a Critical Neuroscience

“…Watching the stock phrases pop into the same basic sentence structures highlights uncritical presentations of neuroscience even as those same headlines position neuroscience as the ultimate and final word on the "realness" of some belief or habit, i.e. the work (re)generates the phenomena of "neurorealism" as noted by science studies scholars [31]. The algorithmic functionality underscores the speed and potential thoughtlessness of online news in an age where simplifications of science can result from media marketing agendas and financial interests that habitually republish "hot topics" [32].…”

Response to Wilkinson: A Neuro‐Informed Humanistic Perspective

“…One of the primary issues in applying neuroscientific research using a humanistic counseling–based framework involves thinking through the relationship between brain and mind, between the material and the immaterial (Gruber, ; Schwartz & Begley, ). This question has long been referred to in philosophy as the mind–brain problem (Honderich, ).…”

“…There is little doubt among contemporary natural scientists that all that is is based on physical realities (see Gruber, ; Schultz, ). The current philosophical debate is not about the specific nature of the mind (physical vs. nonphysical); rather, it concerns the specific ways in which what we call the mind may arise from neurological processes (LeDoux, ).…”