Remember when neurohype was supposed to replace thinking about thinking? Neuroskeptic offers a spring cleaning tip:
… take this sentence about stress and the benefits of meditation.
“Stress activates your amygdala, creates a red alert, activates your flight-or-fight symptoms, and heats up your system. Your thinking brain gets totally frozen and completely hijacked by your emotional brain.”
Impressive – but what happens if we take out the word “brain”, and the other neuroscientific terms like “amygdala”? Then we’re left with
“Stress creates a red alert, activates your flight-or-fight symptoms, and heats up your system. Your thoughts get totally frozen and completely hijacked by your emotions.” More.
A normal sentence in English.
If technical terms don’t tell us anything new, they’re not adding information.
See also: Would we give up naturalism to solve the hard problem of consciousness?
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