The neuronal-mental continuity claim is philosophical, not strictly scientific.

Evidence

This chief affirmation, which is the basis for all ”reductions” (in other words, the basis for assimilating the mind to a natural datum), is at once the strongest and the weakest point of neuroscientific discourse in general. It is the strongest because, even if sometimes shocking, it is incontestably, whatever we think of it, the expression of a real advance: it has enabled us to approach phenomena such as memory, perception, learning—even psychical and behavioral problems—more and more precisely and objectively. In the most general way, it constitutes a new approach to the subject by affirming the existence of a ”neuronal self.” It is the weakest because the certainty of the continuity between the neuronal and the mental can obviously never be a strictly scientific postulate. It necessarily constitutes a philosophical or epistemological position and such positions are not always clearly articulated. I will therefore attempt to question the presuppositions attached to this continuity, not to contest it in itself but to show that its development and function are precisely discontinuous—that it is, in other words, a question of a complex continuity. — Catherine Malabou, What Should We Do with Our Brain?, 184

Categorization

• QUESTION: Worth chasing: what exactly are the unarticulated presuppositions loading the neuronal-mental continuity, and does naming them help the reader dispute ‘brain as flexible workplace’ memos?
• DEEPTHINKING: The maneuver of granting a claim its real strength while showing its foundational status is epistemological rather than scientific — and then reading discontinuity into the continuity — is dense and reusable.