The obsolete machine metaphor of neural centrality persists despite contrary neuroscience

Evidence

I would simply like to analyze the ideological cliche´ attached to the functioning of brains as much as to that of machines, the cliche´ of a centered and centralizing program that leaves no room for plasticity and entertains no relation with alterity. Why does this cliche´, despite being undermined by scientific discoveries, have such endurance? Why does it prevent us from clearly thinking about and conceptualizing what, in effect, we live, what in many respects we make—our brains, which are, once more, our work, fashioned throughout a whole life within the intimate experience of the outside? Why doesn’t the resolutely obsolete character of cybernetic metaphors, revealed by current research on brain plasticity, leap out at us more clearly, given that we live in a period of ”weak” Artificial Intelligence? — Catherine Malabou, What Should We Do with Our Brain?, 130

Categorization

• QUESTION: Why would a debunked centering metaphor survive years of counter-evidence? Cognitive inertia, institutional convenience, ideological investment in docile-subject metaphors are all plausible and worth chasing.
• XREF: Directly relevant to the memo-catching goal: the ideological ‘center-programming’ cliche is exactly the metaphor that flexibility-as-docility rebranding trades on.