A Neuroanthropology? Intimate Technology, Enhancement, and the Need for Neuro Literacy

Contemporary neuroscience and neurotechnology promise access to human
cognition, emotion, and identity by decoding neural processes. This article
argues that such dominant frameworks reduce complex embodied, relational,
and temporal human existence to measurable neural evidence and data—a
reductionism with profound ethical and democratic consequences. Against this
trend, we discuss the figure of the underdetermined human: a being constituted
by vulnerability, relational intersubjectivity, normativity, and temporality, and
resistant to exhaustive scientific description.
The rise of intimate neurotechnology—particularly brain-computer interfaces and
neural prostheses—intensifies these tensions, demanding more than conventional
applied medical ethics. Adequate governance requires anthropological reflection
and neuro literacy as a democratic virtue. The underdetermined human is not a
problem to be optimized, but the foundation of democratic culture.