  The ontogeny of cognitive neuroscience has emerged within the hegemony of
substance ontology. Persistent physicalist influences are described through
three developmental hallmarks that yielded epistemic attractors - promoters and
perpetuators of material-discursive practices oriented toward reification and
self-vindication across the interdisciplinary spectrum which, as a whole, has
been driven away from its pretensions to scientific realism. In virtue of a
desire for a radical return thereto, we adopt a metaphysic stance akin to
pragmatism, and briefly make the case that such concerns have sociopolitical
implications extending far beyond the realm of mere philosophical interest.
