why does churchland think epiphenomenalism is strange course hero

What is epiphenomenalism like?

What is the idea that our conscious minds serve no role in affecting the physical world?

What is consciousness in psychology?

What is the problem with dualism?

Does the mind exist?

Who said our thoughts are like clocks?

Is consciousness a mistake?

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Epiphenomenalism - Wikipedia

Epiphenomenalism is a position on the mind–body problem which holds that physical and biochemical events within the human body (sense organs, neural impulses, and muscle contractions, for example) are the sole cause of mental events (thought, consciousness, and cognition). According to this view, subjective mental events are completely dependent for their existence on corresponding physical ...

Epiphenomenalism (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

Epiphenomenalism is the view that mental events are caused by physical events in the brain, but have no effects upon any physical events. Behavior is caused by muscles that contract upon receiving neural impulses, and neural impulses are generated by input from other neurons or from sense organs.

What is epiphenomenalism like?

According to epiphenomenalism, we are like children pretending to drive a car — it can be great fun, but we are really not in charge.

What is the idea that our conscious minds serve no role in affecting the physical world?

Epiphenomenalism is the idea that our conscious minds serve no role in affecting the physical world.

What is consciousness in psychology?

In this theory, consciousness is something that emerges from the sum of our cognitive processes — or, more specifically, the “capacity of a system to integrate information,” as Tononi writes. In other words, consciousness is a net product of all the other things our mind is doing, such as synchronizing sensory inputs, focusing on specific objects, accessing various types of memory, and so on. The mind is an overseer at the center of a huge web and is the result or byproduct of all the incredibly complex things it needs to do.

What is the problem with dualism?

The problem in dualism is understanding how something mental, nonphysical, and subjective possibly could affect the physical world and especially my physical body. Yet, it clearly happens. For instance, if I want a cupcake, I make my hand move toward it.

Does the mind exist?

It seems to suggest that the mind does exist but that it can be fully explained and accounted for by other physical processes. For instance, if we suppose our consciousness is the product of our complex and various sensory inputs, as Godfrey-Smith offers, then what does conscious thought actually add to the equation that our sight, smell, interoception, and so on are not already doing? By analogy, if a “traffic jam” is just the term for a collection of stationary cars and trucks, what does the concept “traffic jam” add that all those vehicles don’t already provide? A traffic jam has no causal role to play.

Who said our thoughts are like clocks?

Anthropologist Thomas Huxley argued that our thoughts are a bit like a clock’s chime at the hour. It makes a sound, but it makes no difference at all to the time. Likewise, our thoughts and subjective feelings might be very nice and appear very special to us, but they are completely uninvolved.

Is consciousness a mistake?

This is not to say that consciousness is a mistake or without value. After all, without it, I would not be me and you would not be you. Pleasure would not exist. There would be no world at all. We cannot even imagine a life without consciousness. And epiphenomenalism does believe that physical events, like our synaptic sparks and neuronal interactions, do cause our mental events.

What would happen if epiphenomenalism was true?

Thus, if epiphenomenalism (or, in James’s own language, automaton-theory) were true, the felicitous alignment that generally holds between affective valuation of our feelings and the utility of the activities that generally produce them would require a special explanation.

How would contemporary thinkers respond to the central motivation for epiphenomenalism?

Many contemporary thinkers would respond to the central motivation for epiphenomenalism by denying its dualistic presupposition, i.e., by holding that mental events are identical with physical events, and may therefore have physical effects. Questions that remain for such physicalistic views will be explained in section 3. For now, it should be noted that the argument stated in the previous two paragraphs is not supposed to be an argument for dualism, but only for adopting epiphenomenalism, once dualism is accepted.

What are the two types of mental events?

Many philosophers recognize a distinction between two kinds of mental events. (A) The first goes by many names, e.g., phenomenal experiences, occurrences of qualitative consciousness, the what-it-is-like of experience, qualia . Pains, afterimages, and tastes can serve as examples. (B) Mental events of the second kind are occurrent propositional attitudes, e.g., (occurrent) beliefs and desires. Arguments about epiphenomenalism may concern either type of mental event, and it should not be assumed that an argument given for one type can be rephrased without loss for the other. The two types can often be connected, however, through beliefs that one has one’s experiences. Thus, if it is held that pains have no physical effects, then one must say either (i) pains do not cause beliefs that one is in pain, or (ii) beliefs that one is in pain are epiphenomenal. For, if pains caused beliefs that one is in pain, and the latter had physical effects, then pains would, after all, have effects in the physical world (albeit indirectly). But epiphenomenalism says mental events have no effects in the physical world. [ 1]

What is the view that mental events are caused by physical events in the brain?

Epiphenomenalism. Epiphenomenalism is the view that mental events are caused by physical events in the brain, but have no effects upon any physical events. Behavior is caused by muscles that contract upon receiving neural impulses, and neural impulses are generated by input from other neurons or from sense organs.

Why do we reject epiphenomenalism?

The most powerful reason for rejecting epiphenomenalism is the view that it is incompatible with knowledge of our own minds — and thus, incompatible with knowing that epiphenomenalism is true. (A variant has it that we cannot even succeed in referring to our own minds, if epiphenomenalism is true. See Bailey (2006) for this objection and Robinson (2012) for discussion.) If these destructive claims can be substantiated, then epiphenomenalists are, at the very least, caught in a practical contradiction, in which they must claim to know, or at least believe, a view which implies that they can have no reason to believe it. Moreover, unless epiphenomenalists can consistently claim to know their own minds, they cannot offer the response to the other minds objection given in 2.3 above. (See Walton, 1989.) (Many authors give some version of this objection. For a full statement of this argument, and several others concerning epiphenomenalism, see Chalmers, 1996. For strong recent versions, see DeBrigard, 2014; Moore, 2012 (responded to by Robinson, 2013); and Moore, 2014.)

What is the view that causation of behavior involves only physical properties of our parts?

Many philosophers regarded this view as tantamount to epiphenomenalism, i.e., to the view that causation of our behavior involves only the physical properties of our parts, and that the mental properties as such have no efficacy.

Why do we believe in other minds?

2.3 Knowledge of Other Minds. Our reason for believing in other minds is inference from behavioral effects to mental event causes. But epiphenomenalism denies such a causal connection. Therefore, epiphenomenalism implies the (exceedingly implausible) conclusion that we do not know that others have mental events.

Explanation

Imagine both Pierre and a robot eating a candy bar. Unlike the robot, Pierre is conscious of eating the candy bar while the behavior is under way.

Background

Metaphysical epiphenomenalism has a niche among methodological or scientific behaviorism. In the early 1900's scientific behaviorists such as Ivan Pavlov, John B. Watson, and B.F. Skinner began the attempt to uncover laws describing the relationship between stimuli and responses, without reference to anything inner.

Critical responses

The philosophical behaviorists (as opposed to scientific behaviourists) would reject epiphenomenalism on the grounds that it is, in Gilbert Ryle 's phrase, a " category mistake ." Just as there is no Cartesian "ghost in the machine", there are no ghostly events that accompany behavior in an inner theater.

External links

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What is the view of epiphenomenalism?

Epiphenomenalism. Epiphenomenalism is a position on the mind–body problem which holds that physical and biochemical events within the human body ( sense organs, neural impulses, and muscle contractions, for example) are causal with respect to mental events (thought, consciousness, and cognition). According to this view, subjective mental events are ...

Who proposed the concept of epiphenomenalism?

However, since the cognitive revolution, there have been several who have argued for a version of epiphenomenalism. In 1970, Keith Campbell proposed his "new epiphenomenalism", which states that the body produces a spiritual mind that does not act on the body.

Why is epiphenomenalism considered a form of property dualism?

Because mental events are a kind of overflow that cannot cause anything physical, yet have non-physical properties, epiphenomenalism is viewed as a form of property dualism .

How long does it take for a stimulus to become conscious?

More recently Benjamin Libet et al. (1979) have shown that it can take 0.5 seconds before a stimulus becomes part of conscious experience even though subjects can respond to the stimulus in reaction time tests within 200 milliseconds. The methods and conclusions of this experiment have received much criticism (e.g., see the many critical commentaries in Libet's (1985) target article), including recently by neuroscientists such as Peter Tse, who claim to show that the readiness potential has nothing to do with consciousness at all. Recent research on the Event Related Potential also shows that conscious experience does not occur until the late phase of the potential (P3 or later) that occurs 300 milliseconds or more after the event. In Bregman's auditory continuity illusion, where a pure tone is followed by broadband noise and the noise is followed by the same pure tone it seems as if the tone occurs throughout the period of noise. This also suggests a delay for processing data before conscious experience occurs. Popular science author Tor Nørretranders has called the delay the " user illusion ", implying that we only have the illusion of conscious control, most actions being controlled automatically by non-conscious parts of the brain with the conscious mind relegated to the role of spectator.

How did Huxley defend automatism?

Huxley defended automatism by testing reflex actions , originally supported by Descartes. Huxley hypothesized that frogs that undergo lobotomy would swim when thrown into water, despite being unable to initiate actions. He argued that the ability to swim was solely dependent on the molecular change in the brain, concluding that consciousness is not necessary for reflex actions. According to epiphenomenalism, animals experience pain only as a result of neurophysiology.

What was the scientific behaviorism of the 1960s?

By the 1960s, scientific behaviourism met substantial difficulties and eventually gave way to the cognitive revolution. Participants in that revolution, such as Jerry Fodor, reject epiphenomenalism and insist upon the efficacy of the mind. Fodor even speaks of "epiphobia"—fear that one is becoming an epiphenomenalist.

What did behaviorists believe?

F. Skinner began the attempt to uncover laws describing the relationship between stimuli and responses, without reference to inner mental phenomena. Instead of adopting a form of eliminativism or mental fictionalism, positions that deny that inner mental phenomena exist, a behaviorist was able to adopt epiphenomenalism in order to allow for the existence of mind. George Santayana (1905) believed that all motion has merely physical causes. Because consciousness is accessory to life and not essential to it, natural selection is responsible for ingraining tendencies to avoid certain contingencies without any conscious achievement involved. By the 1960s, scientific behaviourism met substantial difficulties and eventually gave way to the cognitive revolution. Participants in that revolution, such as Jerry Fodor, reject epiphenomenalism and insist upon the efficacy of the mind. Fodor even speaks of "epiphobia"—fear that one is becoming an epiphenomenalist.

What is epiphenomenalism like?

According to epiphenomenalism, we are like children pretending to drive a car — it can be great fun, but we are really not in charge.

What is the idea that our conscious minds serve no role in affecting the physical world?

Epiphenomenalism is the idea that our conscious minds serve no role in affecting the physical world.

What is consciousness in psychology?

In this theory, consciousness is something that emerges from the sum of our cognitive processes — or, more specifically, the “capacity of a system to integrate information,” as Tononi writes. In other words, consciousness is a net product of all the other things our mind is doing, such as synchronizing sensory inputs, focusing on specific objects, accessing various types of memory, and so on. The mind is an overseer at the center of a huge web and is the result or byproduct of all the incredibly complex things it needs to do.

What is the problem with dualism?

The problem in dualism is understanding how something mental, nonphysical, and subjective possibly could affect the physical world and especially my physical body. Yet, it clearly happens. For instance, if I want a cupcake, I make my hand move toward it.

Does the mind exist?

It seems to suggest that the mind does exist but that it can be fully explained and accounted for by other physical processes. For instance, if we suppose our consciousness is the product of our complex and various sensory inputs, as Godfrey-Smith offers, then what does conscious thought actually add to the equation that our sight, smell, interoception, and so on are not already doing? By analogy, if a “traffic jam” is just the term for a collection of stationary cars and trucks, what does the concept “traffic jam” add that all those vehicles don’t already provide? A traffic jam has no causal role to play.

Who said our thoughts are like clocks?

Anthropologist Thomas Huxley argued that our thoughts are a bit like a clock’s chime at the hour. It makes a sound, but it makes no difference at all to the time. Likewise, our thoughts and subjective feelings might be very nice and appear very special to us, but they are completely uninvolved.

Is consciousness a mistake?

This is not to say that consciousness is a mistake or without value. After all, without it, I would not be me and you would not be you. Pleasure would not exist. There would be no world at all. We cannot even imagine a life without consciousness. And epiphenomenalism does believe that physical events, like our synaptic sparks and neuronal interactions, do cause our mental events.

The Pointless Chiming of The Clock

• On any given day, we will make thousands of decisions and perform countless actions. We will move our legs to walk, open our mouths to eat, smile at our friends, kiss our loved ones, and so on. Today, we know enough about neuroscience and physiology to give a complete and full account of how this happens. We can point to the parts of the brain that...

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