Epiphenomenalism anyone?

[cacian]

I am trying to get ahead with this concept but I am not sure I am doing the right thing.
here is a passage I am to decipher
I quote:

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. On the epiphenomenalist view, mental events play no causal role in this process. Huxley (1874), who held the view, compared mental events to a steam whistle that contributes nothing to the work of a locomotive. James (1879), who rejected the view, characterized epiphenomenalists' mental events as not affecting the brain activity that produces them “any more than a shadow reacts upon the steps of the traveller whom it accompanies”.


is this phenomena a paradox of denial that tries justifies an act any act or is it a mental exercise not may are aware of?
is it an out of body experience without hallucinogenic interior??

either way I don't get it any help or views on this would be great :)

[PeterL]

I don't know much about it, but I believe that it is an attempt to understand the relationship between mind and body without knowing that neurotransmitters exist. In fact, the mind influences the body and the body influences the brain, and the brain can't be understood at all unless one considers it to be part of the body.


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.

If one thinks that the firing of neurons is not mental activity, then Epiphenomenalism might make sense, but behavior is caused by impulses sent from the brain to the muscles, etc. as results of mental activity.

If one is studying the history of science, then looking at Epiphenomenalism might be reasoanble, but science has moved well beyond it, and still has a way to go.

[mal4mac]

Quote later on from that article:

"One might have thought that if the mental and the physical are identical, there could be no room for epiphenomenalistic questions to arise. Behavior is caused by muscular events, and these are caused by neural events. Mental events will be identical with some of these neural events; so whatever effects these neural events have will be effects of mental events, and mental events will make a causal contribution to, i.e., will “make a difference” to our behavior.

Questions about epiphenomenalism, however, arise the moment any distinction is made between the mental properties and the physical properties of an event. There are several ways of doing this within a broadly materialist monism..."

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/epiphenomenalism/#ArgAgeM

So epiphenomenalism is still going strong in some quarters, even if "materialist monism" is accepted.

[YesNo]

Epiphenomenalism tries to reduce mental activity or consciousness to physics somewhere in the body. I agree with William James in rejecting this position. The body is something we play like an instrument. It does not play us. This is especially evident since neuroplasticity has replaced the idea of the brain as a static organ: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroplasticity

I was reading Thomas Nagel's Mortal Questions recently where he has a chapter on panpsychism. He provides an example of the difficulty of trying to maintain an emergent form of epiphenominalism.

Panpsychism is the view that everything is in some way conscious. Now Nagel is not a theist (to my knowledge) nor a new age psychic. His problem is essentially how can one maintain a materialist reductionist view and also allow consciousness to emergence as something new even as an epiphenomenon. If everything can be reduced to physical properties, if physics is causally closed, those mental properties must be reduced as well. Since he doesn't believe in a soul of any sort, those mental properties must be in all matter, hence panpsychism.

This pushes consciousness down to the subatomic level (and might incidentally explain some of the indeterminism there if his view is correct). However, what is worse for a materialist position, because of the evidence for the big bang, this also pushes conscious right outside of space and time to exist along with whatever quantum "field" might have been present to start our universe. At this point I don't see any difference between his view and some theisms.

[mal4mac]

Panpsychism is the view that everything is in some way conscious...


How would you determine if this is true or not?



how can one maintain a materialist reductionist view and also allow consciousness to emergence as something new even as an epiphenomenon.


There are several ways round this. For instance, you could take a materialist reductionist view for all events except for certain neural events.

[cacian]

Epiphenomenalism tries to reduce mental activity or consciousness to physics somewhere in the body. I agree with William James in rejecting this position. The body is something we play like an instrument. It does not play us. This is especially evident since neuroplasticity has replaced the idea of the brain as a static organ: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroplasticity

I was reading Thomas Nagel's Mortal Questions recently where he has a chapter on panpsychism. He provides an example of the difficulty of trying to maintain an emergent form of epiphenominalism.

Panpsychism is the view that everything is in some way conscious. Now Nagel is not a theist (to my knowledge) nor a new age psychic. His problem is essentially how can one maintain a materialist reductionist view and also allow consciousness to emergence as something new even as an epiphenomenon. If everything can be reduced to physical properties, if physics is causally closed, those mental properties must be reduced as well. Since he doesn't believe in a soul of any sort, those mental properties must be in all matter, hence panpsychism.

This pushes consciousness down to the subatomic level (and might incidentally explain some of the indeterminism there if his view is correct). However, what is worse for a materialist position, because of the evidence for the big bang, this also pushes conscious right outside of space and time to exist along with whatever quantum "field" might have been present to start our universe. At this point I don't see any difference between his view and some theisms.

Is it possible to give an instance an example of what it actually trying to mean?

[YesNo]

Is it possible to give an instance an example of what it actually trying to mean?

If something is an epiphenomenon then it would be something like how fast it is moving or its overall shape or color. All of these would be caused by the matter itself and its relationship to other objects. They are secondary.

Is mind nothing more than the "color" of matter or its "shape" or "speed"? Can mind be reduced to matter and its relationship to other matter? If so then matter has mental properties which are, so far as I know, undetected physically. Let's not forget that matter itself isn't all that substantial. The atom is mostly empty space. The subatomic particles when represented as waves of probabilities don't seem to have any substance themselves at all. Matter even fits into Einstein's equation with energy on one side.

The metaphysical requirement for reductionism to be true is what pushes Nagel into his belief in panpsychism, at least as I understand what he wrote.

[YesNo]

How would you determine if this is true or not?



There are several ways round this. For instance, you could take a materialist reductionist view for all events except for certain neural events.

There might be ways around this. I am just pointing out Nagel's concerns. Do you have a reference I could read on this approach?

[cacian]

If something is an epiphenomenon then it would be something like how fast it is moving or its overall shape or color. All of these would be caused by the matter itself and its relationship to other objects. They are secondary.

Is mind nothing more than the "color" of matter or its "shape" or "speed"? Can mind be reduced to matter and its relationship to other matter? If so then matter has mental properties which are, so far as I know, undetected physically. Let's not forget that matter itself isn't all that substantial. The atom is mostly empty space. The subatomic particles when represented as waves of probabilities don't seem to have any substance themselves at all. Matter even fits into Einstein's equation with energy on one side.

The metaphysical requirement for reductionism to be true is what pushes Nagel into his belief in panpsychism, at least as I understand what he wrote.

ok let's put it in a different way.
here is an example of what I think you are saying
if someone committed a crime then they could justify the act as being an epiphenomenalism.
that the body did what it did irrelevant to what the mind observed.
is that the idea?

[mal4mac]

If someone tries to justify a crime by saying he had no mental control over what he was doing the judge should, and will, lock him up for the same length of time as someone who says he has mental control. So, really, it doesn't matter.

[YesNo]

ok let's put it in a different way.
here is an example of what I think you are saying
if someone committed a crime then they could justify the act as being an epiphenomenalism.
that the body did what it did irrelevant to what the mind observed.
is that the idea?

I agree with mal4mac about what would happen if someone said his body committed the crime so he should be let off. I would want to lock that body up depending on the amount of damage it was causing.

If mental properties are epiphenomena, all caused by the body, then there is no point in blaming someone for committing a crime. Those someones aren't there in any significant way to blame.

[mal4mac]

If mental properties are epiphenomena, all caused by the body, then there is no point in blaming someone for committing a crime. Those someones aren't there in any significant way to blame.

I blame genetics and the environment. Who is left to blame? I want to lock up that part of "my" environment that is doing the thieving.

[YesNo]

I take a view closer to common sense and blame the person and not the body even if there is a lot of "unconscious" activity going on. Those thinking mental properties can be reduced to genetics and the environment need to deal with Thomas Nagel's objections.

In checking the internet for Nagel, it looks like he has written a book recently that has generated some controversy: Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False That's a mouthful. I'm wondering whether I should stop what I'm reading now and get the Kindle edition.

Here is a review by Michael Chorost that illustrates the controversy: http://chronicle.com/article/Where-Thomas-Nagel-Went-Wrong/139129/

This quote is from Chorost's article:


The Weekly Standard quoted the philosopher Daniel Dennett calling Nagel a member of a "retrograde gang" whose work "isn't worth anything—it's cute and it's clever and it's not worth a damn."

Dennett's remark sounds irrational, which is what I find most interesting about it. If Dennett needs irrationality to respond to Nagel, there must be something seriously threatening in Nagel's viewpoint. That makes Nagel's ideas seem worth examining.