Epiphenomalism

**Night Wolf** · 01-08-2006 01:38 AM

Well my folks gave me this really awesome book for Christmas called "The Pig That Wants To Be Eaten."

Basically it's a whole book of thought experiments (for those of you not familiar, these are imaginary scenarios that philosophers come up with to strip problems down to their bare essences.)

I thought it might be fun to post one on here and see what people think, so here it is:

Epiphenia was a remarkable planet. So like Earth in appearance, and yet its inhabitants were different in one remarkable way. As one of them, Huxley, explained to the visiting Earthling Dirk, the Epiphens had long ago 'discovered' that their thoughts did not affect their actions. Thoughts were the effects of bodily processes, not the other way around. Dirk found this baffling.

"You can't really believe this", he protested to Huxley. "For instance, when we met in this bar you said, "Gee I could kill for a beer," and ordered one. Are you saying that the thought "I want a beer" had no effect on your actions?"

"Of course it didn't," replied Huxley, as though the question were idiotic. "We have thoughts and these often precede actions. But we know full well that these thought's aren't causing the actions. My body and brain were already gearing up to order a beer. The thought "I could kill a beer" was just something that popped into my head as a result of what was happening in the physical brain and body. Thoughts don't cause actions."

"For Epiphens maybe," replied Dirk.
"Well I can't see what's so different about humans," said Huxley, and for a while at least, nor could Dirk.

Epiphenomalism is the view that thoughts and other mental events do not cause anything in the physical world, including our actions. Rather, that the brain and body work like some kind of purely physical machine, and our concious experience is a by-product, caused by the machine but not affecting it.

But if what goes on in our minds has no impact on what we actually do, the world we think of is actually an illusion. But is this really the consequence of accepting epiphenomalism? The imaginary land of Epiphenia is designed to test the idea that no one can live with the truth of epiphenomalism.

Is it really possible to divorce what we believe about the link between thought and action and how we actaully live? For example, take a situation where the thinking seems to be crucial. Say you're trying to work out a solution to a tricky logical or mathematical problem. Eventually, the eureka moment comes. In this case, surely the actual thinking has to play a part in the explanation for your actions?

Well, no. Why can't I believe that the concious experience of thinking is just a byproduct of the computing that is going on at brain level? It may be the necessary by-product. But just as the noise that a boiling pot of water makes is an inevitable by-product of the heating without meaning it is the noise which cooks the egg, so thought could be the necessary by-product of neural computation that doesn't itself produce the solution to the problem.

Indeed if you think about thinking, there does seem to be something almost involuntary about it. Solutions 'come to us', for example, not we to them. Reflect on what it really feels like to think, and the idea that it is a by-product of a process you are not concious of may not seem quite so fanciful.

**Belisarius** · 01-10-2006 05:00 AM

Epiphenomalism is true in a way.

"Thoughts" as conscious events don't affect anything, they are just another kind of perception like seeing or hearing. Sights and sounds work in the same way, they are, in essence, merely events before our consciousness.

**Krrish** · 01-10-2006 05:39 AM

Complete list of thought experiments 8)

**R.Carter** · 01-10-2006 03:21 PM

That's an interesting concept. The more you think about it the more
believable it is. I'll have to come back to this when I've got more time.
See ya!

**Belisarius** · 01-11-2006 05:47 AM

The only problem is that if your thoughts are merely another experience for your consciousness, then how does your thinking brain know that thought is merely an experience before your consciousness?

**Night Wolf** · 01-11-2006 06:22 AM

Originally posted by Belisarius
The only problem is that if your thoughts are merely another experience for your consciousness, then how does your thinking brain know that thought is merely an experience before your consciousness?

Well I agree that it is very hard to imagine our whole spectrum of experiences and thoughts are merely the product of our interaction with our environment.

Damn that's a hard question to wrap your brain around! However, if you were to completely accept epiphenomalism, then it does not really matter that our conciousness can know that thought is a by-product of actions.
Our conciousness is surely a by-product of our thoughts?

So if our thoughts make up our conciousness and our actions make up our thoughts, then our conciousness is just a by-product of our actions also.

Comments/Criticisms?

**AirRick101** · 01-12-2006 08:04 AM

It kind of takes off the pressure from believing that all of our thoughts and feelings will manifest one way or another. Great thought experiment! Thumbs up

**R.Carter** · 01-12-2006 03:19 PM

Originally posted by Belisarius
The only problem is that if your thoughts are merely another experience for your consciousness, then how does your thinking brain know that thought is merely an experience before your consciousness?

The thinking brain has learned this through experience, presumably.
Our intelligence allows us to observe the process in which our brain initiates
action and our conciousness follows up with contemplation and often
augmentation of the original impulse. Our behavior will always be tempered
by previous experience, keeping us from repeating mistakes or allowing
us to learn from the observed actions of others.

**Belisarius** · 01-13-2006 02:23 AM

Originally posted by Night Wolf

Well I agree that it is very hard to imagine our whole spectrum of experiences and thoughts are merely the product of our interaction with our environment.

Damn that's a hard question to wrap your brain around! However, if you were to completely accept epiphenomalism, then it does not really matter that our conciousness can know that thought is a by-product of actions.
Our conciousness is surely a by-product of our thoughts?

So if our thoughts make up our conciousness and our actions make up our thoughts, then our conciousness is just a by-product of our actions also.

Comments/Criticisms?

Our consciousness isn't merely a byproduct of our thoughts, we are also conscious of our feelings, memories, sight, smell, taste, sound, etc... If our thoughts weren't there we'd still have consciousness.

The thinking brain has learned this through experience, presumably.
Our intelligence allows us to observe the process in which our brain initiates
action and our conciousness follows up with contemplation and often
augmentation of the original impulse. Our behavior will always be tempered
by previous experience, keeping us from repeating mistakes or allowing
us to learn from the observed actions of others.[/b]

If our consciousness thinks, and that thought later affects our actions, then epiphenomalism isn't true. Furthermore, if the thinking brain can expereince consciousness, then our consciousness is merely part of our brain's function.

**FluBB** · 02-01-2006 05:56 AM

you guys should check this out

http://www.bigissueground.com/philosophy/a...dandbrain.shtml

you might find it interesting, i did.

FluBB

**Belisarius** · 02-02-2006 05:50 AM

My favorite theory on the mind-brain religionship is the Berkelian one, but I stop at how to explain the complex nature of the "physical illusion". Berkely says, according to the article, that what makes experience so patterened and common is common access to "The Mind of God". I would say it's certainly a plausible theory, but that there are many others, in fact, you could begin an entirely new field of Philosophy just about answers to the question,"Why is experience so patterened and complex?"

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