Epiphenomenalism
***** STUB *****Epiphenomenal theories of consciousness say that mental states are simply a by-product of physical activity, they don't actually affect anything. According to the 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. On the epiphenomenalist view, mental events play no causal role in this process."The concept of epiphenomenalism is often used interchangeably with the concept of emergent phenomena. Although valid in many cases (think of the emergent epiphenomena in Conway's Life), the two are not strictly equivalent. It's possible to theorise emergent phenomena that are not epiphenomenal and vice versa.
(Robinson 2012)
Epiphenomenalism can either be physicalist or dualist.
If consciousness is indeed epiphenomenal then this effectively relegates consciousness to the role of an impotent observer and makes free will an illusion. As such it has the same moral implications as determinism.
Epiphenomenalism also suffers from a problem of asymmetry; if physical events can cause mental events then there must be some form of interaction between the two. Once we have assumed such an interaction mechanism exists then why should it operate in only one direction? Why should the physical be able to influence the mental but not vice versa? This objection leads to the favouring of either interactionism or eliminativism over epiphenomenalism.
References:
Robinson, William. 2012. Epiphenomenalism, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2012 Edition)
