Epiphenomenalism: The thorn of dualism is to bridge two things that have been defined in opposition. Recognized approaches towards tackling this gap include interactionism (there is a third thing that unites), supervenience (mind manifests from matter), and epiphenomenalism (mind exists as an effect of matter without being a cause itself). Epiphenomenalism is the least intuitive of this triad, as...
Meta: I have written about epiphenomenalism on the 28-29th October, and will continue to do so here in parallel with my reading of the IEP article on the subject (beginning at section 4 therein). The 18-19th centuries assumed dualism and scientific naturalism, but given the observation that there was no need (for instance) to postulate the mental in order to explain neurophysiology (i.e. material...
Epiphenomenalism[I] is a brand of dualism in which mind and matter are two different manifestations of existence, but holding mind to be ontologically inferior to matter, and there is some form of logical flow – not necessarily causality per se – from matter to mind. The term as used in the late 19th century provides another analogy through its definition: a secondary symptom of a...
