Single Idea 3530

[catalogued under 17. Mind and Body / D. Property Dualism / 2. Anomalous Monism]

Full Idea

If mental events are causally efficacious only by virtue of their physical features and not their mental ones, …then anomalous monism leads straight to ephiphenomenalism.

Gist of Idea

Denial of purely mental causation will lead to epiphenomenalism

Source

Keith T. Maslin (Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind [2001], 7.6)

Book Reference

Maslin,Keith: 'An Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind' [Polity 2001], p.203


A Reaction

As epiphenomenalism strikes me as being incoherent (see Idea 7379), what this amounts to is that either mental effects are causally efficacious, or they are not worth mentioning. I take them to be causally efficacious because they are brain events.

Related Idea

Idea 7379 If an epiphenomenon has no physical effects, it has to be undetectable [Dennett]