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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 Ref
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]
| 2307 | Anomalous monism says nothing at all about the relationship between mental and physical [Davidson, by Kim] |
| 5497 | Mind is outside science, because it is humanistic and partly normative [Davidson, by Lycan] |
| 4081 | Anomalous monism says causes are events, so the mental and physical are identical, without identical properties [Davidson, by Crane] |
| 2321 | If rule-following and reason are 'anomalies', does that make reductionism impossible? [Davidson, by Kim] |
| 3404 | Davidson claims that mental must be physical, to make mental causation possible [Davidson, by Kim] |
| 3963 | There are no strict psychophysical laws connecting mental and physical events [Davidson] |
| 3961 | Obviously all mental events are causally related to physical events [Davidson] |
| 3965 | Mental entities do not add to the physical furniture of the world [Davidson] |
| 2597 | Contrary to the 'anomalous monist' view, there may well be intentional causal laws [Fodor] |
| 7858 | If causes are basic particulars, this doesn't make conscious and physical properties identical [Papineau] |
| 6121 | There are many psychophysicals laws - about the effects of sweets, colours and soft cushions [Mellor/Crane] |
| 5339 | Cars and bodies obey principles of causation, without us knowing any 'strict laws' about them [Flanagan] |
| 3530 | Denial of purely mental causation will lead to epiphenomenalism [Maslin] |