3398
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Epiphenomenalism makes the mind totally pointless [Alexander,S]
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Full Idea:
Epiphenomenalism supposes something to exist in nature which has nothing to do and no purpose to serve.
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From:
Samuel Alexander (works [1927]), quoted by Jaegwon Kim - Philosophy of Mind p.129
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A reaction:
An objection, but not, I think, a strong one. The fact, for example, that sweat is shiny is the result of good evolutionary reasons, but I cannot think of any purpose which it serves. All events which are purposeful are likely to have side-effects.
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12727
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It's impossible, but imagine a body carrying on normally, but with no mind [Leibniz]
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Full Idea:
If it could be supposed that a body exists without a mind, then a man would do everything in the same way as if he did not have a mind, and men would speak and write the same things, without knowing what they do. ...But this supposition is impossible.
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From:
Gottfried Leibniz (Paper of December 1676 [1676], A6.3.400), quoted by Daniel Garber - Leibniz:Body,Substance,Monad 5
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A reaction:
This is clearly the zombie dream, three centuries before Robert Kirk's modern invention of the idea. Leibniz's reason for denying the possibility of zombies won't be the modern physicalist reason.
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