Epiphenomenalism’ Developmental Routes In Modern Philosophy Of Mind And Its Issues

Epiphenomenalism assumes event dualism; that there are both physical events, including brain events, and mental events. And there are three basic views in it:(a)mental properties are not reducible to physical properties.(b)These mental properties are determined by physical properties, and most distinctively,(c)these mental properties have no effects. This is kind of unintelligent standpoint and was regarded as a kind of reductio ad absurdum by many romantic philosophers once it appeared, due to that no one would deny that those things such as Mind、Spirit and Consciousness play some certain kind of causal function——this is a kind of commonsense views of the mental. While epiphenomenalist refute that the kind of folk psychology embraces inadequate picture of the causation of the behaviour. If epiphenomenalism is correct, then phenomenal states have no effect on our behaviour. For example, a sensation of pain will play no causal role in my hands moving away from a flame; my remembering that my tutor informed of me to attend tomorrow’s meetings yesterday will not work causally for my deciding whether to go; thus I was also very happy that will no worry about my tutor’ criticisings anymore. Epiphenomenalism is usually put forward as respecting both consciousness and science:it simultaneously accommodates the anti-materialist arguments about consciousness and the causal closure of the physical. At the same time, epiphenomenalism dualism is frequently rejected as deeply couterintuitive.In the contemporary domain under study of Philosophy of Mind, epiphenomenalism is a very fashionable topic, but not a new one. My text will be divided with six sections, which will try to outline the epiphenomenalism’ appearance、development the focus of the debate、and its implication by a way of history narrative in order to see the meaning of the consideration of the epiphenomenalism and its position in the domain. The first section introduces the epiphenomenalism’s emergence and debate; Plato who rebuts the Harmonia Theory of the Soul from Simmias, assumes entity dualism, arguing for the immortality. Aristotle,full of scientism passion, is an empiricism philosopher. He emphasizes that the "material cause" should be regarded as a form of ontology, and developed, by rethinking of the Harmonia Theory of the Soul, into a kind of epiphenomenalism. the conclusion comes into severe conflict with his "form cause" and "teleology cause". The second section introduces Epiphenomenalism in the18th and19th century. Descartes makes the history of mechanism, surely promoting the quick development of that due time powerfully, however, causing endless disasters for the study of philosophy of mind in virtue of the separation of mind from body. Huxley is one of the victims of the dichotomy. he is a scientist first and foremost, and the he was also very versed in philosophy. He try to make the two kind of distinct beliefs equally well entrenched:a dualism with respect to mind and body on the other hand and a scientific naturalism or mechanism concerning the body on the other. The third section introduces epiphenomenalism in our day. Epiphenomenalism is a kind of coherent theory without fatal problem at least so as to be treated carefully. Jackson put forward to a soft kind of epiphenomenalism by conceiving of knowledge argument; Ned block develop functionalism from epiphenomenalism; The Anomalous Monism by Davidson urge philosophers to think of epiphenomenalism again and again:for example, Mclaughlin comes up with a certain kind of famous distinction between token and type, while N. Campbell distinction between metaphysics epiphenomenalism; McGinn’s new mystery is inclined to fail into epiphenomenalism; W.S. Robinson call his epiphenomenalism "united dualism". The forth section introduces three arguments for epiphenomenalism, namely, the Argument from the Anomaly from the Mental; the Argument from anti-individualism; the argument from Causal Exclusion. The fifth section introduces five powerful Arguments against epiphenomenalism merely, Counterintuitive Argument, Introspection Argument, Evolution argument, the argument from the Impossibility of Knowledge of Other Minds, Justification Argument. The sixth section introduces some implications that we can learn from.