Editing Epiphenomenalism (section)

== Development ==
During the 17th century, [[René Descartes]] argued that [[animal]]s are subject to mechanical laws of nature. He defended the idea of [[automatic behavior]], or the performance of actions without conscious thought. Descartes questioned how the immaterial mind and the material body can interact causally.<ref name="Walter">{{cite encyclopedia |title=Epiphenomenalism |encyclopedia=Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy |publisher=University of Bielefeld |url=http://www.iep.utm.edu/epipheno/#H2 |access-date=10 October 2013 |last=Walter |first=Sven |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130923005826/http://www.iep.utm.edu/epipheno/#H2 |archive-date=23 September 2013}}</ref> His [[Interactionism|interactionist]] model (1649) held that the body relates to the mind through the [[pineal gland]].<ref name="Robinson">{{cite book|last=Robinson|first=William|chapter=Epiphenomenalism|chapter-url=http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/epiphenomenalism/|title=The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy|access-date=1 November 2013|editor-last=Zalta|editor-first=Edward N.}}</ref> [[La Mettrie]], [[Leibniz]], and [[Spinoza]] all in their own way began this way of thinking. The idea that even if the animal were conscious nothing would be added to the production of behavior, even in animals of the human type, was first voiced by La Mettrie (1745), and then by [[Pierre Jean George Cabanis|Cabanis]] (1802), and was further explicated by [[Shadworth Hodgson|Hodgson]] (1870)<ref>{{cite book|last=Hodgson|first=Shadworth|title=The Theory of Practice|url=https://archive.org/details/dli.bengal.10689.19483|year=1870|publisher=Longmans, Green, Reader, & Dyer|location=London}}</ref> and [[Thomas Henry Huxley]] (1874).<ref>Huxley, T. H. (1874). "On the Hypothesis that Animals are Automata, and its History", ''The Fortnightly Review'', n.s.16:555–580. Reprinted in ''Method and Results: Essays by Thomas H. Huxley'' (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1898)</ref><ref>Gallagher, S. 2006. "Where's the action?: Epiphenomenalism and the problem of free will". In W. Banks, S. Pockett, and S. Gallagher. ''Does Consciousness Cause Behavior? An Investigation of the Nature of Intuition'' (109–124). Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press.</ref>

Thomas Henry Huxley agreed with Descartes that behavior is determined solely by physical mechanisms, but he also believed that humans enjoy an intelligent life. In 1874, Huxley argued, in the Presidential Address to the [[British Association for the Advancement of Science]], that animals are [[Conscious automatism|conscious automata]]. Huxley proposed that psychical changes are collateral products of physical changes. Like the bell of a clock that has no role in keeping the time, consciousness has no role in determining behavior.<ref name="Walter"/><ref name="Robinson"/>

Huxley defended [[automatic behavior|automatism]] by testing reflex actions, originally supported by Descartes. Huxley hypothesized that frogs that undergo lobotomy would swim when thrown into water, despite being unable to initiate actions. He argued that the ability to swim was solely dependent on the molecular change in the brain, concluding that consciousness is not necessary for reflex actions. According to epiphenomenalism, animals experience pain only as a result of [[neurophysiology]].<ref name="Walter"/><ref name="Robinson"/>

In 1870, Huxley conducted a case study on a French soldier who had sustained a shot in the [[Franco-Prussian war]] that fractured his left parietal bone. Every few weeks the soldier would enter a trance-like state, smoking, dressing himself, and aiming his cane like a rifle all while being insensitive to pins, electric shocks, odorous substances, vinegar, noise, and certain light conditions. Huxley used this study to show that consciousness was not necessary to execute these purposeful actions, justifying the assumption that humans are insensible machines. Huxley's mechanistic attitude towards the body convinced him that the brain alone causes behavior.<ref name="Walter"/><ref name="Robinson"/>

In the early 1900s, scientific [[behaviorists]] such as [[Ivan Pavlov]], [[John B. Watson]], and [[B. F. Skinner]] began the attempt to uncover laws describing the relationship between stimuli and responses, without reference to inner mental phenomena. Instead of adopting a form of [[eliminativism]] or mental [[fictionalism]], positions that deny that inner mental phenomena exist, a behaviorist was able to adopt epiphenomenalism in order to allow for the existence of mind. [[George Santayana]] (1905) believed that all motion has physical causes. Because consciousness is accessory to life and not essential to it, natural selection is responsible for ingraining tendencies to avoid certain contingencies without any conscious achievement involved.<ref>{{cite book|last=Scott|first=Alwyn|title=Stairway to the Mind|year=1995|publisher=Copernicus|location=New York, New York|isbn=9780387943817|page=[https://archive.org/details/stairwaytomindco00scot/page/109 109]|url-access=registration|url=https://archive.org/details/stairwaytomindco00scot/page/109}}</ref> By the 1960s, scientific behaviorism met substantial difficulties and eventually gave way to the [[cognitive revolution]]. Participants in that revolution, such as [[Jerry Fodor]], reject epiphenomenalism and insist upon the efficacy of the mind. Fodor even speaks of "epiphobia"—fear that one is becoming an epiphenomenalist.

However, since the cognitive revolution, there have been several who have argued for a version of epiphenomenalism. In 1970, [[Keith Campbell (philosopher)|Keith Campbell]] proposed his "new epiphenomenalism", which states that the body produces a spiritual mind that does not act on the body. How the brain causes a spiritual mind, according to Campbell, is destined to remain beyond our understanding forever.<ref>{{cite book|last=Griffin|first=David|title=Unsnarling the World-Knot|year=1998|publisher=University of California Press|location=Berkeley, California|isbn=9781556357558|page=5}}</ref> In 2001, [[David Chalmers]] and [[Frank Cameron Jackson|Frank Jackson]] argued that claims about conscious states should be deduced a priori from claims about physical states alone. They offered that epiphenomenalism bridges, but does not close, the [[explanatory gap]] between the physical and the phenomenal realms.<ref>{{cite book|last=Polger|first=Thomas|title=Natural Minds|year=2004|publisher=Massachusetts Institute of Technology|location=Cambridge, Massachusetts|isbn=9780262661966|pages=37–38}}</ref> These more recent versions maintain that only the subjective, qualitative aspects of mental states are epiphenomenal. Imagine both Pierre and a robot eating a cupcake. Unlike the robot, Pierre is conscious of eating the cupcake while the behavior is under way. This subjective experience is often called a ''quale'' (plural [[qualia]]), and it describes the private "raw feel" or the subjective "[[Thomas Nagel|what-it-is-like]]" that is the inner accompaniment of many mental states. Thus, while Pierre and the robot are both doing the same thing, only Pierre has the inner conscious experience.

[[Frank Cameron Jackson|Frank Jackson]] (1982), for example, once espoused the following view:
{{Blockquote|I am what is sometimes known as a "qualia freak". I think that there are certain features of bodily sensations especially, but also of certain perceptual experiences, which no amount of purely physical information includes. Tell me everything physical there is to tell about what is going on in a living brain... you won't have told me about the hurtfulness of pains, the itchiness of itches, pangs of jealousy....<ref>Jackson, 1982, p. 127.</ref>}}

Some thinkers draw distinctions between different varieties of epiphenomenalism. In ''[[Consciousness Explained]]'', [[Daniel Dennett]] distinguishes between a purely metaphysical sense of epiphenomenalism, in which the epiphenomenon has no causal impact at all, and Huxley's "steam whistle" epiphenomenalism, in which effects exist but are not functionally relevant.