Epiphenomenalism

Epiphenomenalism is said to cause physical events have mental affects.


Do the physical events tangibly move brain matter? How does this exactly work?
Keep in mind that one can sit in darkness, touch nothing relevant to the thought, and spark a thought.


Let me know your thoughts.


~Victor

Careful when you use the term "move". It is not a physical push by external stimuli that causes the mental effect. It is the interpretation of external (and internal) stimuli by our senses that causes changes in the structure of the brain and then a mental effect.

The second way in which thought can be provoked is on past experience.

However, if you got a being who had no past experience, with no sensory ability then it is probably, according to this theory, that they would be unable to think. Unfortunately, it is difficult to know if this is testable or not so it isn't very scientific.

Fluffy said:

Careful when you use the term "move".

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I was pondering on what word to use and that's what came out. But you understood.

Fluffy said:

It is not a physical push by external stimuli that causes the mental effect. It is the interpretation of external (and internal) stimuli by our senses that causes changes in the structure of the brain and then a mental effect.

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That's how I understood it but I just gave you an example of when the senses are not involved.

Fluffy said:

The second way in which thought can be provoked is on past experience.

However, if you got a being who had no past experience, with no sensory ability then it is probably, according to this theory, that they would be unable to think. Unfortunately, it is difficult to know if this is testable or not so it isn't very scientific.

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This went over my head. If you cover all my senses I can imagine all sorts of things that can get triggered by what physical event?

This went over my head. If you cover all my senses I can imagine all sorts of things that can get triggered by what physical event?

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If you cover all of the sense of a person who has had past sensory experience then yes they would be able to think. However, if you did this with a being who did not have this experience then they would not be able to think.

If I cover your senses at the moment, then your thoughts will be generated by your memory of sensory data which is in turn generated by physical events.

Fluffy said:

If you cover all of the sense of a person who has had past sensory experience then yes they would be able to think. However, if you did this with a being who did not have this experience then they would not be able to think.

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So a mixture of physical events and past experience [no physical events needed] is what triggers mental affects?
So mental affects can be independent of physical events?

Fluffy said:

If I cover your senses at the moment, then your thoughts will be generated by your memory of sensory data which is in turn generated by physical events.

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It's not always necessarily "memory" because you can imagine things not in your memory bank, can you not?

~Victor

So a mixture of physical events and past experience [no physical events needed] is what triggers mental affects?
So mental affects can be independent of physical events?

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Not entirely because past experience is directly caused by physical events, just at an earlier stage. Therefore, mental affects are only independent of physical events if this link is ignored.

It's not always necessarily "memory" because you can imagine things not in your memory bank, can you not?

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No you can't . There are two ways in which you can create the illusion of thinking things which you have never experienced, however.

1) Creating compoud concepts. You can imagine a unicorn yet you have never experienced one. However, you have experienced a horse and a horn and therefore you can imagine these together.

2) Creating words for concepts that don't exist. There is some debate over this. Hume used this to show that God, as we define him, cannot exist. Others state that we cannot experience evil but we can experience a series of acts that we find unnerving and this creates the overall sensation of evil in the same way that viewing an object covered in thousands of shades of red from a distance gives the impression of it being covered in a single shade of red.

Victor said:

It's not always necessarily "memory" because you can imagine things not in your memory bank, can you not?

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we can imagine things based on what we have knowledge of

for instance, i have never seen a real unicorn, but i have seen horses, i have seen wings, i have seen silver, and i have seen horns - thus i can imagine something i have no knowledge of yet it is based in my knowledge - if that makes sense

So mental affects can be independent of physical events?

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To that I would reply that a mental effect is usually caused by a physical effect. I'm no neuroscientist, but I think that even trying to recall past events or imagining things requires neural activity. Think MRI scans. Mental effects are never 'independent' of physical events in that regard.

Fluffy said:

Not entirely because past experience is directly caused by physical events, just at an earlier stage. Therefore, mental affects are only independent of physical events if this link is ignored.

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Good point, but as you mentioned below, unicorns can still be imagined.

Fluffy said:

No you can't . There are two ways in which you can create the illusion of thinking things which you have never experienced, however.

1) Creating compoud concepts. You can imagine a unicorn yet you have never experienced one. However, you have experienced a horse and a horn and therefore you can imagine these together.

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I don't agree with this. I can imagine things that have no link to physical events or past experiences. Example:

I call it kimdobulichu. What do you think?

Fluffy said:

2) Creating words for concepts that don't exist. There is some debate over this. Hume used this to show that God, as we define him, cannot exist. Others state that we cannot experience evil but we can experience a series of acts that we find unnerving and this creates the overall sensation of evil in the same way that viewing an object covered in thousands of shades of red from a distance gives the impression of it being covered in a single shade of red.

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Words are only a label to what you processed.

~Victor

Fatmop said:

To that I would reply that a mental effect is usually caused by a physical effect. I'm no neuroscientist, but I think that even trying to recall past events or imagining things requires neural activity. Think MRI scans. Mental effects are never 'independent' of physical events in that regard.

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I wasn't even trying to say that it doesn't require neuro activity. Of course it has to. My point is that something subjective cannot trigger neuro activity. I think something does.

~Victor

Victor said:

I don't agree with this. I can imagine things that have no link to physical events or past experiences. Example:

I call it kimdobulichu. What do you think?

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ok, either you had the idea/image mapped out in your mind, which you then drew on paper, or you were just drawing, thought it looked cool, and saved it!

i would say this looks like some ort of tribal symbol, so even if it is not, it may be you are just drawing something that your mind was inspired to draw based on some other tribal artwork you have seen in the past.

Mike182 said:

ok, either you had the idea/image mapped out in your mind, which you then drew on paper, or you were just drawing, thought it looked cool, and saved it!

i would say this looks like some ort of tribal symbol, so even if it is not, it may be you are just drawing something that your mind was inspired to draw based on some other tribal artwork you have seen in the past.

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So your point is that nothing can be imagined that is subjective and without past experience?

~Victor