For instance, fear seems to make the heart beat faster, but according to epiphenomenalism the biochemical secretions of the brain and nervous system (such as adrenaline)—not the experience of fear—is what raises the heartbeat.
[4][5] Thomas Henry Huxley agreed with Descartes that behavior is determined solely by physical mechanisms, but he also believed that humans enjoy an intelligent life.
[1][2] 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.
[1][2] 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.
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....[9]Some thinkers draw distinctions between different varieties of epiphenomenalism.
[12] The information about the mind (and its problematic properties such as qualia and the hard problem of consciousness) could have been, in principle, implicitly "written" in the material world since its creation.
Some philosophers, such as Daniel Dennett, reject both epiphenomenalism and the existence of qualia with the same charge that Gilbert Ryle leveled against a Cartesian "ghost in the machine", that they too are category mistakes.
In principle, multiple realisability would guarantee platform dependencies can be avoided, whether in terms of hardware and operating system or, ex hypothesi, biology and philosophy.
Because a high-level language is a practical requirement for developing the most complex programs, functionalism implies that a non-reductive physicalism would offer a similar advantage over a strictly eliminative materialism.
Benjamin Libet's results are quoted[14] in favor of epiphenomenalism, but he believes subjects still have a "conscious veto", since the readiness potential does not invariably lead to an action.
In Freedom Evolves, Daniel Dennett argues that a no-free-will conclusion is based on dubious assumptions about the location of consciousness, as well as questioning the accuracy and interpretation of Libet's results.
[15] Similar criticism of Libet-style research has been made by neuroscientist Adina Roskies and cognitive theorists Tim Bayne and Alfred Mele.
That ability would seem to be at odds with early epiphenomenalism, which according to Huxley is the broad claim that consciousness is "completely without any power… as the steam-whistle which accompanies the work of a locomotive engine is without influence upon its machinery".
[20] In favor of interactionism, Celia Green (2003) argues that epiphenomenalism does not even provide a satisfactory solution to the problem of interaction posed by substance dualism.
A number of scientists and philosophers, including William James, Karl Popper, John C. Eccles and Donald Symons, dismiss epiphenomenalism from an evolutionary perspective.