53 - William James' Evolutionary Argument Against Epiphenomenalism

If epiphenomenalism is true, mental causation is an illusion. Even if pain and pleasure were inverted, you’d go on behaving the same way you do now, since your conscious states have nothing to do with determining or motivating your physical behavior. This is counterintuitive, to say the least. But it also leaves us completely unable to explain why our conscious states line up appropriately with our actions. We typically think that natural selection molded our mental profile: that which aids in survival and reproduction is incentivized by experiences with a positive hedonic valence, and vice versa. Thus, we have an evolutionary explanation of harmonious correlations. But on epiphenomenalism, this can't be the right explanation, since experiences play no causal role at all. If they have no causal influence, they can't make any difference to genetic fitness. So how is it that harmonious correlations evolved if experiences are invisible to natural selection? Argument from Psychophysical Harmony w/ Dustin Crummett  Psychophysical Harmony in a Nutshell   Listen to our sister show, Counter Apologetics here Transcript Music by ichika Nito and used with permission. Twitter @waldenpod @OnPanpsychism YouTube Consider supporting the show on Patreon here or Counter Apologetics here linktr.ee/emersongreen