Epiphenomenalism and knowledge

Defending Robinson’s Reply to the Self-Stultification Objection

Authors

  • Marcus Damm Strøm-Hansen Københavns Universitet

Keywords:

mind, consciousness, epiphenomenalism, knowledge

Abstract

Epiphenomenalism is the view that mental events have no causal impact on physical events. One of the most potent objections to this view is the self-stultification objection, which aims to show that epiphenomenalism is incompatible with knowledge about our own experience. William Robinson (2006) argues that epiphenomenalism can escape charges of self-stultification by appealing to the common underlying cause between mental events and our reports of mental events. In this paper, I defend Robinson’s proposal against several objections raised by Dwayne Moore (2012). I conclude that Moore’s argu-ments fail to undermine Robinson’s solution to the self-stultification objection.

References

Block, Ned. 2002. “Concepts of Consciousness.” In Philosophy of Mind: Classical and Contemporary Readings, edited by David John Chalmers, 206. New York: Oxford University Press.

Chalmers, David John. 2004. The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory. New York: Oxford University Press.

Jackson, Frank. 2002. “Epiphenomenal Qualia.” In Philosophy of Mind: Classical and Contemporary Readings, edited by David John Chalmers, 273. New York: Oxford University Press.

Moore, Dwayne. 2012. “On Robinson’s Response to the Self-Stultifying Objection.” Review of Philosophy and Psychology 3 (4): 627–41.

Robinson, William. 2006. “Knowing Epiphenomena.” Journal of Consciousness Studies 13 (1–2): 85–100.

Nida-Rümelin, Martine, and Donnchadh O’Conaill. 2019. “Qualia: The Knowledge Argument.” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edward N. Zalta, Winter 2019 Edition. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qualia-knowledge/.

Robinson, William. 2006. “Knowing Epiphenomena.” Journal of Consciousness Studies 13, nos. 1–2: 85–100.

Robinson, William. 2019. “Epiphenomenalism.” In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philos-ophy, edited by Edward N. Zalta, Summer 2019 Edition. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/epiphenomenalism/

Rosenthal, David M. 1997. “A Theory of Consciousness.” In The Nature of Conscious-ness, edited by Ned Block, Owen J. Flanagan, and Guven Guzeldere. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.

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Published

2021-10-28

How to Cite

Strøm-Hansen, M. D. (2021). Epiphenomenalism and knowledge: Defending Robinson’s Reply to the Self-Stultification Objection. Journal of Media, Cognition and Communication, 9(1), 88–105. Retrieved from https://tidsskrift.dk/mef-journal/article/view/121619