ABSTRACT
This chapter explains the view, provide some positive motivation for it, and clarify the relation of epiphenomenalism. It presents William James’s ‘evolutionary argument’ against epiphenomenalism. Epiphenomenalism for sensations is the view that our sensations are caused by brain events. The primary motivation for epiphenomenalism is best understood by comparison to its main rivals, physicalism and interactionism. The properties of our sensations that result, according to the laws, from arrangements of physical items, are thus not properties in virtue of which anything in our bodies happens. Apart from the incantation of an alleged a posteriori identity, it is structurally the same view as epiphenomenalism. Epiphenomenalism, however, would contain all the actual explanations of behavior that would be part of such a view, and it would be a more parsimonious account. This view is inspired by a few brief remarks made by Russell and is known as Russellian Monism.
