Dynamical agents: Consciousness, causation, and two specters of epiphenomenalism

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to defend the causal efficacy of consciousness against two specters of epiphenomenalism. We argue that these challenges are best met, on the one hand, by rejecting all forms of consciousness-body dualism, and on the other, by adopting a dynamical systems approach to understanding the causal efficacy of conscious experience. We argue that this non-reductive identity theory provides the theoretical resources for reconciling the reality and efficacy of consciousness with the neurophysiology of the brain and body.

Consciousness, Supervenience, and Identity: Marras and Kim on the Efficacy of Conscious Experience

“…47, n. 12). 16 See Dempsey and Shani ( 2009 ), 232-235. 17 Of course, one could resist the demand for an account of the effi cacy of experiences in this sense.…”

“…Thus the threat of epiphenomenalism is thoroughgoing, extending to mental-to-mental causation. 26 A great deal of thanks is due to Itay Shani, with whom I began to develop some of the ideas in this section as a fellow graduate student of Professor Marras, and later as a collaborator on a co-authored paper dealing with embodiment responses to two different epiphenomenalist challenges (Dempsey and Shani 2009 ). 27 There is of course a rich literature on attempts to reconcile mental causation and nonreductive physicalism by appealing to the relation of supervenience.…”

“…In particular, Benjamin Libet's ( 1999 ) research presents further challenges to the causal effi cacy of consciousness. We offer strategies for responding to Libet's challenge in Dempsey and Shani ( 2009 ), 235-242. 66 Thanks to Ausonio Marras, Itay Shani, and Hugh Alcock for reading early drafts of this paper.…”

Why Jaegwon Kim’s Physicalism is Not Near Enough: An Implicit Argument for a non-Cartesian Interactionism (Part I)

“…To get a sense of how deeply problematic epiphenomenalism is for nonreductive physicalism, consider a recent development, due to Dempsey and Shani (2008), in which they revisit Feigl's dual access theory, "emphasizing the capacity of autonomous systems to control their own micro-constituents for the benefit of the whole." Like Feigl, they "embrace a thoroughgoing physicalism, one which (type) identifies conscious phenomena with certain neurophysiological phenomena."…”

Will Science and Consciousness Ever Meat? Complexity, Symmetry and Qualia

“…Therefore, Van Gulick doubts the claim of dependency of the mental on the physical and speculates that such higher-order patterns constitute an order that manifests itself in our world via physical realizations. This order is informational first and foremost and can, in our view, at least in part be said to constitute the phenomenal aspect of physically embodied information: "there seems to be no way around the idea that form, or organization, can be a legitimate locus of emergent causal powers… namely that once a macro level structure has emerged, it is capable of acting as an organized whole whose activities constrain (that is, dynamically constrain) the unfolding of causal processes at lower levels of organization in ways that were not possible prior to emergence and so, in part, in virtue of the emergent organization" [36]. Juarrero takes a similar stance.…”