Philosophers have a tendency to name pretty much every position that you can hold by accepting/refusing various “key” propositions. Epiphenomenalism tends to be reached by people frantically trying to hold on to their treasured beliefs about the way the mind works. Then they realise they can consistently be epiphenomenalists and they feel okay because it has a name or something.
Basically, it’s a consistent position (well, Eliezer seems to think it’s meaningless!), and so you want to go to some effort to show that it’s actually wrong. Plus it’s a good exercise to think about why it’s wrong.
In my experience, most philosophers are actually pretty motivated to avoid the stigma of “epiphenomenalism”, and try instead to lay claim to some more obscure-but-naturalist-friendly label for their view (like “non-reductive physicalism”, “anomalous monism”, etc.)
Philosophers have a tendency to name pretty much every position that you can hold by accepting/refusing various “key” propositions. Epiphenomenalism tends to be reached by people frantically trying to hold on to their treasured beliefs about the way the mind works. Then they realise they can consistently be epiphenomenalists and they feel okay because it has a name or something.
Basically, it’s a consistent position (well, Eliezer seems to think it’s meaningless!), and so you want to go to some effort to show that it’s actually wrong. Plus it’s a good exercise to think about why it’s wrong.
In my experience, most philosophers are actually pretty motivated to avoid the stigma of “epiphenomenalism”, and try instead to lay claim to some more obscure-but-naturalist-friendly label for their view (like “non-reductive physicalism”, “anomalous monism”, etc.)