Epiphenomenalism Analysis

3.3.3 The problem of epiphenomenalism
It is sometimes claimed that a physicalist picture of the mind entails an epiphenomenalist view; Thomas Huxley gives an introduction to this idea in his book On the Hypothesis that Animals are Automata (1874/2002): It may be assumed, then, that molecular changes in the brain are the causes of all the states of consciousness of brutes. Is there any evidence that these states of consciousness, may, conversely, cause those molecular changes which give rise to muscular motion? I see no such evidence (Huxley, 1874/2002, p. 24).

In other words, under this view, even if the mind is the result of brain activity, once the mind appears it is just inactive, with no effects on the physical universe whatsoever –
For instance, the idea of supervenience can give us an account in terms of relations or dependence, and could be of use as another argument to support a physicalist view. Davidson (1970/202) maintains that: “…mental characteristics are in some sense dependent, or supervenient, on physical characteristics” (p. 119). He makes the significant remark that “Dependence or supervenience of this kind does not entail reducibility” (Davidson, 1970/2002, p.119). However, reduction seems to be is one of the keys points that define physicalism, for example, Papineau (1993) maintains that “physicalism requires reductionism” (p. 2). Nonetheless, so, if the main criterion for physicality is reducibility, how can it be that the mental, although physical, cannot be reduced to physics? If a mental event is identical with a brain event, then reduction could be a valid methodological approach: for instance Place (1956) or Smart (1959) argue that consciousness are process of the brain. However, Putnam (1967), Davidson (1970) and Fodor (1974) present strong arguments against such view. The next section will further discuss the problems of reductionism that encourage non-reductive