ysabetwordsmith: Cartoon of me in Wordsmith persona (Default)
[personal profile] ysabetwordsmith
This article talks about epiphenomenalism, the idea that thoughts don't matter.


Epiphenomenalism is the idea that our conscious minds serve no role in affecting the physical world. On the contrary, our thoughts are a causally irrelevant byproduct of physical processes that are occurring inside of our brains. According to epiphenomenalism, we are like children pretending to drive a car — it can be great fun, but we are really not in charge.

This claim is falsifiable, and indeed, there is plenty of diverse evidence disproving it. Examples include:

* "The observer changes the experiment" is a known issue in science. Quantum physics has some fascinating cases like Schrodinger's cat.

* Thoughts can influence the body in many ways, such as the placebo effect. Sometimes, thoughts cause results that fly in the face of what purely physical science would predict, like the "will to live" keeping people alive in impossible situations where hard science says they should die.

* The farther down the evolutionary scale you go, the more organisms tend to run entirely on instinct. The higher up you go, the more instinct becomes an influence rather than an absolute. Humans have instincts, biochemistry, and other base influences but also have highly developed thought. This allows them (at least sometimes) to perform feats like, "I shall put on a condom before having sex because I do not want to make a baby right now." It is counter-evolutionary and achievable only by thinking ahead about the possible consequences of actions and then choosing to suppress a very strong drive long enough to take precautions. There is nothing in the base influences that tells a horny organism not to reproduce; that is purely an artifact of thought.

(no subject)

Date: 2022-09-22 02:28 pm (UTC)
pronker: barnabas and angelique vibing (Default)
From: [personal profile] pronker
I'd hope the thinking ahead gets put behind at some point and reproductive instinct simply takes the lead because babies bring immeasurable joy.

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