As promised in my last post, here is some more in response to counter-arguments against the argument in Titus's paper.
The Standford Encyclopedia of Philosophy's
article on epiphenomenalism refers to the sort of argument prosecuted by Titus in his paper as "
self-stultification", and describes it in these terms (similar to those of Titus and his co-author):
"
The most powerful reason for rejecting epiphenomenalism is the view that it is incompatible with knowledge of our own minds — and thus, incompatible with knowing that epiphenomenalism is true. (A variant has it that we cannot even succeed in referring to our own minds, if epiphenomenalism is true. See Bailey (2006) for this objection and Robinson (2012) for discussion.) If these destructive claims can be substantiated, then epiphenomenalists are, at the very least, caught in a practical contradiction, in which they must claim to know, or at least believe, a view which implies that they can have no reason to believe it".
It then purports to describe a counter-argument based on a figure supposedly describing an interactionist causal chain, where "M" is a mental event (which by the self-stultification argument cannot on an epiphenomenalist view be known, since it has no causal efficacy):, and where the Pn's are physical events (such as speech), and where, I think (but can't be sure), "C" indicates "directly causes":
M
\
| C
\
P1 P2 --> P3 --> ....
(Figure 2)
[Please forgive me for the messiness of the diagram - it seems difficult if not impossible to specify a monospaced font in this editor.]
This counter-argument (so far as I understand it) seems to be premised on P3 conveying (potentially inferential) knowledge of M. There is a bunch more to it than that, but I won't bother to go into it, because this premise seems to me to be both a necessary part of the counter-argument and a red herring. It is a red herring because the so-called self-stultification argument neither entails nor suggests the premise that knowledge of M is conveyed by or inferred from a physical event: it is premised on the idea that a subsequent
mental event would constitute knowledge of a prior mental event!
In the article's own words, prior to supplying the above "interactionist" figure 2: "The argument that epiphenomenalism is self-stultifying in the way just described rests on the premise that knowledge of a mental event requires causation by that mental event". Yes, but not causation of a subsequent physical event - causation of a subsequent mental event!
Thus, the correct figure to be drawn of the failure of epiphenomenalist causation is this:
M1 M2
^ ^
| |
P1 --> P2 --> P3 --> ....
The self-stultification argument is that because mental event M1 (some state of consciousness) has no causal efficacy upon mental event M2, then mental event M2 cannot contain knowledge of M1, i.e. we could never become conscious (i.e. "know", which - knowing - is a mental state) that we are conscious. There is no capacity for self-reflection under epiphenomenalism. This argument is simply not addressed in this form by the supposed counter-arguments presented in the SEP article.
Now, I read one of the papers (Robinson, 1982b) referenced as "further explain[ing] and defend[ing]" this purported counterargument, and, if you want to, you can too (via the pirate site Sci-Hub). It is this one:
Causation, Sensations and Knowledge by William S. Robinson. I read it carefully to see whether it says anything that would indicate that its counter-argument against the self-stultification argument was any more relevant than the one summarised in the SEP article, but, apparently, it is not. It, too, seems premised on the idea that knowledge of mental events is physical, or at least that knowledge of mental events is
predicated on or
inferred from physical events.
There is another supposed counter-argument by Chalmers presented, but it too seems (to me) to fail, and I don't have the patience to address why right now.
If anybody else is as interested as I was to dig into these counter-arguments, I would welcome your thoughts: have I called it right, or am I, myself, falling prey to red herrings?