Epiphenomenalism

I was hoping that someone might be able to give me a hand with a problem I am having.

I am struggling with epiphenomenalism. The usual ‘definition’ is that epiphenomenalism says that consciousness, or mental events, is causally inert and all that does the ‘pushing and shoving’ are physical events (such as neural processes and other purely physical events). Consciousness just comes along for the ride.

We can break this down into type- and token-epiphenomenalism. Both kinds of epiphenomenalism hold that there are only physical causes and that there are no mental causes. However, type-epiphenomenalism holds that mental events might cause something, but only in virtue of some underlying physical cause, such as a particular neural process. Token epiphenomenalism, on the other hand, denies that mental events play ANY part in the causal chain.

Okay. What I need to know is in what sense mental events are said to be acausal for the epiphenomenalist. The problem is that there seem to be two ways mental events can have a causal impact. One way has it that they are INTERNAL to the workings of the mind, the other is that they are EXTERNAL to the workings of the mind. Here is an analogy: suppose I am driving a car and I swerve to avoid a tree. Here, the tree plays a causal role in the TOTAL causal story (if the tree were not there I would not have swerved), but in another sense it does not: it plays no part in explaining the processes that went on to make the car swerve. The latter causal story mentions ONLY the driver’s actions and the mechanics of the car. To draw the analogy, the tree plays only an external causal role to the workings of the structural system, viz. the driver and the car.

A similar story can be told with respect to mental events or consciousness. Suppose, for example, that I come to some conscious decision; say, that . There are two ways I can see conscious mental states playing a role here. The first one is that they are internal to the causal story. In this way I have a certain group of conscious mental states—such as , , and so on—which I internally process to come to the conclusion that . Here, these mental states play an internal causal role. But it seems possible that these conscious mental states play only an external causal role. Here, I would unconsciously come to the ‘conclusion’ that by unconsciously reflecting upon these conscious states. So these conscious mental states play a part in the TOTAL causal story, but they are like the tree: to explain the structural system, viz. the workings of the mind, one needs only to refer to the unconscious mental states.

Basically, I do not know whether the theory of epiphenomenalism denies that conscious mental states play ANY causal role (i.e. internal or external) or whether they deny that they play any INTERNAL causal role.

On the other hand, perhaps this makes little sense. Any help and/or suggestions would be great (stop writing on ‘We know what Penguins eat’ being a valid one!).