The Theory of Practice: An Ethical Enquiry

Answers

• Q04AUTOMATON

  Does conscious intention help cause bodily action?

  No. consciousness is an epiphenomenon. Neural events form a closed causal chain; states of consciousness are always conditioned by them and never condition them.

  4. To this reasoning I now reply, that the feeling of pain from the heat and representation of means to avoid it must, each of them, be regarded as states of consciousness dependent on some nerve or brain movements, and that, if these particular movements were there, and only the dependent states of con- sciousness absent, the same muscular movements of pulling down the blind would follow. Every modi- fication of the succession of states of consciousness has its own modification of the succession of nerve movements causing it; and the various nerve move- ments are equally numerous, and modified as min- utely, as the various states of consciousness which are their evidence.

  Archive.org record for vol. 1 (1870); Wikipedia and IEP credit Hodgson with the first modern statement of epiphenomenalism. Did not read the passage.