{"id":617,"date":"2008-03-10T08:56:34","date_gmt":"2008-03-10T12:56:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/?p=617"},"modified":"2008-03-10T13:06:22","modified_gmt":"2008-03-10T17:06:22","slug":"epiphenomalism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/?p=617","title":{"rendered":"Epiphenomalism"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s not often that one finds someone who embodies an odd philosophical position.  Nobody really is a solipsist (although I think I knew someone once who was).  I’m beginning to think, however, that E.J. Dionne, liberal columnist for the Washington Post, might be an epiphenomenalist<\/a>, that is, someone who believes the mind has no causal influence on the body, but is merely a byproduct of the brain’s workings.  The epiphenomenalist can merely observe the body doing the things it does, he cannot will the body to do as he wants.  The body does what it wants, then the mind makes up a story explaining why that was what it wanted to do.  In a similar fashion, Dionne<\/a> observes political changes and viewpoints (even his own) without really intervening.  Here he is yesterday:<\/p>\n

\n

\nThe era of the religious right is over. Even absent the rise of urgent
\nnew problems, Americans had already reached a point of exhaustion with
\na religious style of politics that was dogmatic, partisan and
\nideological.\n<\/p>\n

That style reflected a spirit far too certain of itself and far too
\ninsistent on the moral depravity of its political adversaries. It had
\nthe perverse effect of narrowing the range of issues on which religious
\ntraditions would speak out and thinning our moral discourse. Precisely
\nbecause I believe in a strong public role for faith<\/strong>, I would insist
\nthat it is a great sellout of those traditions to assert that religion
\nhas much to say about abortion and same-sex marriage but little to
\nteach us about war and peace, social justice and the environment.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I’d have two things to say about that last paragraph.  First, where someone else might say why faith ought <\/strong>to have a strong public role, Dionne uses his believe in faith (odd as that may see) as the explanans–the thing that explains–his position.  This is pure Dionne, of course, where an argument is necessary, he brings an explanation.  Thus his argumentative epiphenomenalism: no one in his world has reasons for her positions, there are in fact only personal or psychological explanations.  These may be in some sense accurate and helpful, but they really belong to something other than political argument.  <\/p>\n

Here’s the second point.  People whose faith differs from Dionne’s have a lot to say about war and peace, social justice, and the environment.  It’s just a little different.  Ok it’s a lot different.  It involves Armageddon, dominion, and so forth.  Dionne seems to think it’s wrong.  Perhaps in another column he can argue for that claim.  After all, they argue for theirs.  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s not often that one finds someone who embodies an odd philosophical position.  Nobody really is a solipsist (although I think I knew someone once who was).  I’m beginning to think, however, that E.J. Dionne, liberal columnist for the Washington Post, might be an epiphenomenalist, that is, someone who believes the mind has no causal … Continue reading Epiphenomalism<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45,77],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-617","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ejdionne","category-unclassifiable"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/617","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=617"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/617\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=617"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=617"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=617"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}