Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Pertaining to or of the nature of an epiphenomenon.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective philosophy, psychology Of or pertaining to a mental process which occurs only as an incidental effect of electrical or chemical activity in the brain or nervous system.

Etymologies

Sorry, no etymologies found.

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word epiphenomenal.

Examples

  • One of the most far-fetched essays, and one which is clearly carried away by what I earlier called the epiphenomenal aspects of Dorothy’s work, is Matthew R. Smith’s, which argues that “The Catholic Worker Movement is a form of liberation theology.”

    No Catholic Church, No Dorothy Day 2007

  • This list is, in the most thorough way possible, epiphenomenal.

    OCD 2009

  • All that we are allowed to see may well be epiphenomenal -- the real running of the country is done in secret and often in violation of fundamental constitutional principles, couched behind the banner of national security.

    Jonathan R. Cole: Occupy Wall Street as the Conscience of America Jonathan R. Cole 2011

  • Our wilful choices enter neither as redundant nor epiphenomenal effects, but rather as fundamental dynamical elements that have the causal efficacy that the objective data appear to assign to them.

    Book Review: Quantum Enigma 2009

  • Maybe not even imperatives but inconsistent protocols resulting in complex processes if you want to get right down to the programmatic nitty gritty and treat human consciousness as epiphenomenal.

    Bukiet on Brooklyn Books Hal Duncan 2009

  • All that we are allowed to see may well be epiphenomenal -- the real running of the country is done in secret and often in violation of fundamental constitutional principles, couched behind the banner of national security.

    Jonathan R. Cole: Occupy Wall Street as the Conscience of America Jonathan R. Cole 2011

  • If they think consciousness is epiphenomenal, or emergent, or otherwise intimately related to the brain – still no.

    Bunny and a Book 2008

  • Nor can the threat of epiphenomenal irrelevance be simply dismissed as an obvious non-option, since at least some forms of consciousness have been seriously alleged in the recent literature to lack causal status.

    Bunny and a Book 2008

  • I should also tell my own philosophical counter-argument to the argument I've presented here: It's all about consciousness, whether or not it's epiphenomenal.

    Aiguy's Computer 2008

  • And by this I mean being more than just epiphenomenal things that take affect as a result of mutation and selection.

    It's more than genes, it's networks and systems - The Panda's Thumb 2010

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.

  • "My epiphenomenal faces retract, and no longer a metal dancer at the hub of a wheel, I take a step, diminish in size, stumble, stoop, fumble on the floor for my robe, laugh a silly laugh, thoroughly un-tranced."

    Forgetting Elena by Edmund White, p 130 of the Vintage International paperback edition

    November 21, 2009