Quotes About Epiphenomenal

sociobiologists are not merely willing, but devoted, "Slaves of the Gene."" They believe that an organism-a man, say-is epiphenomenal to his genes: an effect, not a cause. Or at least, they believe that a man is about as epiphenomenal to his genes, as his singlet (for example) is to him. Wilson spoke for all sociobiologists, when he said: "An organism is only DNA's way of making more DNA."24 Fourth:

Even though the relationship of cigarettes to disease is today perhaps the epiphenomenal fact of modern medicine, demonstrating this connection required a fundamental transformation in medical ways of knowing in the mid-twentieth century.

Either consciousness is epiphenomenal or it's outside a physical system but somehow playing a role in physics. That's a more traditional, dualist possibility. Or there's a third possibility: Consciousness is somehow built in at the fundamental level of physics.

The error in reasoning is a bit from wishful thinking, because education is considered "good"; I wonder why people don't make the epiphenomenal association between the wealth of a country and something "bad," say, decadence, and infer that decadence, or some other disease of wealth like a high suicide rate, also generates wealth.)