Epiphenomenalism, causation and explanation

Epiphenomenalism is a view that mental events are caused by physical events yet they themselves do not play any causal role in the physical world. This view is worth considering for those philosophers who do not accept physicalism for some reason or another. However, a common objection to this view, which can be found in Richard Taylor?s work, is that it leads to an unacceptable consequence that existing mental events are not important in explaining or understanding our behaviour, given that it predicts that nothing would change even if corresponding mental events had not occurred. In this paper, a response to this objection is provided. It is argued that the objection above at best relies upon the assumption that all explanations have to be causal, which is rather implausible in the context of present debates in the philosophy of science that make room for noncausal explanations. Furthermore, by using an interpretation of the Aristotelian view of the nature of geometrical objects as analogy, a model of how noncausal (and nonphysical) phenomenal consciousness could be explanatorily powerful is provided, which renders epiphenomenalism intelligible.