Epiphenomenon

EPIPHENOMENON. - From ἐπὶ χάρις φανύψενον
"phenomenon" means an accessory or added phenomenon.
In psychology this name designates a new phenomenon that presents itself on the basis of another phenomenon, or series of phenomena, with which it is ordinarily connected, but from which it can also be disjoined, without that phenomenon or series of phenomena being modified in its specific character.

For psychologists who reduce the emotions to essentially physiological facts, the specific states, for example, of joy, of fear, etc., are pure epiphenomena. Some forms of materialist psychology (T. H. Huxley, W. Clifford, H. Mausday, T. A. Ribot), denying the substantial reality of the human spirit, consider states of consciousness, not excluding thought, as simple epiphenomena of physiological processes (Cf. Th. Ribot, Les maladies de la personnalité, Paris 1885, pp. 6, 15-18; id., Les maladies de la mémoire, 27th ed., ibid. 1925, ch. 1). An analogous position is that of psychophysical parallelism (W. Wundt, G. T. Fechner, H. Ebbinghaus), according to which physiological phenomena and conscious phenomena represent nothing but two different aspects of an identical series of psychic facts.

Ugo Viglino