How do you reconcile the placebo effect with epiphenomenalism?

Answer 1

epiphenomenalism is basically the idea that we have a mind that rides on top of our brain and placebo effect is a mind experience that has no brain cause. So, to reconcile this, beliefs would have to cause mental experiences and be in the brain too. Which means that if you cut out a piece of brain meat out of your head, a few beliefs should go with it, if not, then beliefs probably exist in the platonic world and were back at square one.

Answer 2

um... isn't a placebo effect when there is no actual pill/drug/whatever involved? its just in people's head's that they think they're feeling the effects of something that could have changed them. Thus, there is no reconciling as the brain has just been fooled temporarily.

The placebo effect (Latin placebo, "I shall please"), first mentioned in 1955 by Henry K. Beecher, M.D. (Beecher 1955) and also known as non-specific effects and the subject-expectancy effect, is the phenomenon that a patient's symptoms can be alleviated by an otherwise ineffective treatment, since the individual expects or believes that it will work. Some people consider this to be a remarkable aspect of human physiology; others consider it to be an illusion arising from the way medical experiments were conducted. The phenomenon, if it exists at all, is not fully understood by science.

Answer 3

You raise an interesting point. For the placebo to be effective, the mind must make the body feel better while epiphenomalism, as I understand it, the mind has no impact on the body. I am unsure if the placebo would be beneficial in this situation.