Suppose that you sincerely believe that you are feeling pain. What justification do you have for thinking that your belief is true? How about this—-I know my belief is true because I feel pain!!! If I wasn't feeling any pain, I wouldn't believe that I was in pain. In short, my belief that I am in pain is justified because it is connected to actual feeling of pain.

Epiphenomenalism

According to both Huxley and Jackson (1982), your feeling of pain is completely causally inert—it does absolutely nothing.

So what's the big deal?
According to epiphenomenalism, the feeling of pain does not cause me to believe that I'm feeling pain. Rather, what causes this belief is just some brain state (or some physical properties of that brain state)—call it "brain state 47". So here's the punchline…If I had brain state 47 and no feeling of pain, I would still sincerely believe that I was feeling pain! Let's take it even further—Imagine a person who has brain state 47 but who never has the feeling of pain. Every time this person believes that they are feeling pain, they are wrong. How do you know that you aren't just like this person? If your belief that you are feeling pain is unconnected to your feeling of pain, how can you tell whether your belief is right or wrong?

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