Psychophysical parallelism¶
A philosophy-of-mind position holding that mental and bodily event streams correspond systematically without directly causing one another.
Core Idea¶
Leibnizian pre-established harmony, occasionalist coordination and Spinozist attribute parallelism offer importantly different grounds; the shared claim is correspondence without interaction. Each mental event is paired with an orderly bodily event through an underlying coordination principle while causal explanation remains internal to each series rather than crossing between mind and body. The abstraction is therefore identified by a declared carrier, a transformation or constraint over that carrier, and an invariant that tells an analyst whether the named structure is genuinely present.
Scope of Application¶
Psychophysical parallelism belongs to philosophy of mind and is useful where the analyst can specify the typed philosophy of mind carrier, including objects, relations, parameters, conventions, evidence, boundaries, and comparison targets, then evaluate the mental and physical ontologies, event-pairing relation, temporal coordination, denial of cross-domain causation, proposed ground of correspondence and contrasts with interactionism, epiphenomenalism and identity theory are explicit. The scope is broad within that domain but bounded by the need for the mental and physical ontologies, event-pairing relation, temporal coordination, denial of cross-domain causation, proposed ground of correspondence and contrasts with interactionism, epiphenomenalism and identity theory are explicit. The entry records a descriptive analytical identity; practical use requires the governing domain's evidence, standards, and safety obligations.
Clarity¶
The abstraction clarifies a crowded vocabulary by making the mental and physical ontologies, event-pairing relation, temporal coordination, denial of cross-domain causation, proposed ground of correspondence and contrasts with interactionism, epiphenomenalism and identity theory are explicit the center of the account. A claim should name the carrier, the governing operation or relation, the applicable assumptions, and the recognition test. A bare label is insufficient because the name Psychophysical parallelism can be used for a formal identity, an implementation, or a neighboring result unless carrier and convention are stated.
Manages Complexity¶
Without the abstraction, an analyst must reason directly over many local details: the carrier roles, admissibility assumptions, competing conventions, derived invariants, boundary cases, and proof or validation obligations specific to Psychophysical parallelism. Psychophysical parallelism compresses them into the roles in the structural signature. That compression permits comparison across instances without erasing the variables that determine validity. It also exposes which details may be varied safely and which are constitutive.
Abstract Reasoning¶
- Identify the carrier. State what the elements, states, objects, or observations are: the typed philosophy of mind carrier, including objects, relations, parameters, conventions, evidence, boundaries, and comparison targets. Reject examples whose alleged carrier belongs to a different problem. 2. Lock the constitutive rule. Express the mental and physical ontologies, event-pairing relation, temporal coordination, denial of cross-domain causation, proposed ground of correspondence and contrasts with interactionism, epiphenomenalism and identity theory are explicit independently of one notation or implementation.
Knowledge Transfer¶
Knowledge transfers strongly among subfields of philosophy of mind because they reuse the typed philosophy of mind carrier, including objects, relations, parameters, conventions, evidence, boundaries, and comparison targets, Each mental event is paired with an orderly bodily event through an underlying coordination principle while causal explanation remains internal to each series rather than crossing between mind and body., and type the carrier, state every parameter and convention in the definition, test that the mental and physical ontologies, event-pairing relation, temporal coordination, denial of cross-domain causation, proposed ground of correspondence and contrasts with interactionism, epiphenomenalism and identity theory are explicit, compare the nearest accepted identity, and report counterexamples, uncertainty, and limiting cases.
Relationships to Other Abstractions¶
Current abstraction Psychophysical parallelism Domain-specific
Parents (1) — more general patterns this builds on
-
Psychophysical parallelism is a kind of Correlation Prime
The proposed strict upward parent is
prime:correlation.
Hierarchy path (1) — routes to 1 parentless root
- Psychophysical parallelism → Correlation
Neighborhood in Abstraction Space¶
Psychophysical parallelism sits in a crowded region of the domain-specific corpus (6th percentile for distinctiveness): several abstractions share nearly its structure, so a description that fits it tends to fit its neighbors too.
Family — Consciousness & Philosophy of Mind (13 abstractions)
Nearest neighbors
- Epiphenomenalism — 0.96
- Hard problem of consciousness — 0.94
- User illusion — 0.94
- Language of thought hypothesis — 0.94
- Causal closure — 0.93
Computed from structural-signature embeddings · 2026-09-08