Epiphenomenalism

The textbook account of epiphenomenalism goes something like this. Although our thoughts, desires, and other mental states seem to affect what happens in the world, by bringing about changes in our behavior or subsequent mental states, this is only an appearance, cast off by the real physical sequence of cause and effect that underlies our mental life.

The theory of emergent evolution has been largely developed as a corrective of mechanistic theories with their attendant psycho-physical dualisms and epiphenomenalisms.