Definition
Epiphenomenalism
Epiphenomenalism is the philosophical view that there’s a one-way causal relationship between the physical and mental worlds.
Physical events, such as neural activity in the rain, are what cause mental events like thoughts or feelings.
Mental events themselves have no causal effect on the physical world. The belief that our thoughts cause our actions is considered an illusion.
It was proposed in the 1800s by Thomas Huxley.