Baby You Can Drive My Car, Part 2: Lennon and McCartney

Most Beatles songs are attributed to “Lennon and McCartney”, but it is well known that many of these songs were not really collaborations.  In fact, some of the songs attributed to “Lennon and McCartney” were written by John Lennon, and some of them were written by Paul McCartney, and usually you can find out which one by looking up the song on Wikipedia.

Let’s assume that the song “Baby You Can Drive My Car” was written entirely by Paul McCartney, and John Lennon made no contributions whatsoever.  (Actually, Lennon did contribute some lyrics to “Baby You Can Drive My Car”.)

Given that assumption, would it be true to say that “Baby You Can Drive My Car” was written by Lennon and McCartney?  The statement does have some truth to it: after all, if you add up all of the contributions from John Lennon and all the contributions from Paul McCartney, you get the song.  But usually, we would assume that the attribution to “Lennon and McCartney” is a convention, a fiction.  You might as well say that “Baby you can Drive my Car” was written by Starr and McCartney, or by Stalin and McCartney.  The true story can be found in Wikipedia: the song was written by Paul McCartney.

Similarly, if epiphenomenalism is true, the book “The Conscious Mind” was not written by the conscious mind of David Chalmers; it was written by the physical brain of David Chalmers.  David Chalmers’ physical brain, according to epiphenomenalism, is self-contained and self sufficient.  It takes no input from Chalmers’ conscious mind, it needs no help from Chalmers’ conscious mind, and it has no access to Chalmers’ conscious mind.  Chalmers’ conscious mind is no better than a reader of “The Conscious Mind”, certainly not a co-author.

“The Conscious Mind” was written by Chalmers’ physical brain in two important senses.  First, Chalmers’ physical brain is a natural language engine that generated the English sentences that comprise “The Conscious Mind”.  Even more important, however, is that Chalmers’ physical brain is an epistemological engine -- an epistemological agent -- that arrived at the conclusions presented in “The Conscious Mind”.