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Full Idea
Davidson takes mental anomalism (that the mind exhibits normativity and rationality), and in particular his claim that there are no laws connecting mental and physical properties, to undermine mind-body reductionism.
Gist of Idea
If rule-following and reason are 'anomalies', does that make reductionism impossible?
Source
report of Donald Davidson (Mental Events [1970]) by Jaegwon Kim - Mind in a Physical World §4 p.092
Book Ref
Kim,Jaegwon: 'Mind in the Physical World' [MIT 2000], p.92
A Reaction
A nice summary of the core idea of property dualism. Personally I expect the whole lot to be reducible, and to follow laws, but the sheer complexity of the brain permanently bars us from actually doing the reduction.
| 3529 | Reduction is impossible because mind is holistic and brain isn't [Davidson, by Maslin] |
| 2307 | Anomalous monism says nothing at all about the relationship between mental and physical [Davidson, by Kim] |
| 5497 | Mind is outside science, because it is humanistic and partly normative [Davidson, by Lycan] |
| 4081 | Anomalous monism says causes are events, so the mental and physical are identical, without identical properties [Davidson, by Crane] |
| 2321 | If rule-following and reason are 'anomalies', does that make reductionism impossible? [Davidson, by Kim] |
| 3404 | Davidson claims that mental must be physical, to make mental causation possible [Davidson, by Kim] |
| 3405 | If mental causation is lawless, it is only possible if mental events have physical properties [Davidson, by Kim] |
| 3429 | Multiple realisability was worse news for physicalism than anomalous monism was [Davidson, by Kim] |
| 6620 | Davidson sees identity as between events, not states, since they are related in causation [Davidson, by Lowe] |
| 3524 | Causation is either between events, or between descriptions of events [Davidson, by Maslin] |
| 3526 | Whether an event is a causal explanation depends on how it is described [Davidson, by Maslin] |
| 16041 | Supervenience of the mental means physical changes mental, and mental changes physical [Davidson] |
| 4983 | There are no rules linking thought and behaviour, because endless other thoughts intervene [Davidson] |