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Full Idea
Davidson's thesis is that if mental events of a particular kind cause physical events of a particular kind, and the two kinds are connected by a law, then they must both be physical kinds.
Gist of Idea
Davidson claims that mental must be physical, to make mental causation possible
Source
report of Donald Davidson (Mental Events [1970]) by Jaegwon Kim - Philosophy of Mind p.137
Book Ref
Kim,Jaegwon: 'Philosophy of Mind' [Westview 1998], p.137
A Reaction
Davidson would pretty obviously be right. The whole problem here is the idea of a 'law'. You can only have strict law for simple entities, like particles and natural kinds. The brain is a mess, like weather or explosions.
| 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] |
| 3963 | There are no strict psychophysical laws connecting mental and physical events [Davidson] |
| 3961 | Obviously all mental events are causally related to physical events [Davidson] |
| 3965 | Mental entities do not add to the physical furniture of the world [Davidson] |
| 2597 | Contrary to the 'anomalous monist' view, there may well be intentional causal laws [Fodor] |
| 7858 | If causes are basic particulars, this doesn't make conscious and physical properties identical [Papineau] |
| 6121 | There are many psychophysicals laws - about the effects of sweets, colours and soft cushions [Mellor/Crane] |
| 5339 | Cars and bodies obey principles of causation, without us knowing any 'strict laws' about them [Flanagan] |
| 3530 | Denial of purely mental causation will lead to epiphenomenalism [Maslin] |