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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.
| 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] |