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Full Idea
If two events are related as cause and effect, there is a strict law under which they may be subsumed.
Clarification
'Strict laws' have no 'ceteris paribus' (all things being equal) clause
Gist of Idea
Cause and effect relations between events must follow strict laws
Source
Donald Davidson (Davidson on himself [1994], p.231)
Book Ref
'A Companion to the Philosophy of Mind', ed/tr. Guttenplan,Samuel [Blackwell 1995], p.231
A Reaction
Davidson admits that this is open to challenge (though Hume and Kant supported it). It does seem to be central to our understanding of nature.
| 3965 | Mental entities do not add to the physical furniture of the world [Davidson] |
| 3960 | There are no such things as minds, but people have mental properties [Davidson] |
| 3964 | If the mind is an anomaly, this makes reduction of the mental to the physical impossible [Davidson] |
| 3961 | Obviously all mental events are causally related to physical events [Davidson] |
| 3963 | There are no strict psychophysical laws connecting mental and physical events [Davidson] |
| 3966 | The correct conclusion is ontological monism combined with conceptual dualism [Davidson] |
| 3962 | Cause and effect relations between events must follow strict laws [Davidson] |
| 3969 | There are no ultimate standards of rationality, since we only assess others by our own standard [Davidson] |
| 3968 | Propositions explain nothing without an explanation of how sentences manage to name them [Davidson] |
| 3967 | Absence of all rationality would be absence of thought [Davidson] |
| 3970 | Thought is only fully developed if we communicate with others [Davidson] |
| 3971 | There is simply no alternative to the 'principle of charity' in interpreting what others do [Davidson] |
| 3972 | Truth and objectivity depend on a community of speakers to interpret what they mean [Davidson] |
| 3973 | Without a teacher, the concept of 'getting things right or wrong' is meaningless [Davidson] |
| 3974 | Our meanings are partly fixed by events of which we may be ignorant [Davidson] |