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Full Idea
There are no strict psychophysical laws (that is, laws connecting mental events under their mental descriptions with physical events under their physical descriptions).
Clarification
'Strict' laws allow no exceptions
Gist of Idea
There are no strict psychophysical laws connecting mental and physical events
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
This is clearly open to question. It may be just that no human mind could ever grasp such laws, given their probable complexity.
| 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] |