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Full Idea
Davidson's anomalous monism says that events are causes, so we can identify mental and physical events without having to identify their properties.
Clarification
'Anomalous monism' means 'one substance which is a misfit within natural laws'
Gist of Idea
Anomalous monism says causes are events, so the mental and physical are identical, without identical properties
Source
report of Donald Davidson (Mental Events [1970]) by Tim Crane - Elements of Mind 2.18
Book Ref
Crane,Tim: 'Elements of Mind' [OUP 2001], p.62
A Reaction
As Fodor insists, a thing like a mountain has properties at different levels of description. We can have 'property dualism' and full-blown reductive identity.
| 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] |