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Full Idea
For Davidson, mental types are individuated by considerations that are nonscientific, distinctly humanistic, and part normative, so will not coincide with any types that are designated in scientific terms.
Clarification
'Normative' means it creates and follows rules
Gist of Idea
Mind is outside science, because it is humanistic and partly normative
Source
report of Donald Davidson (Mental Events [1970]) by William Lycan - Introduction - Ontology p.8
Book Ref
'Mind and Cognition (2nd Edn)', ed/tr. Lycan,William [Blackwell 1999], p.8
A Reaction
I just don't believe this, mainly because I don't accept that there is a category called 'nonscientific'. All we are saying is that a brain is a hugely complicated object, and we don't properly understand its operations, though we relate to it very well.
| 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] |