I never heard of this theory, but it intrigues me. I spent an hour trying to understand it, and I think I do, but I am hesitant to write it down; I am pretty sure I will have parts of it wrong.
Anomalous Monism (SEP)
Anomalous Monism is a theory about the scientific status of psychology, the physical status of mental events, and the relation between these issues developed by Donald Davidson. It claims that psychology cannot be a science like basic physics, in that it cannot in principle yield exceptionless laws for predicting or explaining human thoughts and actions (mental anomalism). It also holds that thoughts and actions must be physical (monism, or token-identity), contradicting the paradigmatic dualist view of Descartes that mental and physical states are entirely different things. Thus, according to Anomalous Monism, psychology cannot be reduced to physics, but must nonetheless share a physical ontology.
While neither of these claims, on its own, is novel, their relation, according to Anomalous Monism, is. It is precisely because there can be no such strict laws governing mental events that those events must be identical to physical events. Most previous identity theories of mind had held that claims concerning the identity of particular mental and physical events (tokens) depended upon the discovery of lawlike relations between mental and physical properties (types). Empirical evidence for psychophysical laws was thus held to be required for particular token-identity claims. Token-identity claims thus depended upon type-identity (see Johnston, 1985, 408–409). Davidson’s monism is dramatically different – it requires no empirical evidence and depends on there being no lawlike relations between mental and physical properties. It in effect justifies the token-identity of mental and physical events through arguing for the impossibility of type-identities between mental and physical properties. (For detailed discussion of how Davidson’s position relates to David Lewis’s argument for type identity (Lewis 1966), see supplement A.2.1. For discussion of philosophical positions related to Davidson’s version of monism, see supplement A.)
The appeal of Anomalous Monism is owed to these striking and novel features, a fairly straightforward argumentative structure, and its attempt to bring together an intuitively acceptable metaphysics (monism) with a sophisticated understanding of the relation between psychological and physical explanatory schemes (anomalism). Its explicit assumptions are each intended, on their own, to be acceptable to positions opposing monism, but, when taken together, to show that monism is in fact required. Anomalous Monism thus maintains the autonomy of the common sense view of persons as agents acting for reasons while nonetheless acknowledging that persons are part of the physical world.
Read the rest here: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/anomalous-monism/
Chatbot
Anomalous Monism (Donald Davidson)
Anomalous monism is a theory about how mental talk fits into a fully physical world.
It starts from three claims that seem hard to combine:
- Everything that happens in the world is physical.
- Human actions are explained in terms of reasons (beliefs, desires, intentions).
- There are no strict scientific laws connecting mental concepts to physical concepts.
Most theories give up one of these. Davidson does not.
His key idea is this:
mental events are physical events, but they can be described in different ways.
When I raise my hand because I believe the teacher called on me, one event occurs. The same event can be described:
- mentally: as acting on a belief and a desire
- physically: as neural activity causing muscle movement
These are not two events and not two causes. They are one event under two descriptions.
What makes the theory “anomalous” is Davidson’s claim that mental concepts cannot enter strict laws. Beliefs and desires are defined by how they fit into a whole network of reasons, norms, and interpretations. Because of this, there can be no exception-free laws saying “this belief always equals that brain state.”
Causation, however, requires laws. So the causal work is done at the physical level. Mental explanations do not compete with physics; they interpret the same events in a different vocabulary.
Anomalous monism therefore rejects:
- dualism (there is no non-physical mind)
- reductionism (psychology does not reduce to neuroscience)
- epiphenomenalism (mental events are not causally idle)
It also does not assume free will or a controlling self. Determinism can be true, and reason-talk can still function as a way humans make sense of actions.
In short: the world is physical, reasons are interpretive, and both describe the same events without one replacing the other.
Wikipedia
Anomalous monism is a philosophical thesis about the mind–body relationship. It was first proposed by Donald Davidson in his 1970 paper “Mental Events”. The theory is twofold and states that mental events are identical with physical events, and that the mental is anomalous, i.e. under their mental descriptions, causal relations between these mental events are not describable by strict physical laws. Hence, Davidson proposes an identity theory of mind without the reductive bridge laws associated with the type-identity theory. Since the publication of his paper, Davidson refined his thesis and both critics and supporters of anomalous monism have come up with their own characterizations of the thesis, many of which appear to differ from Davidson’s.
Considering views about the relation between the mental and the physical as distinguished first by whether or not mental entities are identical with physical entities, and second by whether or not there are strict psychophysical laws, we arrive at a fourfold classification: (1) nomological monism, which says there are strict correlating laws, and that the correlated entities are identical (this is usually called type physicalism); (2) nomological dualism, which holds that there are strict correlating laws, but that the correlated entities are not identical (parallelism, property dualism and pre-established harmony); (3) anomalous dualism, which holds there are no laws correlating the mental and the physical, that the substances are ontologically distinct, but nevertheless there is interaction between them (i.e. Cartesian dualism); and (4) anomalous monism, which allows only one class of entities, but denies the possibility of definitional and nomological reduction. Davidson put forth his theory of anomalous monism as a possible solution to the mind–body problem.
Since in this theory every mental event is some physical event or other, the idea is that someone’s thinking at a certain time, for example, that snow is white, is a certain pattern of neural firing in their brain at that time, an event which can be characterized as both a thinking that snow is white (a type of mental event) and a pattern of neural firing (a type of physical event). There is just one event that can be characterized both in mental terms and in physical terms. If mental events are physical events, they can at least in principle be explained and predicted, like all physical events, on the basis of laws of physical science. However, according to anomalous monism, events cannot be so explained or predicted as described in mental terms (such as “thinking”, “desiring”, etc.), but only as described in physical terms: this is the distinctive feature of the thesis as a brand of physicalism.
Read the rest here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anomalous_monism
Nochrisis 