Causal Interaction
The first principle follows from Davidson's view of the ontology of events and the nature of the relationship of mental events (specifically propositional attitudes) with physical actions. Davidson subscribes to an ontology of events where events (as opposed to objects or states of affairs) are the fundamental, irreducible entities of the mental and physical universe. His original position, as expressed in Actions and Events, was that event-individuation must be done on the basis of causal powers. He later abandoned this view in favour of the individuation of events on the basis of spatio-temporal localization, but his principle of causal interaction seems to imply some sort of, at least, implicit commitment to causal individuation. According to this view, all events are caused by and cause other events and this is the chief, defining characteristic of what an event is.
Another relevant aspect of Davidson's ontology of events for anomalous monism is that an event has an indefinite number of properties or aspects. An event such as "the turning on of the light-switch" is not fully described in the words of that particular phrase. Rather, "the turning on of the light-switch" also involves "the illumination of the room", "the alerting of the burglar in the kitchen", etc... Since a physical event, such as the action of turning on the light-switch can be associated with a very large variety of mental events (reasons) which are potentially capable of rationalizing the action a posteriori, how is it possible to choose the real cause of my turning on the light-switch (which event is the causal one)? Davidson says that the causal event, in such a case, is the particular reason that caused the action to occur. It was because I wanted to see better that I turned on the light-switch and not because I wanted to alert the burglar in the kitchen. The latter is just a sort of side effect. So, for Davidson, "reasons are causes" and this explains the causal efficacy of the mental.
Read more about this topic: Anomalous Monism
Famous quotes containing the words causal and/or interaction:
“There is the illusion of time, which is very deep; who has disposed of it? Mor come to the conviction that what seems the succession of thought is only the distribution of wholes into causal series.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Here is this vast, savage, howling mother of ours, Nature, lying all around, with such beauty, and such affection for her children, as the leopard; and yet we are so early weaned from her breast to society, to that culture which is exclusively an interaction of man on man,—a sort of breeding in and in, which produces at most a merely English nobility, a civilization destined to have a speedy limit.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)