Anomalous Monism - Resolving The Contradiction

Resolving The Contradiction

So how are the three seemingly irreconcilable principles above resolved? Davidson distinguishes causal relations, which are an extensional matter and not influenced by the way they are described, from law-like relations, which are intensional and dependent on the manner of description. There is no law of nature under which events fall when they are described according to the order in which they appeared on the television news. When the earthquake caused the Church of Santa Maria dalla Chiesa to collapse, there is surely some physical law(s) which explains what happened, but not under the description in terms of the event on Channel 7 at six p.m. causing the events on Channel 8 at six fifteen. In the same way, mental and physical events are causally related but not qua mental events. The mental events have explanatory predicates which are physical as well as predicates which are irreducibly mental. Hence, AM is a form of predicate dualism which accompanies ontological monism.

Finally, for those who objected that this is not really a form of physicalism because there is no assurance that every mental event will have a physical base, Davidson formulated the thesis of supervenience. Mental properties are dependent on physical properties and there can be no change in higher-level properties without a corresponding change in lower-level properties.