“Mental Events”, by Donald Davidson, defends a view of Token physicalism known as Anomalous Monism. Token physicalism claims that every event that falls under a mental-event kind, also falls under a physical-event kind. According to Davidson,

“Anomalous Monism resembles materialism in its claim that all events are physical, but rejects the thesis, usually considered essential to materialism, that mental phenomena can be given purely physical explanations. Anomalous monism shows an ontological bias only in that it allows the possibility that not all events are mental, while insisting that all events are physical.”

This view of Token physicalism does not use type or general kinds of events that the type-identity theorist would use. But instead, Davidson uses an identity that does not need the reductive laws that type-identity uses. Davidson claims that tokens or particular mental and physical occurrences hold the identity between the mental and the physical. This is important because it claims that an identity cannot be made between mental and physical types and mental concepts can be reduced to physical concepts.

Davidson uses three premises to defend his view of Anomalous

The second premise, the Principle of the Nomological Character of Causality, claims that cases of causation require laws to say event “A” caused event “B”, is to say that there is a law that holds that events like “A” are typically followed by events like “B”. Not that when event “A” takes place it is always followed by event “B”.

Monism. The first premise, Principle of Causal Interaction, claims that at least some mental events causally interact with physical events in perception and action. Davidson uses the example of the sinking of the Bismarck to explain this premise. If someone sank the Bismarck, then that means that some mental events took place for the physical event, the sinking of the Bismarck, to take place. Someone saw the Bismarck approaching and through mental events, “perceivings, notings, calculations, judgments, decisions, intentional actions and changes of belief,” causally interacted with the sinking of the Bismarck. Some mental event caused that someone to sink the ship when the ship approached the person. Davidson’s example shows how the mental and the physical causally interact.

Davison’s claim of Anomalous Monism seems to have contradictions that he does not eliminate. Davison needs to take a full position and state whether mental has causality or not. He cannot say that in one premise they can and in another they cannot. It is also hard to imagine that mental events have no casual powers with physical states. In the example of ordering a pizza, how is it possible that my mental state cannot influence or causally affect my behavior? Also, to understand our behaviors we need to understand our how our mental events causally interact with the physical. I maybe missing something here, but I understand what Davidson is trying to claim, I just don’t seem to believe it. I personally believe that mental events are responsible for physical events and behavior.

The third and final premise, the Principle of the Anomalism of the Mental, claims that there are no strict links involving mental kinds. For Davidson there is a contradiction in the premises. Premise one and two deny the truth of the third premise. Davidson states,

Some topics in this essay:
Al Gore, Character Causality, Anomalism Mental, Toledo Joe, According Davidson, Anomalous Monism, Principle Rationality, Causal Interaction, Bismarck Bismarck, Joe Cleveland, mental events, mental physical, physical events, causal laws, causally interact, premise principle, strict causal, anomalous monism, davidson claims, nomological character causality, events causally, events causally interact, mental events causally, causally interact physical, strict causal laws,