Donald_Davidson_

Donald Davidson: Donald Davidson: “Mental Events” “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 Monism. The first premise, Principle of Causal Interaction, claims mental, events, physical, premise, causal, davidson, claims, laws, claim, true, event, two, strict, principle, law, one, first, causality, cannot, behaviorist, states, causally, believe, monism, example, beliefs, under, say, interact, generalizations, explain, bismarck, because, anomalous, third, theory, terms, state, singular, seems, psychological, pizza, nomological, least, individual, identity, descriptions, davidson’s, concepts, closed