Topic:  Discussion of Davidson’s Anomalous Monism

Davidson’s “Thinking Causes”

*Davidson characterizes AM as:  “it endorses ontological reduction, but eschews conceptual reduction.” (p. 3)

*The most common objection to AM is that it “makes the mental causally inert.” (p. 3)

    --The common objection:  Since the only strict laws are those containing physical predicates, and strict laws are required for
    causation, it seems that there is only physical causation.  Since it is never in virtue of the mental properties of any event that it
    brings about some action, there is no mental causation.

*On pp. 3-4, Davidson provides his 3-fold plan:
 
    1.  Clarify AM
    2.  Show that the premises for AM are consistent
    3.  Respond to the “mental inertness” objection

*Davidson on supervenience:
 
    --supervenience:  “a predicate p is supervenient on a set of predicates S if and only if p does not distinguish any entities that
    cannot be distinguished by S.” (p. 4)

    --Example:  semantic predicates supervene on syntactic predicates. (p. 5)

    --“supervenience in any form implies monism” (p. 5)

*On pp. 5-6, Davidson presents an excerpted criticism of non-reductive physicalism from Kim.  Davidson rejects something being a cause ‘as’ (or qua, in virtue of, etc.) something-or-other.

    --Good quote:
    “if causal relations and causal powers inhere in particular events and objects, then the way those events and objects are
    described, and the properties we happen to employ to pick them out or characterize them, cannot affect what they cause.”
    (p. 8)

    But this isn’t quite right.  After all, an event must fall under a description that appears in a strict law in order to cause
    anything.  (Of course our describing things doesn’t bestow causal efficacy.)

    --Davidson later writes:  “But it is also irrelevant to the causal efficacy of physical events that they can be described in the
    physical vocabulary.  It is events that have the power to change things, not our various ways of describing them.” (p. 12)

    Objection:  This is inconsistent with the strict law requirement.  If the only strict laws are in physical vocabulary, then events
    must be describable [note the modal] in physical vocabulary to be causally efficacious.

*Davidson’s bold claim on pp. 11-12:  No psychological laws of any kind are needed for mental causation.

*The closest Davidson comes to recognizing the problem of mental inertness is in the last paragraph on p. 13.  He suddenly understands the “in virtue of” objection, and simply makes a burden of proof move.  (He does also go on to state, in the next paragraph, that supervenience alone is enough to save mental causation.  Is it that easy?  Can’t there be epiphenomenal, but supervenient, properties??)

*Davidson attributes the “confusions” about AM to a failure to appreciate the distinction between event types and tokens. (p. 15)

*Good example:  Is the sound of the gunshot epiphenomenal (with respect to the death) in Sosa’s example? (pp. 16-17)  Isn’t Davidson’s position weakened by his acceptance of this comparison?
 

Kim’s Response

1.
*Kim never accused Davidson’s AM + P of inconsistency.  Kim grants that on Davidson’s view mental events are causes.  The charge Kim makes regards the causal efficacy of mental properties.

2.
*It might be true that AM + P does not necessarily show mental properties to be epiphenomenal.  Still, it does nothing to vindicate their causal efficacy (in contrast with the vindication of the causal efficacy of physical properties).

3.
*Causation might be a two-place relation between concrete events (in extension, however described, etc.).  Still, we need to have an understanding of the causal efficacy of properties (perhaps as “grounding” the two-place causal relation).

    “… the causal relation obtains between a pair of events because they are events of certain kinds, or have certain
    properties.  How could anyone refuse to acknowledge this—unless, that is, he believe that causal relations were brute facts
    about events, having nothing to do with the kinds of events that they are?” (p. 22)

4.
*Contrary to Davidson’s claims, supervenience does require the existence of some psychophysical laws—namely, supervenience requires physical-to-mental laws.

5.
*Kim makes, though he does not explain, a distinction between causal relevance and causal efficacy.  Oftentimes causal relevance is thought of as an epistemological notion, and causal efficacy as a metaphysical notion (e.g., what “does the causal work”), but that’s not exactly how Kim hints at the distinction on p. 23.  Regardless, supervenience is supposed to be sufficient for causal relevance, but not causal efficacy.  E.g., in the story I told in class about a statue being thrown through a window, the aesthetic properties were causally relevant, but not causally effiacious.

6.
*Non-strict laws:

    i)  What are they?  (E.g., are they strict laws in disguise?)
    ii)  Does the Anomalism of the Mental rule out even non-strict laws?

7.
*If there are non-strict laws, why aren’t they enough to back causal relations?  Why is the strict-law requirement needed?

*Furthermore, why aren’t non-strict laws enough to ground a reduction?
 

McLaughlin’s Response

*McLaughlin distinguishes between type and token epiphenomenalism:

    “Token Epiphenomenalism.  Physical events cause mental events, but mental events cannot cause anything.
    Type Epiphenomenalism.  (a)  Events cause other events in virtue of falling under physical types, and (b) no event can cause
    anything in virtue of falling under a mental type.” (p. 28)

McLaughlin stresses (as did Kim before him) that no one is charging Davidson with Token-E.  The charge against Davidson is always Type-E.  This charge arises out of the conjunction of Davidson’s principles of the Nomological Character of Causality and the Anomalism of the Mental.

*Q:  Is Davidson right when he says that “it makes no sense to speak of an event being a cause ‘as’ anything at all”, since it is whole events that are causes and effects? (p. 6)  McLaughlin argues against Davidson on this issue on pp. 30-32.  Consider my own example (rather than McLaughlin’s more complicated example using weight):

    Only whole people are brunettes or blondes, but it still make sense to speak of someone being brunette or blonde in virtue of
    (or as, or qua, etc.)…

*Again, like Kim, McLaughlin considers whether Davidson is right in his claim that supervenience is enough to avoid Type-E.  On pp. 36-37 provides a good example (involving syntax and the truth-values that supervene on that syntax) of a case in which we have causally inefficacious supervenient properties (i.e., supervenient properties that are Type-E).

*McLaughlin ends by suggesting that the principle of the Nomological Character of Causality should be abandoned (p. 40).
 

Sosa’s Response

*Sosa’s analogy:  Mental properties, on AM, are like the loudness of a gunshot.  The loudness of a gunshot is causally inefficacious with respect to the death, and similarly mental properties, on AM, are causally inefficacious with respect to action.

    --Recall that Davidson’s response was to insist that the loudness of the gunshot was causally efficacious, because the death
    would have been different had the shot been silent.  In light of this response, Sosa interprets Davidson as accepting (c) on the
    top of p. 42.

    --(c) is plausible only on the assumption of a hyper-essentialism about events.

    Objection:  “But if this is the way the mental is efficacious, then the mental seems no more efficacious than a speck of dust on
    the butt of a murder gun.” (p. 42)

*Aside:  On p. 43 Sosa gives a good formulation of Kim’s complaint against Davidson’s version of weak supervenience.

*Bottom of p. 43:  Sosa’s formulation of Davidson’s argument that supervenience is sufficient for vindicating causal efficacy.

*Sosa notes that there is a plausible sense in which Davidson’s strict law requirement for causation allows for ‘in virtue of’ (or ‘as’, or ‘qua’, etc.) causal talk. (pp. 46-47)

    --Davidsonian weak supervenience has already been shown to be unsuccessful in vindicating mental property efficacy.  The
    only alternative proposals Sosa envisions, that have any chance of succeeding, involve modality, subjunctives, or non-strict
    laws.  But pursuing these alternatives threatens, Sosa claims, the strict law requirement for causation. (pp. 47-48)

    Q:  But might this be avoided by simply noting that causal efficacy is not the same thing as causation simpliciter?