Reading Notes: August 11th, 2024

“Another important alternative is the non-reductive, non-eliminative materialism of Donald Davidson (1970, 1973, 1974). Davidson advocates a thesis which asserts that every concrete mental event is identical to some concrete neurological event, but which does not assert (indeed, denies) that there are systematic bridge laws linking mental event-types, or properties, with neurological event-types. He calls this view anomalous monism; it is a form of monism because it posits psychophysical identities, and it is “anomalous” because it rejects reductive bridge laws (or reductive type-type identities).” (Horgan and Woodward, Folk Psychology is Here to Stay, 204)

“Davidson’s metaphysical account of mind is a non-reductive form of physicalism which includes a token identity theory. Every mental event just is a physical event under a different description. But there is no systematic connection between types of mental event and types of physical event. Because it rejects the claim that the mental can exist independently of physical stuff, Davidson’s account is a form of physicalism or monism. It is committed to an identity theory because mental and physical classifications classify the same entities. But it is non-reductive and anomalous because it denies that mental and physical types can be matched.” (Thornton, Wittgenstein and Davidson on Content, 151)

“Because our awareness cannot be an awareness of itself, there must always be ultimate awareness which is not itself an object of awareness. In Materialist terms, although the brain may contain self-scanners which scan the rest of the brain, and scanners which in turn scan the self-scanners, and so on as far as we please, we must come in the end to unscanned scanners.” (Armstrong, A Materialist Theory of Mind, 112)