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    The only potentially true and strict laws in which psycho... — Carmelics
    Home/Consciousness & Mind
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    The only potentially true and strict laws in which psychological predicates can figure are of the psychophysical form 'P1 & M1 & M2 → M3'

    CausationConsciousness & Mind
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    1 reason for
    2 reasons against

    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
    ?
    • 1.Physical conditions always play some role in plausible psychological generalizations
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    • 2.Purely psychological laws of the form 'M1 & M2 → M3' cannot be strict because physical intervention can always prevent the mental consequent
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    • 3.Including physical predicates alongside mental predicates is necessary to account for the causal openness of the mental domain
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    Reasons Against

    2 perspectives
    Reason against 1 of 2
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    • 1.Fodor's special sciences argument holds that higher-level regularities are irreducible to physical laws yet remain genuinely nomological in their own right.
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    • 2.If multiply realizable mental states can be unified under psychological kinds that abstract over physical heterogeneity, purely psychological laws of the form 'M1 & M2 → M3' need not be undermined by physical intervention any more than biological or economic laws are.
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    • 3.Davidson's demand for physical conditions in strict psychophysical laws proves too much, as it would equally dissolve the lawhood of all special-science generalizations, not just psychological ones.
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    Reason against 2 of 2
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    • 1.Strict laws are characterized by their logical form and ceteris paribus-free universality, not by the specific predicate vocabularies they employ.
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    • 2.If the move to psychophysical form 'P1 & M1 & M2 → M3' genuinely yields strict laws, this presupposes that mental predicates can appear in strict laws, undermining Davidson's own anomalism thesis.
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    • 3.Hempel's theorist dilemma applies here: either the added physical predicates absorb all the nomic work and the mental predicates become explanatorily idle, or the law remains irreducibly psychophysical and still fails Davidson's strictness criterion.
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    Topics

    Consciousness & MindCausation

    Related

    Davidson's demand for physical conditions in strict psychophysical laws proves t...Fodor's special sciences argument holds that higher-level regularities are irred...Hempel's theorist dilemma applies here: either the added physical predicates abs...If multiply realizable mental states can be unified under psychological kinds th...
    +5 moreShow less
    If the move to psychophysical form 'P1 & M1 & M2 → M3' genuinely yields strict l...Including physical predicates alongside mental predicates is necessary to accoun...Physical conditions always play some role in plausible psychological generalizat...Purely psychological laws of the form 'M1 & M2 → M3' cannot be strict because ph...Strict laws are characterized by their logical form and ceteris paribus-free uni...

    Similar

    There are no strict, purely psychological laws of the form 'M1 & M2 → ...89%Bridge laws of the form 'P1 ↔ M1' are strict laws in which mental pred...85%Purely psychological laws of the form 'M1 & M2 → M3' cannot be strict ...84%Davidson's considered position rejects the possibility of any strict l...81%

    Source

    AI-extracted1/3 agreementValid
    SEP: anomalous-monism
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    Davidson uses the interaction principle to establish directly one part of mental anomalism—psychological anomalism, which denies the possibility of strict, purely psychological laws of the form ‘M1 & M2 → M3’ (Davidson 1970, 224; 1974b, 243). For if physical events causally impact on mental events, then the mental domain is ‘open’, and any laws in which mental predicates figure will have to take this into account (for related discussion, see the supplement on Causal Closure of the Physical
    Extraction notes

    Validity: Extracted via Max plan + API grounding/validity checks

    Details

    Type
    claim
    Perspectives
    3 (1 for, 2 against)
    Edits
    1 edit