Bad News for Anomalous Monism?

Author(s): Peter Smith

Source: Analysis, Vol. 42, No. 4 (Oct., 1982), pp. 220-224
Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of The Analysis Committee
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BAD NEWS FOR ANOMALOUS MONISM?

By PETER SMrrH

N his paper 'The Argument for Anomalous Monism' (ANALYSIS

42.1,January 1982), Ted Honderich argues that the Davidsonian

position has grave difficulty in accommodating a central conviction

which any acceptable philosophy of mind should surely underwrite,
namely our conviction that the mental is causally efficacious.
Davidson's type of monism is intended to reconcile the following
propositions which are prima facie inconsistent. (1) There are causal
connections between mental events and physical events. (2) Wherever
there is a causal connection, there is a covering law. And (3), there
are no psycho-physical laws. As is now well known, Davidson aims
to reconcile these three propositions by noting that we must interpret the second one in a weak sense - i.e. as asserting only that,
where there is a causal connection between events, there must be
some descriptions of these events in virtue of which they instantiate
a law. A given singular causal claim need not identify the events in
question by means of concepts which are fit to feature in the supporting general law. This opens up the possibility that it could be
true that Jane's desire caused her action consistently with there
being no psycho-physical laws, by virtue of the particular desire
and the action falling under physical descriptions which do instantiate a law. This possibility presupposes the identity of the mental
with the physical: and the monism here (if we are to avoid the reintroduction of psycho-physical laws) must be anomalous.
Honderich argues that this familiar complex of ideas is not able
to secure the causal efficacy of the mental. For the point that a
singular causal claim need not be couched in terms which recur in
the backing law is just the point that we can identify a cause and
effect by means of properties which are not relevant to their causal
linkage. Davidson is thus committed to distinguishing, among the
properties of a given event, those in virtue of which it causes a
certain upshot - and these properties will be the ones governed by
the relevant background causal law. In the light of this, let's ask
which properties of Jane's desire are relevant to its causing her
action. The immediately plausible reply is that it is in virtue of its
mental properties that the desire causes the action: or in Honderich's
phrase, it is 'the mental as mental' which causes the physical. But
this reply implies that there are, after all, nomological ties between

mental properties and physical ones, and we are back with the

unwanted psycho-physical laws. So suppose instead that we say that

it is 'the mental as physical' which causes the physical: in other
words, suppose we maintain that the properties of Jane's desire
which are relevant to its causing the action in question are among
its physical properties. Note, however, that if we are to continue to
avoid the re-introduction of psycho-physical laws, then the connec220

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BAD NEWS FOR ANOMALOUS MONISM? 221

tion between the mental and physical properties of a given event

must be deemed not to be nomological. And according to Honderich

'that is to say that the connection between the mental and the

physical is accidental'. So it follows that, in particular, the connection between an event's having the property of being a desire and its

causally relevant physical properties is accidental. But this conclusion seems intolerable; as Honderich puts it, 'Here, it seems, we do

not get the efficacy of the mental'.

All this, claims Honderich, is bad news for anomalous monism.

But it is worth pointing out that, whatever the merits of the argument, it certainly is not news. For here is Fred Stoutland writing in
1976:

... On Davidson's theory, the causal powers of propositional attitudes have

no determinate connection with the fact that they are propositional attitudes. It is, on the one hand, because they are propositional attitudes that
they account for intentionality (or figure in the explanation of intentional

action); it is, on the other hand, (only) because they are identical with

physical events that they cause behaviour. But that any particular event
should be both a particular attitude and a particular physical event - that
is, that the same event should have both a propositional attitude description and a physical description - is simply a brute fact for which there

cannot, on Davidson's grounds, be an explanation.... [To avoid re-intro-

ducing psycho-physical laws] it must be a brute fact, without explanation,

that an attitude causes the behaviour it does.'

The argument here is evidently the same as Honderich's; and Stoutland too, reasonably enough, finds its conclusion unacceptable. But

does Davidson's anomalous monism really commit him to this

conclusion? I think not.

The crucial move in the Stoutland/Honderich argument is their

inference from the lack of any nomological connection between the
mental and the physical to the claim that it is an 'accident' or 'brute
fact' that a given event has the particular combination of mental
and physical properties it displays. And this move should be resisted.
Let's begin by asking the anomalous monist how we are to pick
out the physical event (or state) which is identical with a given
mental event (or state). In other words, given a mental specification
of an event, how are we to determine which physical event satisfies
the specification? Of course, we cannot demand from the identity

theorist a recipe which can in practice be applied in order to

identify empirically the physical realization of a given mental state.

The demand is the weaker one that we are provided with some non-

arbitrary and well-motivated completion for such a schema as 'The

physical state which is X's belief that p at time t is that physical

1 Frederick Stoutland, 'The Causation of Behaviour', in Essays on Wittgenstein in

Honour of G. H. von Wright (ed. J. Hintikka), Acta Philosophica Fennica, vol. 28, 1976,
pp. 307-8. Stoutland expounded the argument in a paper read in Oxford and elsewhere
in 1975, a descendant of which appears as 'Oblique Causation and Reasons for Action',
Synthese, vol. 43, 1980.

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222

ANALYSIS

state such that...', where the filling does in principle pick out a
unique state.2
It seems clear enough how the monist must proceed here. He can
hardly offer to identify X's belief with some physical state which
lacks the right sort of causal connections with the behaviour we
interpret as done because of that belief; for this would ratify what
are, by ordinary standards, quite the wrong claims of the form 'X
did A because he believed that p'. So, putting it crudely, we must
identify X's mental states with physical states which are causally

appropriate. Refining this rough idea, we arrive at the following suggestion: the physical state which is X's belief that p (for example) is

that state which is (a) causally dependent on those antecedents

which folk psychology recognizes as explaining X's belief (such as
perceptual input), and such that (b) it is causally involved in the
production of such behaviour as folk psychology interprets as
actions done because X believes that p.
Now it is very easily seen that, if the anomalous monist does
identify the physical state which is X's belief in this sort of way,
then he is not vulnerable to the Stoutland/Honderich argument.
Suppose that X flipped the switch because he believed it would turn
on the light. Then the physical state which is X's belief is that state

(whatever it is) which has the right causal relations to the antecedents and consequences of X's belief: and so in particular, X's belief

is that physical state which (among other things) is causally involved

in the production of the behaviour which we interpreted as X's

flipping the switch because he believed it would turn on the light.
So - very trivially - the physical state which is X's belief caused
X's action. It is not an 'accident' or 'brute fact' that the belief (in
virtue of its physical properties) caused the action; for the physical
state which is the belief is partially identified as the state which has

the right physical properties to cause the action! And note that
none of this reinstates unacceptable psycho-physical laws. There is
no route, from the thought that if X on a given occasion believes
that p then he is in that particular physical state which has the ante-

cedents and consequences of his belief, to the conclusion that there

must be some general law-like correlation between X's believing
p and a type of physical state directly identified in purely physical
terms.

In short then, it can both be the case that there are no nomological links between the mental and the physical and yet also the
case that it is no accident that X's belief (in virtue of its physical
properties) causes the action it rationally explains. So the Stout-

land/Honderich argument entirely collapses.

Against all this, it might be protested that the anomalous monist's
method of identifying the physical state which is, for example, X's
2 For more on the legitimacy of this demand, see my paper 'On Identifying the Mental
and the Physical' (Canadian Journal of Philosophy, forthcoming).

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BAD NEWS FOR ANOMALOUS MONISM? 223

belief that p is in the present context something of a cheat. For the

operative clauses (a) and (b) above help themselves to the 'because'
of folk-psychological explanation, and it was worries about the role
of causality here that started off the whole argument in the first

place. It is important to see how this implied accusation of

circularity can be rebutted.

The accusation is presumably grounded in something like the following thought. We have tried to rescue the anomalous monist from

the Stoutland/Honderich argument by suggesting that the physical

state which is X's belief (and hence the causally relevant physical
properties of his belief) is fixed in part by the requirement that it
causes actions done because of that belief. But fixing which actions
are done because of a given belief presupposes that we can establish

some causal claims about beliefs: and - in the hypothesized

absence of psycho-physical laws - this means bringing to bear some

purely physical laws. However, these physical laws can only be

applied if we have already set up an identification of a given belief

with a specific physical state. So, on pain of circularity, this identifi-

cation cannot in turn presuppose that we have already fixed which

actions are done because of a given belief.
The obvious first reply to this line of thought is that it just isn't
generally true that establishing causal claims requires 'bringing laws
to bear'. I can know that on this occasion dropping the plate caused
it to smash, without benefit of access to the relevant laws concerning e.g. the effect of stress on crystalline structures. Some general
rules of thumb, falling well short of hard-edged laws, suffice to

bolster my everyday bits of causal knowledge.3 Likewise, folk-

psychology provides rough generalizations which are not themselves

law-like but which (it could again be argued) suffice to provide

grounds for particular causal claims about beliefs and desires. This
enables us to break into the supposed circle.
This first line of reply is sufficient as it stands. However, it is

perhaps worth noting in conclusion the possibility of a more

ambitious attack on the accusation of circularity. Let's consider

more carefully the sense in which folk-psychology makes causal
claims. Two views need to be distinguished here. The stronger one
is that a claim such as 'X flipped the switch because he believed it
would turn on the light' provides a causal explanation of X's action.

The more modest view is that such a claim mentions causes but is

not itself a causal explanation. More generally, while beliefs are

indeed states which cause actions, they do not rationally explain
the action in virtue of being such states: rather it is the other way
about - i.e. the belief is that physical state which causes the actions
it rationalizes in virtue of being physically identified in precisely
such a way as to fit that function. If the anomalous monist adopts
this second view, then all appearance of circularity in his position
evaporates.

3 See Davidson in Essays on Actions and Events, e.g. at p. 224.

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224

ANALYSIS

This is not the place to rehearse in detail the virtues of the more

modest view, or to discuss its relations to Davidson's position.

Sceptics about the coherence of such a view might, however, reflect

on the related case of teleological explanations in the light of

Jonathan Bennett's fine discussion in his Linguistic Behaviour.
There Bennett argues that a claim such as 'The missile swerved to
the left because it registered that its target had swerved' could
provide a genuine explanation of the missile's trajectory, and there

is a good sense in which this explanation is of a different type from

causal mechanistic explanation. But, of course, the event which is

the missile's registering of its target's change of course is doubtless

a physical event. Suppose, then, we ask 'which physical event?' The

evident answer is: the one which is responsible for, among other
things, making the missile swerve. So, the registering causes the

swerve. In short then, teleological explanations are not causal

explanations although they mention causes. The anomalous monist

might well commend this as a model for our understanding of folk-

psychological explanations, thus preserving the causal efficacy of

the mental while side-stepping Honderich's attack.
University College of Wales

? PETER SMITH 1982

Aberystwyth, Dyfed SY23 3DY

REPLY TO FORBES

By WILLIAM SEAGER and GRAEME HUNTER

I

EVERYONE
has recognized
sub-titling
of foreigntranslation.
films, and
this without
recourse inept
to a manual
of canonical
Graeme Forbes (in 'Canonical Counterpart Theory', this journal
42.1,January 1982) argues that the situation is somehow different

with regard to the languages of modality. Specifically, he rejects the

view set forth in 'The Discreet Charm of Counterpart Theory' (this

journal, 41.2, March 1981), in which we argued that even in these

cases such manuals are unnecessary.

Forbes believes instead that 'sentences of Lc [the language of

Counterpart Theory (CT)] are intended to interpret or elucidate the
meanings of Lm sentences [first-order modal language]' (op. cit.
p. 33). To this end he attempts to provide an adequate formal translation scheme from Lm to Lc. We think it to be no more plausible

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