Anomalous Monism is a theory about the scientific status of psychology, the physical status of mental events, and the relation between these issues developed by Donald Davidson. It claims that psychology cannot be a science like basic physics, in that it cannot in principle yield exceptionless laws for predicting or explaining human thoughts and actions (mental anomalism). It also holds that thoughts and actions must be physical (monism, or token-identity).

'Thoughts must be physical'. There's the problem. Reasoning from premisses to conclusions or making valid inferences - how can these be physical? You can design any kind of system to encode rational inferences and meaningful sentences, but the substance of them is only ever the relationship between ideas - 'because', 'therefore', 'the same as', 'different from'. The same sentence can be written in different languages, encoded in different systems, represented in different media - but the meaning remains invariant. So the physical representation changes, while the meaning is invariant. So how could the idea it carries be physical? Furthermore you need to be able to engage in rational inference to even decide what is 'physical'. So, again, how could rational thought be physical? It's an absurd proposition.

Brexit here we come!

:grin:

'Thoughts must be physical'. There's the problem. — Wayfarer

I believe it is raining because it is raining. The thing in the world causes the thought.

If I decide to move my arm up, the damn thing goes up. The thought causes the thing in the world.

Any form of dualism faces the issue of explaining how these simple things can happen. SOmehow, thoughts are causally linked to the world.

Indeed, not just dualism but anything apart from monism.

So, if you dislike the word physical, drop it. but I can't see how one could escape monism. 'Thoughts must be physical' is an expression of the fact that thought is a part of the world.

What about "there are lots of different kinds of things in the world?".

What about it? As in, why bring it up?

Still, we don’t know what matter is. We only know the forms it takes. — Olivier5

I'm not sure the question as to what matter is is really coherent. We may find other particles in the future, but how would we ever know if we had arrived at an "ultimate constituent" or if the idea of ultimate constituency is a valid one?

I see the mind as being an activity of the body. — Janus


Or vice versa, in the sense that the body without the mind becomes vegetative. — Olivier5

The thing is their are bodies without minds, albeit vegetative or dead; but we know of no minds without bodies, so what supervenes on what seems fairly clear in the light of that.

Any form of dualism faces the issue of explaining how these simple things can happen. Somehow, thoughts are causally linked to the world.

Indeed, not just dualism but anything apart from monism. — Banno

Or "pluralism"? There are lots of different kinds of things in the world. Not just two, not just one.

There are lots of different kinds of things in the world. Not just two, not just one. — Daemon

Sure, but they are different kinds of physical things, no?

Does it matter whether we say that "physical" or not? "Everything is x" doesn't explain anything.

Sure, monism says everything is X. Dualism doesn't though; it says some things are X and others are Y. My point was only that pluralism doesn't claim a whole range of fundamental ontological categories; when it comes to constitution, everything is still X, but just in a plurality of forms.

I wasn’t really aware that Pluralism is a recognised school of thought. I’m not sure how I feel personally about ‘fundamental’ categories, so there’s something to think about, for which much thanks.

Ontological pluralism does say there are different ways of being, so perhaps I misspoke.

It depends on whether you count different ways of being as amounting to different forms or different constitutions. If the latter, then the claim would have to be that there are no fundamental constituents of the different forms, or that there are a plurality of fundamental constituents that are not all of the same basic nature; i.e. not all physical, or even not all in the categories of physical and mental.

Modern physics tells us that the basic nature of everything is energy and that energy is equivalent to matter. We do have the four fundamental forces: the electromagnetic, the strong and weak nuclear forces and gravity. (Maybe add to that Dark Matter and Dark Energy) They are all counted as physical forces, though, insofar as we can detect and measure their effects.

OK. I think of dualism as an ontological separation thesis, where each dual has its own nature and principles for understanding them.
— Andrew M

Fair. But ontology is elusive. We don’t really know what matter ‘is’, for instance. Personally I try to stay away from it. (ontology I mean, not matter, as staying away from matter would be difficult) — Olivier5

For Aristotle, what matter is depends on what you're specifically investigating. An example he uses is of a house - it can be analyzed into form and matter (or material) where, for a particular house, the matter might be bricks. A brick, in turn, can also be analyzed into form and matter, where its matter is clay. And so on, pursuing this hierarchy down until you get to the fundamental elements. While Aristotle's theory of elements was wrong [*], he nonetheless provided a useful schema for investigating the nature of things to whatever level required.

Aristotle applied this same hierarchical schema to living things, both in terms of genus and species, and also in terms of composition. So for humans (and living things generally) the body is the material. And the body, in turn, can be hierarchically analyzed into form/matter components (say, organs, cells, molecules, elements).

In this way, dualism doesn't arise. Everything observable, including living things such as human beings, is a candidate for natural investigation.

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[*] But still an empirically-grounded theory (and thus scientific in the usual sense):

I show that Aristotelian physics is a correct and non-intuitive approximation of Newtonian physics in the suitable domain (motion in fluids), in the same technical sense in which Newton theory is an approximation of Einstein’s theory. Aristotelian physics lasted long not because it became dogma, but because it is a very good empirically grounded theory. The observation suggests some general considerations on inter-theoretical relations. — Aristotle’s Physics: a Physicist’s Look - Carlo Rovelli, 2014

What I find interesting in this view — which must have many precedents — is that the Platonic world of ideas is not ‘out there’ and objective; rather it is grounded in human subjectivity, and built by our intersubjective dialogue and intellectual efforts generation after generation. — Olivier5

Agreed, though I would say that it is grounded in human experience, rather than human subjectivity, which I think captures the empirical nature of the enterprise.

What does his belief consist in? — fdrake

Exactly.

if you dislike the word physical, drop it. but I can't see how one could escape monism. 'Thoughts must be physical' is an expression of the fact that thought is a part of the world. — Banno

The point about designating something physical is that it is able to be described by (or reduced to) the laws of physics. And 'physicalism', which is the basic subject of this debate, is the declaration that physical laws are the only laws in nature. Humans might have civil laws, but the laws that rule physics, rule reality, and everything we know and see boils down to these laws, because everything is ultimately material in nature. That is the assumption behind the statement that 'thoughts must be physical'. It is also why Daniel Dennett is obliged to deny that 'qualia', and indeed, the mind or consciousness as we understand it are real. They must be derivative of physical processes, the output of molecular interactions. That's what physicalism is, and it has nothing to do with liking or disliking the word.

I argue that the laws of logic and reason - such as the 'law of identity' and the 'law of excluded middle' and the other elements of logic - do not resolve to physical laws, and cannot be explained in terms of physical laws or in terms of supervenience on physical laws. It is an almost universal belief that biological evolution provides the explanatory principle - that the sophisticated human brain is capable of grasping such laws, and that, therefore, they are in a sense the product of biological evolution, and so, grounded in a physical process, as evolution is presumed to be a natural, and therefore, almost by definition, physical process.

But I argue that the 'furniture of reason', such as the elementary laws of thought, were discovered by h. sapiens, and are not 'the product of' the hominid brain. They are elements of reality - not physical reality, but the structure of logic and reason, which is assumed by rational thought, abstraction and reason. And that when h. sapiens evolved to the point of being an language-using, meaning-seeking, rational-thinking creature, then she evolved to a point beyond what either the 'laws of physics', or even biological evolution, could have predicted. Reached 'escape velocity', to coin a space-age metaphor.

Now that is very old-fashioned view, some would even say archaic. But that's what I am arguing.

Anyway, it sounds to me like that Cyrenaics and other ancient skeptical schools anticipated much of the modern debate around qualia, minus the physicalism and neurological part. I do recall that one criticism of ancient atomism was that atoms and the void couldn't create sensations of color and taste. — Marchesk

Yes, they are great examples and I agree it looks like much the same debate. The following passage encapsulates what I see as the whole issue with both the Cyrenaics' and the atomists' positions.

The Cyrenaics note that the same object can cause different perceivers to experience different sensible qualities, depending on the bodily condition of the perceivers. For instance, honey will taste sweet to most people, but bitter to somebody with an illness, and the same wall that appears white to one person will look yellow to somebody with jaundice. And if a person presses his eye, he sees double.

From the fact that the wall appears white to me and yellow to you, the Cyrenaics think we should infer that we cannot know which quality the wall itself has on the basis of our experience of it, presumably because we have no criterion outside of our experiences to use to adjudicate which one (if either) of our experiences is correct. — Cyrenaics - i. The Relativity of Perception - IEP

The obvious response (to me) is that why should they think that there would be a criterion outside of experience? That framing seems to be shared by both the Cyrenaics and the atomists. If, instead, the criterion is in experience, then who or what is the obvious candidate here? The ill person? The person with jaundice? The pressing eye person?

How about the healthy person under normal conditions?

How about the healthy person under normal conditions? — Andrew M

But that would just be one mode of several forming the skeptical argument. We could appeal to the healthy person, but then what about other animals? What about super tasters in humans? What grounds any one sensation as the objective true way the world is?

That's why science ended up going the route of abstracting from the subjective world of sensation to the objective one of mathematical properties, structures and functions, or Locke's primary qualities. We have reason to think those don't vary based on the perceiver.

So while I could say I'm sweetened by the honey as a normal healthy human, I cannot say I'm horsed (a saying used to counter ancient skepticism). Because the form and biology of a horse does not depend on my human senses the way color or taste does.

Maybe we can leave this at anomalous monism instead of going another couple rounds over qualia and subjectivity. Either way, there's a non-reducible psychological component.

You agree that qualia are ineffable?
— Luke

Short answer, Yes. — Banno

I'm surprised by this response. Do you also agree that we have inner private experiences?

There is a way of talking about qualia that is not ineffable, but it appears to be no different to our talk of tastes, sights, fellings and so on - all quite adequatly dealt with without reference to qualia. — Banno

"There is a way of talking about qualia that is...all quite adequately dealt with without reference to qualia"? (Is this the first rule of qualia club?) Seriously though, how do we talk about qualia without reference to qualia?

Agreed, though I would say that [objectivity] is grounded in human experience, rather than human subjectivity, which I think captures the empirical nature of the enterprise. — Andrew M

I would say subjective experience. It helps show that objectivity stems from subjectivity, rather than be the opposite of it.

In other words, it's form all the way down and thus there is no ontological separation between information and matter, because there’s no such thing as matter... But to me, form cannot exist without matter and vice versa, so it’s two sides of the same coin, or to extremities to the same rope. And I have no problem calling that ‘duality’ or ‘dualism’. Never understood what was so compelling about monism, personally. I’m more of a ying-yanger.

Thanks for Rovelli’s quote by the way, Aristotle often gets unfairly attacked by positivists.

Still, we don’t know what matter is. We only know the forms it takes.
— Olivier5

I'm not sure the question as to what matter is is really coherent. We may find other particles in the future, but how would we ever know if we had arrived at an "ultimate constituent" or if the idea of ultimate constituency is a valid one? — Janus

IMO, the question is moot (rather than incoherent) and thus ontology is moot. The shapes that matter takes is what is accessible and important to us, not what it is ‘in itself’.

The thing is their are bodies without minds, albeit vegetative or dead; but we know of no minds without bodies, so what supervenes on what seems fairly clear in the light of that. — Janus

I’m not sure a dead body is ‘really’ a body. It’s more a pile of rot. As for minds without bodies, I agree they don’t exist, although that is of course unproven, it seems quite likely to be true. But minds supervene bodies all the time, e.g. in committing suicide.

But to me, form cannot exist without matter and vice versa, so it’s two sides of the same coin, or to extremities to the same rope. And I have no problem calling that ‘duality’ or ‘dualism’. — Olivier5

Cool. Do you think this is apriori?

Yes, it’s an a priori, in the sense of ‘intuitively necessary yet unproven’.

Yes, it’s an a priori, in the sense of ‘intuitively necessary yet unproven’. — Olivier5

Could it reflect how we're bound to think about the world, but not how the world really is?

Could it reflect how we're bound to think about the world, but not how the world really is? — frank

How could we ever know that? It is the way the world is for us.

I can describe my cat's actions in terms of its beliefs; — Banno

Anthropomorphically, sure.

So the physical representation changes, while the meaning is invariant. So how could the idea it carries be physical? — Wayfarer

Quite. But why can't it be fictional?

Now that is very old-fashioned view, some would even say archaic. But that's what I am arguing. — Wayfarer

Very old-fashioned view indeed. Which just goes to show they got the basics put down right early on. No matter what the human learns about, the internal system by which a human learns, hasn’t changed at all.

How could we ever know that? It is the way the world is for us. — Olivier5

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