The Argument for Anomalous Monism, Again

It is frequently argued that Donald Davidson’s anomalous monism implies property epiphenomenalism: that it renders the mental properties of events irrelevant to causal relations, so that rather than being a solution to the problem of how mental events cause physical ones, it actually denies that they do. Whilst this may be an appropriate criticism of the non-reductive physicalist theses that anomalous monism has inspired, I argue that it is an inappropriate criticism of Davidson’s position. Specifically, the extensional character of causation and the ontology on which the argument for anomalous monism is based preclude the possibility of levelling this kind of criticism at Davidson. I argue that such criticisms are made only by forcing onto anomalous monism an ontology that it actively seeks to deny; it is only by appreciating Davidson’s approach to metaphysics and causation in general that we can understand why the claim that anomalous monism implies property epiphenomenalism is so misguided.