ABSTRACT
Introduction In this chapter I will attempt to do something that is at least controversial. I shall combine Spinoza’s naturalistic substance monism and the strong theory of causality that such a view invites with Davidson’s anomalous monism. The purpose of doing this is to make both views work as one. That is, Spinoza’s apparent endorsement of strict psychophysical laws in IIP7 (and its Scholium) will be reinterpreted as not actually an endorsement of psychophysical laws, but rather as an endorsement of the possibility of strict laws under the attribute of thought alone.1 In this manner the view is not automatically at odds with anomalous monism. Similarly, if we take Davidson’s conceptual dualism (a mental and a physical conceptual realm) seriously, then it is not at all strange to see his mental and his physical realm as much the same as Spinoza’s attributes of thought and extension. In doing so, we leave the possibility for strict causal relations (and explanations) open, without committing ourselves to strict laws that transgress the boundaries between the mental and the physical, hence leaving anomalous monism intact. But before this project can get underway, it is vital that the context in which this debate is relevant is given. And in order to do that it is necessary to sketch, briefly, Davidson and Spinoza’s respective positions on the relation between mind, world, and causality. Ontological Monism and Conceptual Dualism ‘My monism is ontological’ (Davidson, Dialectica, 1995, p.75). ‘There can be, or be conceived, no other substance but God’ (Spinoza, Ethics, IP14).
