Anomalous monism and kripke's cartesian intuitions

Abstract

I AM going to argue that Davidson's anomalous monism' is not imperilled by Kripke's animadversions on the identity theory.2 The argument will turn crucially upon a sharp distinction between type-type and token-token identity theories. Suppose someone claims that pain is identical C-fibre stimulation. Then, according to Kripke, he is committed to the necessity of that identity; there couldn't be pain without C-fibre stimulation, and vice versa. But, Kripke insists, there is a strong intuition, not to be lightly dismissed, that there is an 'element of contingency' in this relationship: for it seems imaginable, and hence possible, that the mental state should exist without the physical, and vice versa. Certainly it seems that it could have turned out that pain was associated with some other brain state. If the identity theorist is to sustain his thesis, he is under an obligation to account for this intuition compatibly the mooted identity. Kripke throws him the following line: the case of pain and C-fibre stimulation is analogous to the case of heat and molecular motion; for here too there abided a stubborn intuition that, since matters could have turned out otherwise, they could have been otherwise. But, Kripke claims, the natural explanation of the intuition of contingency in this case is not available to the mind-brain identity theorist. The following schematic reconstruction of Kripke's reasoning here will help us see why. Take it that we have accepted the essentialist thesis: (1) Epa; but suppose also that, despite conviction of (i), we are strongly disposed to believe: