anomalous monism

Anomalous monism is a philosophical thesis about the mind-body relationship. It was first proposed by Donald Davidson in his 1970 paper Mental events. The theory is twofold and states that mental events are identical with physical events (this is physicalism, a form of materialism) and that the mental is anomalous, i.e. under their mental descriptions these mental events are not regulated by strict physical laws. Hence, Davidson proposes an identity theory of mind without the reductive bridge laws associated with the type-identity theory. Since the publication of his paper, Davidson has refined his thesis and both critics and supporters of anomalous monism have come up with their own characterizations of the thesis, many of which appear to differ from Davidson's.
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The view put forward by Donald Davidson that all mental events are identical to physical events, and that the only laws that govern the relations between events are physical, not psychological, laws. See monism , supervenience , token identity thesis , physicalism .
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