Anomalous Monism Ceteris Paribus

The British Society for the Philosophy of Science

Anomalous Monism, Ceteris Paribus and Psychological ExplanationAuthor(s): Robert KleeSource: The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, Vol. 43, No. 3 (Sep., 1992), pp. 389-403Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of The British Society for the Philosophy ofScienceStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/687765 .

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Brit. J. Phil. Sci. 43 (1992) 389-403 Printed in Great Britain

Anomalous Monism, Ceteris Paribus and Psychological Explanation

ROBERT KLEE

ABSTRACT

Davidson has argued that there can be no laws linking psychological states with physical states. I stress that this argument depends crucially on there being no purely psychological laws. All of this has to do with the holism and indeterminacy of the psychological domain. I criticize this claim by showing how Davidson misconstrues the role of ceteris paribus clauses in psychological explanation. Using a model of how ceteris paribus clauses operate derived from Lakatos, I argue that if Davidson is correct, then there can be no purely physical laws either. This is illustrated with a case from immunology involving interferons. Since there clearly are physical laws, Davidson cannot be correct.

1 The Road to Anomalous Psychology 2 The Road to Anomalous Monism 3 Objections

3.1 The Symmetry Problem 3.2 The Ceteris paribus Problem 3.2.1 Rationality 3.2.2 Ceteris paribus Clauses 3.3 Real-World Cases 3.3.1 The Interferons Case 3.3.2 The Lost Wallet Case

4 Conclusion

I THE ROAD TO ANOMALOUS PSYCHOLOGY

Donald Davidson has argued in a series of important papers that there cannot be the kind of psychophysical laws presupposed by reduction-minded physicalists ([1980a], pp. 207-2 7, and [1980b], pp. 229-40). Davidson does not deny that there could be a psychological open sentence 'Mx' which is true when and only when some physical open sentence 'Px' is true. He allows for the possibility that a biconditional generalization such as '(x)(Mx <(--) Px)' could be established as a true statement linking a specific type of mental state to a specific type of physical state. He grants also that the above biconditional has



390 Robert Klee

the logical form of a law. But Davidson argues that such biconditionals would not be lawlike 'in a strong sense to be described' ([1980a], p. 216). I shall argue below that the 'strong sense' alluded to involves the indeterminacy attending the attribution of psychological states to human beings. On Davidson's view of psychophysical generalizations, they lack the required degree of determinateness which must exist between two states as a necessary condition for holding the relation between them to be a nomological one.

It will become clear in the course of this paper that this attitude about the nomological connectability of two distinct scientific domains is inspired by the Quine-Duhem Thesis and the holistic model of the structure of scientific theories which that thesis spawns (see Duhem [1954], pp. 183-90, and also Quine [1953], pp. 42-6, and [1960], pp. 1-25). Indeed, it is not surprising when Davidson claims that the anomological character of psychophysical generalizations is at least partly illustrated by noting the lesson taught by the failure of logical behaviorism. The failure of logical behaviorism is the failure of extensional descriptions couched in terms of overt behavior or dispositions to overt behavior to adequately capture the content of intentional psychological states and events. This failure is guaranteed because whatever behavioral description one might choose as specifying the content of some given psychological state, there are always a host of background psychological states (in terms of further beliefs, desires, etc.) which are such that were any of them not to hold, then the proposed behavioral description would not represent the foreground psychological state it was alleged to represent. Standard examples of this are familiar enough, and I won't beat a dead horse any further.'

The important feature of the failure of logical behaviorism for my purposes is that it is a failure that is systematic across the entire range of psychological states. This systematic feature illustrates that the psychological domain of nature constitutes a network of properties, states and events, the proper attribution of any one of them being such that it is holistically interdependent on the attribution of a large number of other states and properties in the

1 An excellent critique of logical behaviorism is found in Putnam [1975a], pp. 408-28, and [1975b], pp. 429-40. The basic problem can be illustrated with a crude example. Suppose we seek a behaviorist definition of the mental state that is B's belief that it is raining outside his window right now. To make it easy on the behaviorist, we will demand only sufficient conditions. We must start somewhere, so let's try this: B believes that it is raining outside his window right now if, if B were to go outside right now, then B would carry an umbrella, or B would wear a raincoat, or B would place a newspaper on top of his head, etc. That is, B would engage in rain-avoiding behavior. But hold on. B might be a member of the Ithaca Gentlemen's Club and believe that a member of the Ithaca Gentlemen's Club is never without his umbrella, even when the sun is shining. So B carries an umbrella whenever B goes outside, and this has nothing to do with B's believing that it is raining outside his window right now. Things are worse than this. If the definition is to work, B must also believe that an umbrella keeps certain wet substances off of one; and B must believe that rain is such a wet substance, and that it is not a good idea to get wet, if B also desires not to become ill; which desire B will have only if B believes that it best serves his goals not to become ill at this time, provided that B knows what his goals are, as well as knowing how to achieve them, etc.



Anomalous Monism, Ceteris Paribus and Psychological Explanation 39 1

network-a large enough number in most cases to defeat any attempt at an efficacious reduction of the mental to the behavioral. It is this holistic structure to the psychological domain that prevents its having nomological connections to the behavioral domain. In this regard Davidson states: 'Clearly this holism of the mental is a clue both to the autonomy and the anomalous character of the mental' [1980], p. 217. Of course, the behavioral domain is not the same thing as the physical domain. Physical theory is not exhausted by behavior and dispositions to behave. Further considerations must therefore be brought to bear in order to show that there cannot be nomological connections between the mental and the physical.

Davidson suggests that such further considerations involve the a priori suitability or unsuitability of tokens from distinct classes of predicates for entering into nomological relations with each other. It is a familiar view that generalizations involving predicates like 'blue' or 'green' can be supported by their instances, can support counterfactuals, and can become, with enough corroboration, laws; whereas generalizations involving predicates like 'grue' and bleen' are not supported by their instances, do not support counterfactuals, and cannot become laws (see Goodman [1955], pp. 59-83). Davidson thinks that the lesson taught by the grue/bleen case is that:

Nomological statements bring together predicates that we know a priori are made for each other-know, that is, independently of knowing whether the evidence supports a connection between them. ([1980a], p. 218)

And again:

The direction in which the discussion seems headed is this: mental and physical predicates are not made for each other. In point of lawlikeness, psychophysical statements are more like 'All emeralds are grue' than like 'All emeralds are green.' ([1980a], p. 218)

As these quotations stand, Davidson's position seems to beg the question. It simply does not seem likely that one could meet with success in arguing for the a priori incompatibility of two distinct classes of predicates except in cases of demonstrable formal inconsistency, of which mental and physical predicates are not guilty. Indeed, the history of science testifies to cases where one theoretical domain held to be a priori incompatible with another theoretical domain was eventually shown not to be so. To take one example, prior to the reduction of celestial mechanics to terrestrial mechanics it was held by many medieval theorists that an a priori criterial mark (a priori, given the 'metaphysical' arguments for it) of a celestial body was that it is made of an incorruptible substance distinct from terrestrial matter, and that its move- ments were geometrically perfect figures in contradistinction to terrestrial motions which, in virtue of being terrestrial, must fail of geometric perfection. Yet the evolution of Renaissance physics which eventually culminated in the



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Newtonian revolution overturned this alleged a priori incompatibility between the celestial and the terrestrial (see Butterfield [195 7], pp. 67-8).

Perhaps in recognition of such historical developments, Davidson states that in order to be made more plausible the claim of an a priori incompatibility between the mental and the physical 'must be seriously modified' ([1980a], p. 218). For psychophysical generalizations, unlike generalizations such as 'All emeralds are grue', are supported by their instances and can be used to predict future cases. The real problem with psychophysical generalizations is that they are what Davidson calls 'heteronomic' generalizations. This label is meant to contrast them with 'homonomic' generalizations. A generalization is homonomic if its positive instances give us reason to believe that the generalization could be improved and upgraded into a genuine law by adding further provisos and conditions stated in the same theoretical vocabulary as the generalization itself. A heteronomic generalization is one whose positive instances lead us to believe that it could be upgraded into a genuine law only by adding conditions and provisos stated in a different theoretical vocabulary than the generalization itself. In this context 'different vocabulary' indicates a different theoretical domain in just the sense that psychological states require a different theoretical vocabulary for their proper description than physical states require.

The most important problematic feature of the heteronomicity of psychological generalizations is that their heteronomicity prevents their ever becoming laws. The reason, according to Davidson, is that their heteronomicity together with the holistic and autonomous structure of the psychological domain imply that psychophysical generalizations will lack the kind of determinacy and stability which we demand of full-fledged nomological connections.

The heteronomic character of general statements linking the mental and the physical traces back to [the] central role of translation in the description of all propositional attitudes, and to the indeterminacy of translation. There are no strict psychophysical laws because of the disparate commitments of the mental and the physical schemes. It is a feature of physical reality that physical change can be explained by laws that connect it with other changes and conditions physically described. It is a feature of the mental that the attribution of mental phenomena must be responsible to the background of reasons, beliefs, and intentions of the individual. There cannot be tight connections between the realms if each is to retain allegiance to its proper source of evidence. ([1980a], p. 222)

The fourth sentence of this passage clearly alludes to the holistic nature of psychological domain. This holistic structure to psychology has the methodological result that the proper attribution of a given psychological state P is determinable only by also ascertaining the status of a vast body of other



Anomalous Monism, Ceteris Paribus and Psychological Explanation 393

psychological states holistically bound up and connected with P. One important implication of this is that these intertwined psychological states are all and the only proper sources of evidence for one another. And, I think Davidson would argue, one necessary condition for these intertwined states being all and only the proper sources of evidence for each other is that they are all specifiable in a common theoretical vocabulary. It follows that no other kinds of states describable in other theoretical vocabularies-in particular, physical states described in the vocabulary of physical theory-can affect the attribution of psychological states to an organism in the sense of being evidence for the attribution of those psychological states. This creates a special problem in the case of a psychophysical generalization because we would expect that, if the generalization were truly nomological, then the conditions of attribution for the correlated psychological state would be affected and influenced by the conditions of attribution for the correlated physical state. But the holistic autonomy of the psychological realm will thwart this expectation.

Davidson's conception of the psychological realm thus has two important structural features. First, psychophysical generalizations lack determinateness and stability in the sense that the holistic nature of the psychological domain prevents psychological states from being determinately and rigidly attributable under universally fixed and relatively precise conditions. Since this is a feature of psychophysical generalizations due exclusively to the holistic structure of the psychological domain, we may 'blame' the psychological domain for the failure of psychophysical generalizations to be truly homologi- cal. The fault of anomalousness can be pinned on the mental side of the generalization. I will call this the Holism Thesis. The second structural feature of the psychological domain of use in Davidson's argument is its autonomy. Since only other mental states can be proper sources of evidence for mental states, the psychological domain is autonomous with respect to all other domains, including the physical domain. I will call this the Autonomy Thesis. The argument against psychophysical laws goes through once it is realized that the above two features of the psychological domain clash with the heteronomicity of psychophysical generalizations. This Heteronomicity Thesis entails that the only way psychophysical generalizations could be upgraded into laws is for the psychological side of the generalization to be stabilized- made more fixed and determinate-by the physical side of the generalization. The stabilizing influence, which would provide for the determinate attribution of psychological states, would have to come from the greater stability to the attribution of physical states.

These three theses allow us to present Davidson's argument against the possibility of psychophysical laws in the following manner

(1) Holism Thesis: psychological states lack stable conditions of attribution because of the holistic structure of the psychological domain.



394 Robert Klee

(2) Autonomy Thesis: conditions of attribution for psychological states are not open to influence from other domains, especially the physical domain, because no other domain is a proper source of evidence for the attribution of psychological states.

(3) Heteronomicity Thesis: psychophysical generalizations could be upgraded into laws only if the conditions for the attribution of psychological states could be stabilized and determinately fixed by adding further provisos and conditions having to do with conditions for the attribution of physical states.

Thesis (1) states why psychological states are not nomologically attributable at present. This supports the presupposition of thesis (3) that psychophysical generalizations are not up to snuff nomologically speaking, and therefore in need of some sort of 'help' from other theoretical domains. Thesis (1) furthermore 'blames' this failure of psychophysical generalizations exclusively on the psychological side of the generalization. It is because there are no purely psychological laws that there can be no psychophysical laws. Davidson's argument depends on the existence of a weakness within one domain in order to show the lack of nomological strength to generalizations involving that domain and a certain other domain. The argument against psychophysical laws is complete once it is noted that thesis (2) implies the falsity of the consequent of thesis (3) which, in turn, implies the falsity of the antecedent of (3) to give us

(4) No psychophysical generalization is or can become a law.

Criticism of the argument is clearly limited to three possible lines of attack. One may attack any of theses (1)-(3). I will attack the Holism Thesis, but from a somewhat oblique angle.

2 THE ROAD TO ANOMALOUS MONISM

Davidson construes the psychological domain to be radically holistic. But is the physical domain any different? In fact, Davidson suggests that the same kind of holistic interdependence which infests the mental realm also infests the physical realm:

The nomological irreducibility of the mental does not derive merely from the seamless nature of the world of thought, preference and intention, for such interdependence is common to physical theory... ([1980a], p. 222)

The point of my question about the physical domain is that, for most philosophers, holism is a thesis about the structure of theories in general, not just about the structure of theories in certain special domains (see Duhem [1954] and Quine [1953], [1960]). This fact creates a significant problem for Davidson's argument against the possibility of psychophysical laws. For it may be that the kind of internal indeterminacy which 'infects' psychological (and




therefore psychophysical) generalizations will also 'infect' purely physical generalizations; so that if there can be no laws in the psychological domain because of such indeterminacy, then there can be no physical laws for the same reason. I take it as manifestly false that there are no purely physical laws. Davidson's argument is thus too strong. Let us take a closer look at the 'infection' in question.

According to Davidson, causation is an extensional relation between events simpliciter. Since I will treat events and states as compositionally related to each other (a state is a connected series of events), this amounts to the claim that causation is an extensional relation between states simpliciter.2 Nomic subsumption, on the other hand, Davidson holds to be an intensional relation between events under descriptions (and hence, between states under descriptions) ([1980a], p. 215). It is possible therefore that the same two events (or states) can be causally related, yet not be nomologically related at all. Thus, an event or state under a psychological description can be anomic (not subsumable under any laws), yet nevertheless causally related to other events and states. The immediate problem with this is that, given a standard Humean analysis of causation, we demand nomic subsumption as a necessary condition for causal interaction. Davidson solves this problem in a notoriously novel way. The psychological state must have some other description, a nonpsychological description, under which it is nomically subsumable along with the other states with which it causally interacts. That is, any psychological state that causally interacts with other psychological states or physical states must itself have a purely physical description. Hence, psychological states are really physical states after all. Physicalism is vindicated by way of this strange and unlikely 'anomalous monism' of the psychological domain ([1980a], p. 224). But something has gone awry here.

3 OBJECTIONS

3.1 The Symmetry Problem An immediate objection.to Davidson's argument is that an event or state is symmetric about its description. Thus, one could 'move' in the other direction. Take any psychological state P such that P is nomically subsumable under a purely physical description; one could then argue, consistently with theses (1)-(3) in Section 1 above, that P is not really nomically subsumable after all because there is some psychological description of P under which it is not nomically subsumable. This line of argument raises serious issues of 'priority' among different theoretical domains. But the response that the physical 2 If a state is a series of events connected causally and circumscribed by certain natural

boundaries in the organism, then a series of similarly connected states might then be called a process. My argument is independent of any particular mereological conception of intelligent organisms.



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domain has priority over the psychological domain because the former is truly nomological is not open to Davidson since it begs the very question at issue. This is perhaps one negative result of attributing metaphysically important consequences (such as nomic subsumability) to mere differences among distinct descriptions of the same state or event. My own view is that one is best advised to avoid the 'P-under-description-D' way of characterizing the changing state of knowledge within a theoretical domain. Yet, perhaps it will be felt that this symmetry problem is a bit artificial. Not many cognitive scientists are wont to move in the reverse direction which the criticism assumes makes sense. Even so, there are deeper problems with Davidson's argument for anomalous monism.

3.2 The Ceteris Paribus Problem

3.2.1 Rationality

Why does Davidson claim that a state under a psychological description is never nomically subsumable? The answer is because psychological explanation labors under a certain methodological constraint allegedly found nowhere else in science: the behavior of an organism is to be explained in a manner which maximizes the rationality of the organism as much as is consistent with other data about the organism's psychological states. This has the unfortunate consequence of rendering the attribution of psychological states to a given organism in a given context intractably indeterminate. One must always stand ready to withdraw the attribution of a given psychological state as the behavior of the organism generates more information about the

organism's other beliefs, desires, feelings, etc. A given psychological state is thus attributable to an organism only against a vast background of other

psychological states of that organism, a change in any one of which may require abandoning attribution to the organism of the original foreground psychological state. In order to remove the intractability of this indeterminacy one would have to fix the background states 'once and for all' by making a correct arbitrary choice among auxiliary hypotheses (i.e. among competing explanatory structures), and Davidson insists that a correct arbitrary choice is not possible ([1980a], p. 223).

Davidson claims that this is a state of affairs unique to the psychological domain. The physical domain, while suffering from its own sort of holistic indeterminacy, cannot blame such indeterminacy on any constraint involving the maximization of rationality in the system being explained or investigated. Davidson has expressed this by saying that the constraint of rationality in

psychological theory 'has no echo in physical theory' ([1980b], p. 231). Here I take Davidson to mean that the source of indeterminacy in psychological theory is qualitatively different than the source of indeterminacy in physical theory ([1980a], p. 218). Since the evidence base proper to the psychological




domain includes an overarching structural component-rationality-not included in the evidence base proper to the physical domain, the twain shall never meet on nomological ground. Nobody attributes to a flask of pure hydrogen gas a capacity to behave in a way that is maximally rational; but it is possible to attribute such a capacity to the chemist handling the flask of pure hydrogen gas. Not only is it possible, but it is surely necessary in order to explain a good deal of the chemists' behaviour. But rationality is a very slippery fish. There are different ways of maximizing rationality in the same situation. This gives a 'looseness' to the attribution of psychological states that one does not find in the attribution of physical states-or so says Davidson. That a mole of a pure gas is at pressure P is a state dependent on a host of other physical variables such as temperature and volume. But once one 'fixes' these background conditions, in the sense of treating the sample of gas as a virtual closed system, there is but one pressure P which fits the known regularities of physics and chemistry. By contrast, even if one 'fixes' all known psychological variables interdependent with the chemist's belief that P is the pressure of the gas, one cannot rule out the possibility that the chemist's beliefs do not constitute a virtual closed system. Adjustments in the chemist's other beliefs and desires at semantic distances very far removed from the belief that P is the pressure of the gas could force one to withdraw one's attribution of that belief to the chemist.

3.2.2 Ceteris Paribus Clauses

Davidson's position seems to presuppose that there is a categorical difference in the way ceteris paribus clauses operate in the physical domain as opposed to how they operate in the psychological domain. 'Ceteris paribus' translates as 'other things being equal'. Nancy Cartwright suggests that a more apt translation would be 'other things being right' ([1983], p. 45). Cartwright joins Imre Lakatos in holding that ceteris paribus clauses in scientific inference and explanation are more the rule than the exception (Lakatos [1978], p. 18). Lakatos sees them virtually everywhere, as a matter of pure methodology; Cartwright sees them in lots of places where no exceptionless laws exist, which are more places than you might think. It is the ceteris paribus clause which represents the holistic character of natural domains in science. If something in the background initial conditions is not quite 'right', then the whole inferential edifice on which attribution of a foreground state rests may come crashing down. But these background initial conditions may be more or less causally remote from the foreground state. The more remote a background state is relative to the foreground state, the less theoretically relevant it is to that foreground state. Ceteris paribus clauses thus allow one to fix background states and conditions so as to rule out theoretically irrelevant factors: factors which either lack a sufficiently direct causal connection to the foreground state,



398 Robert Klee

or else have a direct causal connection to the foreground state but one which is of no theoretical interest to us.

Cartwright holds the ceteris paribus clause in a scientific explanation to be part of the law used to determine the attribution of states to the system ([1983), p. 45). Lakatos seems to regard ceteris paribus clauses as being logically independent of laws but nevertheless part of the total theory tested against experience ([1978], p. 98). Ernest Nagel also treats ceteris paribus clauses as logically independent of laws. He seems to hold that ceteris paribus clauses are contained in the initial conditions specified in a deductive- nomological explanation ([1961], p. 560; see also Fodor [1968], pp. 68-9). Who's correct here? Lakatos. Cartwright's position implies that 'ceteris paribus laws', as she calls them, aren't really laws at all-at least not 'covering' laws of use in genuine scientific explanations. On her view, ceteris paribus laws are not causally active except in the restricted context in which the conditions specified by the clause hold true. This is surely an unusual conception of what a causal law is. The real-world causal connections embodied in laws of nature do not shut on and off as Cartwright would apparently have them do. For Lakatos, as well as Nagel, laws are always causally in force; but they can be interfered with or 'outdueled' causally by other lawlike connections with stronger claims on the events and properties in question. Surely it is not laws themselves which are vulnerable to ceteris paribus pre-emption, but rather the explanadum state or event.

3.3 Real-World Cases

State attribution in general is sensitive to initial conditions: that is the lesson taught by ceteris paribus clauses. The attribution of psychological states in particular is constrained by a requirement that the total behavior of the organism be as rational as consistency with other states of the organism allows: that is the lesson taught by the 'special' nature Davidson thinks belongs to the psychological domain. But might it be the case that the particular is here subsumed by the general? Is not maximizing rationality in the organism's behavior basically a means of minimizing interference by theoretically irrelevant causal factors in the total behavior of the organism? I wish to argue that the answer to both questions is yes. There really isn't the categorical difference between the way ceteris paribus clauses work in the physical domain and the way they work in the psychological domain which Davidson's view of things presupposes. I shall illustrate with a case from immunology.

3.3.1 The Interferons Case

We attribute a lawlike capacity to kill viruses to each member of the class of mammalian biochemical secretions called interferons. Why? Well, one classic experiment was this: mice injected with a drug which inactivates mouse interferons were killed by several hundred times less virus than was needed to




kill control mice not injected with the interferon-inactivating drug (Roitt [1988], p. 13). But, of course, ceteris paribus is operating here. Other things must be 'right' in the sense of being equally inactive or irrelevant in causing the observed capacity to kill viruses. For example, it must be assumed (fixed) that (1) the drug inactivates only interferons and not some other as yet undiscovered cytokine (immunologically active biochemical secretion) that is really causally responsible for killing viruses in mammals; and further that (2) the drug does not actually increase the virulence of the virus by several hundred times; and further that (3) the mice who receive the drug are not all especially hypersensitive to the virus to begin with; and further that (4) the drug does not cause mice to die from some side effect having nothing to do with viruses; and further that (5) interferons don't shut on and off in their ability to kill viruses, so that we have merely observed an intermittent capacity which we've mistaken to be lawlike constant; and so on. Notice that (3) is a worry which in some sense will never leave us. Even if genetically 'identical' mice are used for both experimental groups, current evidence suggests that the immune genotype undergoes spontaneous somatic mutations in response to immune challenge which are unique to each individual organism (see French, Laskov and Scharff [1989]). Thus, you can never know with 100 per cent certainty whether or not the experimental effect to be accounted for has one of a virtual infinity of purely genetic ulterior causes. That ceteris paribus worry is a constant for organisms that operate with mammalian immunogenetics.

Condition (5) also represents a permanent worry. Perhaps the observed effect is merely intermittent, and interferons cease to kill viruses altogether during periods when they 'rest'. We must therefore always stand prepared to adjust the attribution to interferons of the capacity to kill viruses should further evidence gather that the immune system, in the interest of competent and efficient immune functioning, has diversified this function in such a way that interferons observationally appear to ride 'piggy-back' on the real virus- killing agents of the immune system. This is the worry that faces the immunologist. How is it different from the kinds of worries about rationality that face the psychologist? I suggest that the two questions aren't as different as Davidson would have us believe. Just as there are different ways of maximizing rationality of behavior, so there are different ways of maximizing immune competence and efficiency. In immunology, maximizing immune competence at the most efficient energy cost to the organism plays the same sort of methodological role with respect to the potential for producing indeterminacy of immunological state attribution as is played by maximizing rationality at the most efficient semantic cost to the organism with respect to the potential for producing indeterminacy of psychological state attribution in psychology. Because immune competence, like rationality, is a global state, the attribution of more 'local' component states must bear traces of indeterminacy on account of the modular role those local states play in adjustments required



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to maximize the more global state they have a part in composing. This may be a kind of macro-to-micro antireductionism, but it does not show the impossibility of nomological relationships holding between local states at the local level. I therefore maintain that the two cases are analogous. Just as the attribution of a psychological state is tremendously sensitive to a plethora of background beliefs and desires, so the attribution of an immunological state is tremendously sensitive to a plethora of background states involving millions of other effector cells, soluble molecular factors, and genetically controlled regulatory mechanisms. The analogy even extends to the dysfunctional case. Evidence for nonrationality in the organism's psychology upsets expectations regarding the attribution of psychological states in the same manner that evidence of immune incompetence upsets expectations regarding the attribution of immunological states. So where is the gap which Davidson assumes sets off psychology as unique? Or are we now to follow Davidson and say that there are no laws of immunology because maximizing immune competence and efficiency leaves the attribution of immunological states intractably indeterminate? I think that the answer is surely no. It is not that nomicity is rare. It's that ceteris paribus is ubiquitous. We are perhaps able to see ceteris paribus indeterminacy more easily in psychology than in most other domains. But this may be due not to a profound metaphysical distinctiveness to psychology but rather to the fact that psychology has had a prominent 'folk' phase, unlike many other domains such as immunology, which in a sense didn't exist before the age of microscopes.

3.3.2 The Lost Wallet Case

I claim that rationality functions as a constraint on the attribution of psychological states in a way no different in kind than how ordinary ceteris paribus clauses operate in the physical domain. Consider a case very loosely adapted from Dennett ([1969], pp. 83-4). B and C are best friends. B is walking along the edge of a frozen lake in winter time. B sees a wallet lying on the surface of the ice a few yards from the shore. It is one of those wallets made with brightly colored beads. B knows only one person with such an unusual wallet: C. The wallet has an initial on it in mosaic: 'C'. It is C's wallet. B knows that C had lost his wallet ice fishing on this very lake the day before. B wants only what is best for C. C had complained to B that he'd lost his whole paycheck when he'd lost his wallet. Now C's landlord will evict C. Cut to the chase. B does not venture onto the ice to get C's wallet. B pauses with an apparent look at the wallet, then walks away.

How do we explain B's behavior? The most plausible view would hold that we should attribute to B the belief that the ice is too thin and dangerous. Since B doesn't want to die (what rational organism would?), attributing this belief to B maximizes B's rationality consistently with what else is known about B's other psychological states.



Anomalous Monism, Ceteris Paribus and Psychological Explanation 40o

But ceteris paribus is at work here. There are other psychological states whose attribution to B would also maximize B's rationality if other things were not quite 'right' with B. For example, suppose (1) B doesn't believe that the ice is too thin and dangerous, but rather B believes that the ice is a nearly perfect horizontal plane and B knows that she has a phobic anxiety reaction to stepping onto nearly perfect horizontal planes. She wants to avoid such a reaction (what rational organism would't?), so she does not retrieve C's wallet; or suppose (2) Rather than believing that the ice is too thin and dangerous, B actually fails to notice C's wallet even though she is looking right at it because B is prone to absence seizures and is having one at this moment; or consider that (3) B doesn't believe the ice is too thin and dangerous, but rather B is struck by a profound attack of existential weltschmerz (she is prone to these), and so she is paralysed with ennui in which all her desires seem inauthentic, including the one to retrieve C's wallet. Not wanting to engage in inauthentic behavior (what rational person does?), B chooses to do nothing but suffer her own interior monologue of guilt; and so on. Note how in each case a difference in background conditions would make a different psychological state the most rational one to attribute to B. In (1) we would attribute to B the desire not to undergo a phobic anxiety attack and the belief that by not retrieving C's wallet this aim can be achieved. In (2) we would attribute to B only the elements of consciousness an absence seizure leaves its victims. In (3) we would attribute to B the desire to avoid acting on inauthentic desires and the belief that retrieving C's wallet is such an inauthentic desire.

4 CONCLUSION

My position is that (1) a ceteris paribus clause is not doing anything categorically different in the psychological domain than it is doing in the physical domain. Ceteris paribus clauses fix background initial conditions in order to rule out theoretically irrelevant causal factor. I also maintain that (2) the rationality requirement in psychological explanation is in large measure functionally carried out by ceteris paribus clauses. They do the methodological work which the requirement says must be done. The problem this creates for Davidson's position is clear. As we saw in Section 3.2.1 above Davidson holds that rationality constraints are what make the psychological domain anomalous. But rationality plays the same role in the psychological domain that other ceteris paribus constraints (such as the constraint of maximizing immune competence at the most efficient energy cost in immunology) do in the physical domain. Thus, if Davidson's argument is valid, then the physical domain is anomalous also. If, because rationally speaking ceteris may not be paribus, there can be no laws about B's state of mind next to the ice, then, because immunologically speaking ceteris may not be paribus, there can be no laws about cytokines that kill viruses in mammals. If ceteris paribus clauses create



402 Robert Klee

indeterminacy in the attribution of states in one domain, then they must do so in every domain in which they are methodologically active. Since they are

methodologically active in all domains, it follows that the universe is an anomalous one.

I trust that such a conclusion is manifestly false. There are perfectly good laws of nature in the physical universe. Accordingly, I prefer to perform the modus tollens and infer that Davidson's argument for the anomalousness of the

psychological realm cannot be valid. Psychology is not the 'special' realm Davidson takes it to be. This seems to me as it should be. For why should one

aspect of organisms with neurological systems above an arbitrary level of

complexity be singled out as some sort of ascientific 'conceptual virus' which

destroys the possibility of a science that explains the behavior of these highly endowed organisms? The answer is surely that rationality should not be

singled out in such a manner. It hardly qualifies as a materialist version of the elan vital.

Department of Philosophy and Religion Ithaca College

New York, USA

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Anomalous Monism Ceteris Paribus

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