Abstract
Donald Davidson has given a different twist to the mind-body problem in his philosophical writing on anomalous monism. In his essay on ‘Mental events,' he has elucidated the mind-body problem differently. For him, there is nothing wrong with the token identity theory; rather, there is something wrong with the type identity theory. This is because mental events such as willing, remembering, decisions, and actions cannot be captured in the nomological net of physical theory.  It is because there is no availability of strictly deterministic laws based on which mental events can be predicted and explained. It is possible to have a scientific explanation for the entire physical universe, but it is difficult to have a scientific explanation of the mental events. The mental events are anomalous and this anomaly gives rise to the view that human actions are autonomous. This is the main philosophical twist on freedom of will within the materialism proposed by Davidson.

Speaker: Prof. Rajakishore Nath, Dept of HSS, IIT Bombay