Originated by Donald Davidson, "anomalous monism" is a nonreductive, token physicalist position on the relation between the mental and the physical. According to it, each mental event is a physical event, although mental descriptions are neither reducible to nor nomologically correlated with physical ones. In terms that are ontologically more robust than those used by Davidson, the position asserts identities between individual mental and physical events while denying that mental types or properties are either identical with, or nomologically connected with, physical ones. The position specifically concerns intentional mental phenomena such as beliefs and desires, although it is arguable that it can be extended to cover other mental phenomena such as sensations.

Davidson's argument for this position results from an attempt to reconcile three apparently inconsistent principles, two of which he finds independently plausible and the third of which he defends at length. The first is...