The mind-body problem.

II. The denial of strict psychophysical laws would not undermine the claim that mental events are causally efficacious. § The three premisses from which AM is derived: (1) that mental events are causally related to physical events (2) that singular causal relations are backed by strict laws (3) that there are no strict psycho-physical laws ⇒ AM + P § "supervenience" ___ a predicate p is supervenient on a set of predicates S if and only if p does not distinguish any entities that cannot be distinguished by S. * The definition of supervenience implies that ___ (i) a change in mental properties is always accompanied by a change in physical properties [same physical properties → same mental properties ~ same mental properties → ~ same physical properties], but it does not imply that ___ (ii) the same physical properties change with the same mental properties. § The Causal Efficacy of Mental Events vs. Mental Properties [A] The Causal Efficacy of Mental Events * "Events" = particular time-and space-bound entities "physical events" = using terms in physics to describe these time-and space-bound entities. "mental events" = using terms in psychology to describe these time-and space-bound entities. Davidson's Claim: ___ It is events that have the power to change things, not our various ways of describing them.