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ANALYSIS

all the cases to which they apply. Of course, a theory is more useful to
the extent that it is more nearly complete. But in view of Aristotle's
warning, and the lesson of the bystander paradox, I should turn a
suspicious eye on theories advertised as complete.
The University of Texas at Austin

PAUL WOODRUFF

1977

By COLIN MCGINN

AM going to argue that Davidson's anomalous monism1 is not

imperilled by Kripke's animadversions on the identity theory.2 The
argument will turn crucially upon a sharp distinction between type-type
and token-token identity theories.
Suppose someone claims that pain is identical with C-fibre stimulation. Then, according to Kripke, he is committed to the necessity of that
identity; there couldn't be pain without C-fibre stimulation, and vice
versa. But, Kripke insists, there is a strong intuition, not to be lightly
dismissed, that there is an 'element of contingency' in this relationship:
for it seems imaginable, and hence possible, that the mental state should
exist without the physical, and vice versa. Certainly it seems that it could
have turned out that pain was "associated with" some other brain state.
If the identity theorist is to sustain his thesis, he is under an obligation to
account for this intuition compatibly with the mooted identity. Kripke
throws him the following line: the case of pain and C-fibre stimulation is
analogous to the case of heat and molecular motion; for here too there
abided a stubborn intuition that, since matters could have turned out
otherwise, they could have been otherwise. But, Kripke claims, the
natural explanation of the intuition of contingency in this case is not
available to the mind-brain identity theorist. The following schematic
reconstruction of Kripke's reasoning here will help us see why.
Take it that we have accepted the essentialist thesis:
(1) D(pa;
but suppose also that, despite conviction of (1), we are strongly disposed
to believe:
(2) It could have turned out that

1
As presented in 'Mental Events', in Experience and Theory, eds. L. Foster and J. Swanson
(London: Duckworth, 1970).
2
See 'Naming and Necessity', in Semantics of Natural Language, eds. D. Davidson and G.
Harman (Boston: Reidel, 1972), pp. 334 f. I shall assume some familiarity with Kripke's ideas
and terminology in what follows.

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ANOMALOUS MONISM AND

KRIPKE'S CARTESIAN INTUITIONS

ANOMALOUS MONISM AND KRIPKE S CARTESIAN INTUITIONS

79

this: any epistemic counterpart of pain must itself be pain. This is simply

because being presented with a counterpart of an entity of a certain sort

in a (metaphysically) possible world is precisely being in a mental state
indistinguishable from that in which one is when presented with that
counterpart's prototype in the actual world. Hence, all epistemic
counterparts of (phenomenologically identified) mental states of a given
type are themselves states of that type. But then, if pain just is C-fibre
stimulation, all counterparts of pain, since they are themselves pain,
must ex hypothesi be C-fibre stimulation. So we have not succeeded in
conceiving a world in which the mental and physical states in question
come apart, and have therefore failed to explain away the stubborn
Cartesian intuition.
I agree that this point is powerful against the type-type theorist who
accepts Kripke's conditions on an adequate reply to the Cartesian. But I
want to insist, against Kripke, that his favoured style of explanation of
the impression of contingency is available to the token-token theorist.
Here is why. Let V in the schemata (i)-(3) be instantiated, not by the
name of a mental type, e.g. 'pain', but by the name of a mental token,
e.g. 'my feeling pain at noon 17.7.76.'; and let q> be the property of being
identical with the token brain state named by 'my C-fibres firing at
noon 17.7.76'. Now, is it possible, according to anomalous monism,
that there should exist a token mental state qualitatively indistinguishable
from a which yet lacks cp? It is not only possible, it is actual; indeed, it is
possible (and probable) that there be a token pain distinct from a which
isn't even of the same physical type, vi%. the C-fibre firing type, as that token
1

For acknowledgment of this entailment see Kripke, op. cit., p. 332.

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Now, Kripke says, (i) and (2) are, as they stand, inconsistent, because of
the principle that if it could have turned out that p it could have been
that p1. His way out of the antinomy is to reconstrue the thought behind
(2) along these lines:
(3) O(3x)(x is an epistemic counterpart of a & ~q>x).
That is, what we really conceive in conceiving (mendaciously) that
[ ~q)tf] is our being confronted with some entity distinct from a which is
such that it puts us in qualitatively the same epistemic state as a does
in the actual world but which yet lacks (p; and this possibility in no wise
tells against the necessity of (pa. Thus, e.g., some phenomenon distinct
from heat (=molecular motion) might produce qualitatively the same
sensation in us as is actually produced by heat; and again, although this
table is necessarily not made of ice, it is possible that there should be a
table, with all the appearance of this one, which is made of ice. In each
case, it is possibilities of this sort that account for the 'illusion of contingency'.
Now Kripke's central contention here is that we cannot get a true
instance of (3) in the case of pain and C-fibre stimulation. The reason is

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ANALYSIS

University College London

COLIN MCGINN

1977

1
That the identity theorist is committed to both of these de re necessities is urged by
Kripke in op. cit., pp. 335-6.
2
The argument occurs at pp. 99100 of Davidson, op. cit.

LIES, DAMNED LIES, AND MISS ANSCOMBE

By M. P. T. LEAHY

ISS Anscombe claims to have unearthed a discomforting paradox

in certain processes of majority decision making hitherto unremarked upon by statisticians (ANALYSIS 36.4, June 1976). The 'naked
point' is that the majority may be satisfied on every issue, while nevertheless the majority is frustrated over a majority of issues.
Although her argument raises general problems of representation,
delegation and so on, which have received an immense critical attention,
the specific paradox is an illusory one and the experts' neglect is not to
be wondered at. She has, I suggest, overlooked something. A model is
employed involving eleven voters deciding upon eleven questions
requiring Yes (1) or No (o) answers. But the same grounds for frustration emerge from a far simpler model which, being transparent, lacks
paradoxicality. Take merely three voters, A-C, deciding upon two questions :

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brain state with which a is identical. And these possibilities compromise

neither the necessity of the token-token identity in question nor the
status of a as necessarily a C-fibre stimulation (which is what Leibniz's
law requires if that modal property holds of the brain state token witn
which a is identical).1 In this respect, token mental states are like particular tables: they can be (and be essentially) of a type such that other
tokens of that type fail to have properties which they, qua tokens,
necessarily have. And there is nothing especially puzzling about this.
That shows, I think, that token-token theories can meet the requirements on an adequate rebuttal of the Cartesian challenge that Kripke
lays down. Moreover, such theories are actually strengthened by
Kripkean considerations. For these considerations help warrant the
rejection of type-type theories in favour of token-token theories; and
this is especially significant where, as with Davidson's anomalous
monism, it is a premiss of the argument to the identity of particular
mental and physical events and states that there is no (nomologically)
correlating mental and physical types.2