Honderich,Davidson, and the question of mental holism

Honderich's defence of aspects of his correlationist theory against many objections actually or likely to be raised today, in particular from the point of view of Davidson's anomalous monism and psychological holism, is accepted as largely successful. But it is suggested that, even if Davidson's theory is wrong‐headed, another kind of holism, more deeply ontological and less linguistic, regarding the mental seems to be true, and presents difficulties for Honderich's correlationism. Finally, it is contended that a panpsychist kind of identity theory escapes his strictures on identity theories and is probably true; however, the identity is, in virtue of certain synthetic necessities about the course of a stream of consciousness, either only between particular mental and physical events (and thus anomalously monist in Davidson's sense), or if it holds also between types of mental and of brain event then certain quite striking consequences follow as to the character of the fullest possible explanation of what goes on in the brain.