Daniel Hutto's critique of Davidson

Donald Davidson is the founding father of one of the most influential forms of non-reductive materialism: anomalous monism. Daniel Hutto, a British idealist philosopher, thinks his non-reductive materialism leaves mental states epiphenomenal.

Is non-reductive materialism an oxymoron

BDK: Epiphenomenalism is a special case of reduction. Just because X is epiphenomenal, doesn't mean it isn't reducible to lower-level bits (e.g. your shadow is epiphenomenal wrt your movement along the street, but it's still reducible).

VR: If so, doesn't it follow that the phrase "non-reductive materialism" is an oxymoron in a class with jumbo shrimp and compassionate conservatism? If that's what you think I'm inclined to agree.

Hasker on how not to be a reductivist

This is Hasker's critique of Chalmers.

Abstract—Some current positions in the philosophy of mind, while ostensibly non-reductive, are in fact reductivist in ways that are seriously problematic. An example is found in the “naturalistic dualism” of David Chalmers: by maintaining the causal closure of the physical domain, Chalmers makes the rationality of conscious experience inexplicable. This can only be remedied by abandoning causal closure and acknowledging that micro processes in the brain go differently in the presence of conscious experience than they would without it. But this move has startling consequences: once it has been made, major objections to mind-body dualism disappear, and determinism is seen to be a theory that is completely lacking in empirical support. Thomas Nagel and John Searle are cited as examples of philosophers who make a serious effort to face up to the consequences of not being reductivists.