Donald Davidson (1917-)is a contemporary philosopher who theorises the issues of mind-body-identity issues. He proposes that the mind is connected to the body it holds by the identity it is given. That is if a person called X does a thing it automatically means that it is X's act. This is act is given to the identity of the Mr.X and his mind is taken to be responsible for the act. This phenomena is called supervenience. The identity of the action is called token-identity. The mind and the body and the action together are bound to a monistic state in an anomalous way. This is defined as the anomalous monism.
In the modern scientific sense the actions, emotions, appearance, thought, body weight, colour, physical health, disease proneness are all linked to our DNA. The DNA is thus a de-facto soul. The DNA has no innate knowledge abots it actions. It is only a protein ribbon of molecules with embedded codes. It is responsible for our bodyand mind. It takes informations from the perceptual organs and processed informations are made into codes yet it by itself can not know the information. It is responsible for our ideas but cannot think by itself.
It can leave our body and unite with another DNA and form an another soul(CHILD). Even one can die and his body may be lost but his DNA survives in the form of his child. If we think in that way the genes have every reason to be called as the soul. This is exactly the reason the modern political controversies about the gene splicing, genetic engineering, gene therapies, stem cell transplantationÂ…etc .
The sivagnana bodham verse -3 takes up the definition of the soul and tries describe its properties. It come closer to the modern description of a DNA.
1. the soul is different from life as life can end in death 2. the soul is different from the body 3. the soul is different from perceptions 4. the soul is different from thoughts 5. the soul is different from the conscious 6. the soul is different from the physiological functions like breathing 7. the soul is different from the sivam 8. the matters which makes the body,mind and conscious are not soul 9. the body is a transitional-mechanical-object only(MAYA-IYANDHRA-DHANU) 10. the soul is the deeper driving force of this illusory –mechanical- object
from these it is obvious the SGB tries to characterize the description of the properties of the soul. Theses qualifications best correspond to the modern DNA.
Donald davidson's anomalous monism is a modern philosophical approach which come very close to the SGB's description of the body and mind. Actions and conscious too are only have a token identity and the real identity is elsewhere.