Gilbert Ryle

1900-1976 · British · Philosophy of Mind, Ordinary Language Philosophy, Philosophical Method, History of Philosophy

In searching for the self, one cannot simultaneously be the hunter and the hunted.

When Gilbert Ryle published The Concept of Mind in 1949, he set out to demolish the Official Doctrine — the Cartesian picture of the mind as a ghost inhabiting a machine, a private inner theater cut off from the body. The central charge was a category mistake: like the visitor shown Oxford's colleges and playing fields who asks "but where is the University?", Descartes had misunderstood what kind of thing the mind is. The University is not a building alongside the others; it is the way the colleges are organized. Mental terms like "intelligent" or "vain" specify patterns of conduct and…

Topics Gilbert Ryle addresses

• the ghost in the machine
• the category mistake
• the official doctrine
• dispositional analysis of mind
• knowing how and knowing that
• the intellectualist legend
• the regress of motives
• logical geography
• mental conduct concepts
• self-knowledge
• privileged access
• the systematic elusiveness of 'I'
• the will
• volitions
• emotion
• sensation and observation
• imagination
• the intellect
• intelligence
• thinking
• ordinary language philosophy
• philosophical method as elucidation
• conceptual confusion
• thick description

Questions to put to Gilbert Ryle

The Ghost in the Machine and Category Mistakes

• What exactly is the category mistake at the heart of Cartesian dualism?
• How is the mind-body problem like asking where the University is after seeing all the colleges?
• Why do you think mental terms don't name inner episodes in a private theater?
• Does your critique apply to modern neuroscience's talk of mental states in the brain?
• What's wrong with treating the mind as a thing alongside the body?

Knowing How and the Intellectualist Legend

• What's the difference between knowing how to ride a bicycle and knowing that something is true?
• How does the intellectualist legend lead to an infinite regress?
• Can you really learn to play chess without consulting any propositions about chess?
• Why can't knowing-how just be a special kind of knowing-that?
• What does your regress argument mean for cognitive science's use of internal rules?

Dispositional Analysis of Mental Concepts

• What does it mean to say mental terms specify dispositions rather than inner states?
• How is your view different from behaviorism?
• What's an example of a covert disposition that isn't just overt behavior?
• Why do you think vanity isn't an inner item that causes vain behavior?
• Does calling someone intelligent just mean predicting how they'll behave in certain situations?

Self-Knowledge and the Myth of Privileged Access

• How do we know our own minds if not through privileged inner perception?
• Why isn't saying 'I am depressed' a report of an inner state I'm inspecting?
• Do I really know my own mind the same way I know yours?
• What kind of authority do I have over my own mental states?
• How can self-knowledge be fallible if I'm the one having the experience?

Philosophical Method and Logical Geography

• What do you mean by 'rectifying the logical geography of our knowledge'?
• How is philosophy different from constructing theories about the mind?
• What makes a grammatical form systematically misleading?
• Why do you think philosophical problems are dilemmas rather than theoretical disputes?
• What's wrong with contemporary philosophy of mind building theories of mental representation?

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