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Gilbert Ryle 1900
- 1976
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From The
Mythos of Man at lostgraphics.com
Gilbert Ryle lived from 1900 to 1976 and was one of the most
impressive British philosophers. He graduated from Oxford
University, where he then became a tutor at Christ Church, Oxford,
and later was a Waynflete professor of metaphysical philosophy
(1945–68). From 1947 to 1971 he was editor of the
philosophical journal Mind.
Like Ludwig Wittgenstein, Ryle was concerned with problems caused by the
confusion of grammatical with logical distinctions. He pointed out the
so-called "category mistake," in which, usually because of a
grammatical equivalence, two things are mistakenly treated as belonging
to equivalent logical categories. In his Concept of Mind
(1949), Ryle argued that the mind is not a non-physical
substance residing in the body, "a ghost in a machine," but a
set of capacities and abilities belonging to the body. The "ghost
in the machine" is a derogatory term coined by him to abuse Dualism
- the theory that human beings are comprised of a tangible body and an
intangible mind. More popularly, it is the notion that a person is an
ethereal soul that inhabits a physical body. The mind/soul continues
after death, enjoying or suffering a conscious existence, just minus a
body that can interact with the material world in space and time. He
believed all references to the mental must be understood, at least
theoretically, in terms of witnessable activities. Ryle wrote many
short essays on this subject. One of these was The
Thinking of Thoughts published in 1968. He also authored an
argument against cognitivist theories called Ryle's
Regress...
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From Garth Kemerling's Philosophy
Pages.
Excerpt:
Oxford professor and editor of the journal Mind for
nearly twenty-five years, Gilbert Ryle had an enormous influence on the
development of twentieth-century analytic philosophy. In
"Systematically Misleading Expressions" (1932) Ryle proposed a
philosophical method of dissolving problems by correctly analyzing the
derivation of inappropriate abstract inferences from ordinary
uses of language. Applying this method more generally in
"Categories" (1938), Ryle showed how the misapplication of an
ordinary term can result in a category
mistake by which philosophers may be seriously misled...
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From Infoplease.com
Excerpt:
1900–1976, British philosopher. A graduate of Oxford, he became a
tutor at Christ Church, Oxford, and later was Waynflete professor of
metaphysical philosophy (1945–68) there. From 1947 to 1971 he was
editor of the philosophical journal Mind. Like Ludwig
Wittgenstein, Ryle was concerned with problems caused by the confusion
of grammatical with logical distinctions. He pointed out the so-called
“category mistake,” in which, usually because of a grammatical
equivalence, two things are mistakenly treated as belonging to
equivalent logical categories. In his Concept of Mind (1949),
Ryle argued that the mind is not a non-physical substance residing in
the body, “a ghost in a machine,” but a set of capacities and
abilities belonging to the body. All references to the mental must be
understood, at least theoretically, in terms of witnessable activities...
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From Introduction
to Philosophy at Southern Illinois University.
Excerpt:
According to Ryle, to have mental states is simply to have the
appropriate pattern of activity in one's body. Often, but not always,
this activity includes one's behavior.
How does functionalism avoid the problem of other minds?
Ryle was struck by the ease with which people learn and use mental
concepts such as belief, desire, pain, anger, etc. Ryle thought that in
order for people to learn these concepts without any difficulty, it was
necessary to suppose that they referred to patterns which included
bodily behavior which everyone could see, and not to processes in a soul
which was hidden from view. Since we observe these patterns in one
another's behavior, we can know other person's have mental states like
ours...
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By Gilbert Ryle
Excerpt:
I begin by drawing your attention to a special, but at first sight
merely curious feature of the notion of doing something, or rather of
trying to do something. In the end I hope to satisfy you that this
feature is more than merely curious; it is of radical importance for our
central question, namely, What is le Penseur doing?
Two boys fairly swiftly contract the eyelids of their right eyes. In
the first boy this is only an involuntary twitch; but the other is
winking conspiratorially to an accomplice. At the lowest or the thinnest
level of description the two contractions of the eyelids may be exactly
alike. From a cinematograph-film of the two faces there might be no
telling which contraction, if either, was a wink, or which, if either,
were a mere twitch. Yet there remains the immense but unphotographable
difference between a twitch and a wink. For to wink is to try to signal
to someone in particular, without the cognizance of others, a definite
message according to an already understood code. It has very complex
success-versus-failure conditions. The wink is a failure if
its intended recipient does not see it; or sees it but does not know or
forgets the code; or misconstrues it; or disobeys or disbelieves it; or
if any one else spots it. A mere twitch, on the other hand, is neither a
failure nor a success; it has no intended recipient; it is not meant to
be unwitnessed by anybody ; it carries no message. It may be a symptom
but it is not a signal. The winker could notnot know that
he was winking; but the victim of the twitch might be quite unaware of
his twitch. The winker can tell what he was trying to do; the twitcher
will deny that he was trying to do anything...
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Contributed by M.R.W. Dawson
Excerpt:
Ryle's Regress is a classic argument against cognitivist theories,
and concludes that such theories cannot be scientific. The philosopher
Gilbert Ryle (1949) was concerned with critiquing what he called the
intellectualist legend, which required intelligent acts to be the
product of the conscious application of mental rules. Ryle (p. 31)
argued that the intellectualist legend results in an infinite regress of
thought:
"According to the legend, whenever an agent does anything
intelligently, his act is preceded and steered by another internal act
of considering a regulative proposition appropriate to his practical
problem. [...] Must we then say that for the hero's reflections how to
act to be intelligent he must first reflect how best to reflect how to
act? The endlessness of this implied regress shows that the application of the appropriateness does not entail the occurrence of a process of
considering this criterion."
Variants of Ryle's Regress are commonly aimed at cognitivist
theories....
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