Gilbert Ryle (19 August 1900-6 October 1976), was a
BritishThe United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is a sovereign state located off the northwestern coast of continental Europe. It is an island country, spanning an archipelago including Great Britain, the northeastern part of Ireland, and many small islands...
philosopher, and a representative of the generation of British
ordinary language philosopherOrdinary language philosophy or linguistic philosophy is a philosophical school that approaches traditional philosophical problems as rooted in misunderstandings philosophers develop by distorting or forgetting what words actually mean....
s influenced by
WittgensteinLudwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein was an Austrian-British philosopher who worked primarily in logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language....
's insights into
languageA language is a system for encoding and decoding information. In its most common use, the term refers to so-called "natural languages" — the forms of communication considered peculiar to humankind. In linguistics the term is extended to refer to the human cognitive facility of creating and using...
, and is principally known for his critique of Cartesian dualism, for which he coined the phrase "the
ghost in the machineThe "ghost in the machine" is British philosopher Gilbert Ryle's derogatory description of René Descartes' mind-body dualism. The phrase was introduced in Ryle's book The Concept of Mind to highlight the perceived absurdity of dualist systems like Descartes' where mental activity carries on in...
". Some of his ideas in the philosophy of mind have been referred to as "behaviourist" (not to be confused with the
psychologicalPsychology is an academic and applied discipline involving the systematic, and sometimes scientific, study of human or animal mental functions and behavior...
behaviourismBehaviorism , also called the learning perspective , is a philosophy of psychology based on the proposition that all things which organisms do — including acting, thinking and feeling — can and should be regarded as behaviors...
of
B. F. SkinnerBurrhus Frederic Skinner was an American psychologist, author, inventor, advocate for social reform, and poet. He was the Edgar Pierce Professor of Psychology at Harvard University from 1958 until his retirement in 1974...
and
John B. WatsonJohn Broadus Watson is an American psychologist who established the psychological school of behaviorism, after doing research on animal behavior. He also conducted the controversial "Little Albert" experiment...
). Ryle himself said that the "general trend of this book [The Concept of Mind, p. 327] will undoubtedly, and harmlessly, be stigmatised as 'behaviourist'."
Life
Ryle was born in
BrightonBrighton is a town in the city of Brighton and Hove in East Sussex on the south coast of Great Britain...
,
EnglandEngland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west and the North Sea to the east, with the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
in 1900. The young Ryle grew up in an environment of learning. His father was a generalist who had interests in philosophy and
astronomyAstronomy is the scientific study of celestial objects and phenomena that originate outside the Earth's atmosphere...
, and passed on to his children an impressive library. Ryle was initially educated at
Brighton CollegeBrighton College is an organisation which splits down into the Senior School known simply as Brighton College, the Prep School and the Pre-Prep School. All of these schools are independent co-educational public schools in Brighton, England sited immediately next to one another. The Senior School...
. In 1919, he went to
Queen's CollegeThe Queen's College, founded 1341, is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. Queen's is centrally situated on the High Street, and is renowned for its eighteenth-century architecture...
at Oxford, initially to study
ClassicsClassics is the branch of the Humanities comprising the languages, literature, philosophy, history, art, archaeology and other culture of the ancient Mediterranean World; especially Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome during Classical Antiquity...
but was quickly drawn to
PhilosophyPhilosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems concerning matters such as existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing these questions by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on reasoned...
. He would graduate with first class honours in 1924 and was appointed to a lectureship in Philosophy at
Christ Church-Churches in Australia:* Christ Church, Lavender Bay, Sydney* Christ Church, Rouse Hill, Sydney* Christ Church St. Laurence, Sydney-Churches in New Zealand:* Christ Church, Russell, the oldest extant church in New Zealand-England:...
, Oxford. A year later, he was to become a tutor. Ryle remained at Christ Church until
World War IIWorld War II, or the Second World War , was a global military conflict which involved a majority of the world's nations, including all great powers, organized into two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
.
A capable linguist, he was recruited to
intelligenceMilitary intelligence is a military service that uses intelligence gathering disciplines to collect informations that informs commanders decision making process....
work during World War II, after which he returned to Oxford and was elected Waynflete Professor of Metaphysical Philosophy and Fellow of
Magdalen CollegeMagdalen College or Magdalene College could be*Magdalen College, Oxford - a constituent college of the University of Oxford*Magdalene College, Cambridge - a constituent college of the University of Cambridge...
, Oxford. He published his principal work, "The Concept of Mind" in 1949. He was president of the
Aristotelian SocietyThe Aristotelian Society for the Systematic Study of Philosophy was founded at a meeting on 19 April 1880, at 17 Bloomsbury Square which resolved "to constitute a society of about twenty and to include ladies; the society to meet fortnightly, on Mondays at 8 o'clock, at the rooms of the Spelling...
from 1945 to 1946, and editor of the philosophical journal
MindMind is a British journal, currently published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Mind Association, which deals with philosophy in the analytic tradition. It was founded by Alexander Bain in 1876 with George Croom Robertson as editor at University College London. With the death of...
from 1947 to 1971. Ryle died on 6 October 1976 at
WhitbyWhitby is a town and civil parish in the Scarborough district of North Yorkshire on the north-east coast of England. Nowadays it is a fishing port and tourist destination. It is situated from York, at the mouth of the River Esk and spreads up the steep sides of the narrow valley carved out by the...
,
North YorkshireNorth Yorkshire is a non-metropolitan or shire county, located in the Yorkshire and the Humber region of England, and a ceremonial county in that region and also partly in North East England. Created in 1974 by the Local Government Act 1972 it covers an area of , making it the largest ceremonial...
.
Philosophy as Cartography
Traditional philosophy believed that the task of a philosopher was to study mental as opposed to physical objects. Ryle believed it was no longer possible for philosophers to believe this. However, in its place, Ryle saw the tendency of philosophers to search for objects whose nature was neither physical nor mental. Ryle believed, instead, that “[p]hilosophical problems are problems of a certain sort; they are not problems of an ordinary sort about special entities.”
Ryle offers the analogy of philosophy as being like
cartographyCartography is the study and practice of making geographical maps. Combining science, aesthetics, and technique, cartography builds on the premise that reality can be modeled in ways that communicate spatial information effectively.The fundamental problems of cartography are to:*Set the map's...
. Competent speakers of a language, Ryle believes, are to a philosopher what ordinary villagers are to a mapmaker. The ordinary villager has a competent grasp of his village, and is familiar with its inhabitants and
geographyGeography is the study of the Earth and its lands, features, inhabitants, and phenomena. A literal translation would be "to describe or write about the Earth". The first person to use the word "geography" was Eratosthenes...
. However, when asked to consult a map for the same knowledge he has practically, the villager will have difficulty until she is able to translate her practical knowledge into universal cartographal terms. The villager thinks of the village in personal and practical terms while the mapmaker thinks of the village in neutral, public, cartographical terms.
By "mapping" the words and phrases of a particular statement, philosophers are able to generate what Ryle calls "implication threads." In other words, each word or phrase of a statement contributes to the statement in that, if the words or phrases were changed, the statement would have a different implication. The philosopher must show the directions and limits of different implication threads that a "concept contributes to the statements in which it occurs." To show this, he must be "tugging" at neighbouring threads, which, in turn, must also be "tugging." Philosophy, then, searches for the meaning of these implication threads in the statements in which they are used.
The Concept of Mind
In
The Concept of MindThe Concept of Mind is a book by the philosopher Gilbert Ryle. In it, he describes what he saw as a "fundamental mistake" made by Descartes' dualism, which underlies much of western philosophy...
(1949), Ryle admits to having been taken in by the
body-mind dualismIn philosophy of mind, dualism is a set of views about the relationship between mind and matter, which begins with the claim that mental phenomena are, in some respects, non-physical.Ideas on mind/body dualism originate at least as far back as Zarathushtra...
which permeates
Western philosophyWestern philosophy is the philosophical thought and work of the Western or Occidental world, as distinct from Eastern or Oriental philosophies and the varieties of indigenous philosophies....
, and claims that the idea of
MindMind is the aspect of intellect and consciousness experienced as combinations of thought, perception, memory, emotion, will and imagination, including all unconscious cognitive processes. The term is often used to refer, by implication, to the thought processes of reason. Mind manifests itself...
as an independent entity, inhabiting and governing the
bodyWith regard to living things, a body is the physical body of an individual. "Body" often is used in connection with appearance, health issues and death...
, should be rejected as a redundant piece of literalism carried over from the era before the biological sciences became established. The proper function of Mind-body language, he suggests, is to describe how higher organisms such as humans demonstrate resourcefulness, strategy, the ability to abstract and hypothesize and so on from the evidences of their behaviour.
He attacks the idea of 17th and 18th century thinkers (such as Descartes) that nature is a complex
machineA machine is any device that uses energy to perform some activity. In common usage, the meaning is that of a device having parts that perform or assist in performing any type of work. A simple machine is a device that transforms the direction or magnitude of a force without consuming any energy...
, and that human nature is a smaller machine with a "ghost" in it to account for
intelligenceIntelligence is an umbrella term used to describe a property of the mind that encompasses many related abilities, such as the capacities to reason, to plan, to solve problems, to think abstractly, to comprehend ideas, to use language, and to learn. There are several ways to define intelligence...
, spontaneity and other such human qualities. While mental vocabulary plays an important role in describing and explaining human behavior, neither are humans analogous to machines nor do philosophers need a "hidden" principle to explain their super-mechanical capacities.
Ryle asserted that the workings of the mind are not distinct from the actions of the body. They are one and the same. Mental vocabulary is, he insists, merely a different manner of describing
actionIn philosophy, action has developed into a sub-field called philosophy of action. Action is what an agent can do.For example, throwing a ball is an instance of action; it involves an intention, a goal, and a bodily movement guided by the agent...
. He also claimed that the nature of a person's motives are defined by that person's
dispositionA disposition is a habit, a preparation, a state of readiness, or a tendency to act in a specified way.The terms dispositional belief and occurrent belief refer, in the former case, to a belief that is held in the mind but not currently being considered, and in the latter case, to a belief that is...
s to act in certain situations. There are no overt
feelingFeeling is the nominalization of "to feel". The word was first used in the English language to describe the physical sensation of touch either through experience or perception. The word is also used to describe experiences, other than the physical sensation of touch, such as "a feeling of warmth"...
s,
painPhysical Pain is the unpleasant feeling common to a headache and a stubbed toe. It typically consists of negative affect and aversion, and has location, duration, intensity and a distinctive quality...
s, or twinges of vanity. There is instead a set of actions and feelings that are subsumed under a general behavior-trend or propensity to act, which we term "vanity."
Novelists, historians and journalists, Ryle points out, have no trouble in ascribing motives, moral values and individuality to people's actions. It is only when philosophers try to attribute these qualities to a separate realm of mind or soul that the problem arises. Ryle also created the classic argument against cognitivist theories of explanation,
Ryle's RegressIn philosophy, Ryle's regress is a classic argument against cognitivist theories, and concludes that such theories are essentially meaningless as they do not explain what they purport to...
.
Criticism
The famous American classicist and philosopher
Allan BloomAllan David Bloom was an American philosopher, classicist, and academic. He studied under David Grene, Leo Strauss, Richard McKeon and Alexandre Kojève...
was harshly critical of Ryle's understanding of
PlatonicPlato's influence on Western culture was so profound that several different concepts are linked by being called "platonic" or Platonist, for accepting some assumptions of Platonism, but which do not imply acceptance of that philosophy as a whole....
texts, writing: "In themselves Ryle's opinions are beneath consideration, but they do deserve diagnosis as a symptom of a sickness which is corrupting our understanding of old writers and depriving a generation of their liberating influence...Such scholarship should give us pause, for Ryle is held by many to be one of the preeminent professors of philosophy in the Anglo-Saxon world." Bloom's central criticism indicts Ryle for anachronistically "Aristotelianizing" Platonic texts, thereby putting them through an artificial "analytic strainer." According to Bloom, this mediation vitiates the content of Plato's text by "torturing Plato to conform to a dogmatic starting point," rather than entering at the natural beginning. Bloom concludes,
Legacy and reputation
Ryle's notion of
thick descriptionIn anthropology and other fields, a thick description of a human behaviour is one that explains not just the behaviour, but its context as well, such that the behaviour becomes meaningful to an outsider....
, from "The Thinking of Thoughts: What is 'Le Penseur' Doing?" and "Thinking and Reflecting", has been an important influence on cultural anthropologists like
Clifford GeertzClifford James Geertz was an American anthropologist and served until his death as professor emeritus at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, New Jersey.-Life:...
.
The Concept of MindThe Concept of Mind is a book by the philosopher Gilbert Ryle. In it, he describes what he saw as a "fundamental mistake" made by Descartes' dualism, which underlies much of western philosophy...
was recognized on its appearance as an important contribution to philosophical psychology, and an important work in the
ordinary language philosophyOrdinary language philosophy or linguistic philosophy is a philosophical school that approaches traditional philosophical problems as rooted in misunderstandings philosophers develop by distorting or forgetting what words actually mean....
movement. However, in the 1960s and 1970s the rising influence of the cognitivist theories of
Noam ChomskyAvram Noam Chomsky is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, political activist, author, and lecturer. He is an Institute Professor and professor emeritus of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Chomsky is well known in the academic and scientific community as...
,
Herbert SimonHerbert Alexander Simon was an American political scientist, economist and psychologist whose research ranged across the fields of cognitive psychology, computer science, public administration, economics, management, philosophy of science, sociology, and political science and was a professor, most...
,
Jerry FodorJerry Alan Fodor is an American philosopher and cognitive scientist. He is the State of New Jersey Professor of Philosophy at Rutgers University and is also the author of many works in the fields of philosophy of mind and cognitive science, in which he has laid the groundwork for the modularity of...
and others in the
neo-CartesianPhilosophers and psychologists are described as being neo-Cartesian if they posit 'mind stuff' as being different from 'brain stuff' and if they posit 'internal cognitive states' as having causal powers. Some philosophers Philosophers and psychologists are described as being neo-Cartesian if they...
school became predominant. Chomsky even wrote a book entitled
Cartesian LinguisticsThe term Cartesian linguistics was coined with the publication of Cartesian Linguistics: A Chapter in the History of Rationalist Thought , a book on linguistics by Noam Chomsky, written with the purpose of deepening "our understanding of the nature of language and the mental processes and...
. In philosophy the two major post-war schools in the
philosophy of mindPhilosophy of mind is a branch of modern analytic philosophy that studies the nature of the mind, mental events, mental functions, mental properties, consciousness and their relationship to the physical body, particularly the brain. The mind-body problem, i.e...
, the representationalism of Jerry Fodor and the
functionalismFunctionalism is a theory of the mind in contemporary philosophy, developed largely as an alternative to both the identity theory of mind and behaviourism. Its core idea is that mental states are constituted solely by their functional role — that is, they are causal relations to other mental...
of
Wilfrid SellarsWilfrid Stalker Sellars was an American philosopher. His father was the noted Canadian-American philosopher Roy Wood Sellars, a leading American philosophical naturalist in the first half of the twentieth-century...
posited precisely the 'internal' cognitive states that Ryle had argued against. However as influential modern philosopher and former student
Daniel DennettDaniel Clement Dennett is a prominent American philosopher whose research centers on philosophy of mind, philosophy of science and philosophy of biology, particularly as those fields relate to evolutionary biology and cognitive science. He is currently the co-director of the Center for Cognitive...
has pointed out, recent trends in
psychologyPsychology is an academic and applied discipline involving the systematic, and sometimes scientific, study of human or animal mental functions and behavior...
such as embodied cognition,
discursive psychologyFor other uses of the word, see discursiveDiscursive psychology is a form of discourse analysis that focuses on psychological themes. It was developed in the 1990s by Jonathan Potter and Derek Edwards at Loughborough University...
,
situated cognitionSituated cognition posits that knowing is inseparable from doing by arguing that all knowledge is situated in activity bound to social, cultural and physical contexts ....
and others in the post-cognitivist tradition have provoked a renewed interest in Ryle's work. Dennett has provided a sympathetic foreword to the 2000 edition of
The Concept of MindThe Concept of Mind is a book by the philosopher Gilbert Ryle. In it, he describes what he saw as a "fundamental mistake" made by Descartes' dualism, which underlies much of western philosophy...
. Ryle remains a significant defender of the possibility of lucid and meaningful interpretation of higher-level human activities without recourse to an abstracted soul.
Books
- The Concept of Mind
The Concept of Mind is a book by the philosopher Gilbert Ryle. In it, he describes what he saw as a "fundamental mistake" made by Descartes' dualism, which underlies much of western philosophy...
(1949)
- Dilemmas (1954), a collection of shorter pieces
- Plato's Progress (1966)
- On Thinking (1979)
External links