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Gilbert Ryle
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| Biography: Gilbert Ryle |
The English philosopher Gilbert Ryle (1900-1976) ranked among the leaders of the contemporary analytic movement in British philosophy. His most original work was his analysis of the concept of mind.
Gilbert Ryle was born on Aug. 19, 1900, in Brighton, the son of a prosperous doctor. He was educated at Brighton College and then entered Queen's College, Oxford, where he took first honors in two subjects: classical honor moderations and the school of philosophy, politics, and economics. He was also captain of the Queen's College Boating Club.
As a result of his brilliant academic work, Ryle was appointed lecturer in 1924 and a year later tutor in philosophy, both appointments at Christ Church, Oxford. In 1940 he was commissioned in the Welsh Guards, serving for the duration of World War II and ending his military career as a major.
Ryle returned to Oxford to become Waynfleete professor of metaphysical philosophy, a post he held from 1945 to 1968. In 1947 he inherited from G. E. Moore the editorship of Mind, the most influential journal of English philosophy.
Early in his philosophical career, Ryle decided that the task of philosophy was "the detection of the sources in linguistic idioms of recurrent misconceptions and absurd theories." In his Tanner Lectures, published as Dilemmas (1954), he showed how certain philosophical impasses could be dissolved by a clearer understanding of the concepts employed by the apparently contradictory views.
In his major work, The Concept of Mind (1949), Ryle mounted a devastating attack on Cartesian dualism and, in particular, on the view of mind as a separate substance apart from the body. He caricatured this view as the "myth of the ghost in the machine" proposed by Descartes. Ryle's own view of mental reality is that it consists in dispositions to behave in certain ways. He tried to show that mental concepts do not refer to private, unwitnessable events, maintaining against critics that his view was not identical with behaviorism.
In Plato's Progress (1966) Ryle exhibited an unexpected talent for ingenious speculation in an attempt to reconstruct the historical genesis of Plato's dialogues. Ryle, a bachelor, lived most of his life in college rooms. Friends said that "the Common Room atmosphere fits him like a glove." Quick and formidable in debate, Ryle was also the writer of clear and witty prose. He took particular delight in exploding pompous views and in inventing fresh metaphors and vivid aphorisms. Though professing to dislike erudition and intellectual matters, Ryle was both learned and highly intellectual. He was said to distrust imagination and its works, but he had a typically British love of gardening.
Further Reading
Ryle's works are eminently readable even for the general reader. The Concept of Mind (1949) and Dilemmas (1954) are the most important. The only study of any length is the highly critical one by Laird Addis in Moore and Ryle: Two Ontologies (1965). Also see William Lyons, Gilbert Ryle: An Introduction to his Philosophy, (1980) and Ira Altman, The Concept of Intelligence: A philosophical Analysis (1997). Collections of Ryle's works include: Modern Studies in Philosophy (1971) and Logic and Language (1978).
| Philosophy Dictionary: Gilbert Ryle |
Ryle, Gilbert (1900-76) English philosopher and classicist. Ryle was born in Brighton, educated at Oxford, and after teaching from 1924 to 1945 at Christ Church, became professor at Oxford. His earliest interests were in the phenomenological tradition of Husserl and Heidegger. But from the 1930s onwards he absorbed the influence of the later work of Wittgenstein, becoming a fierce advocate of the kind of attention to language demanded by Wittgenstein and J. L. Austin. His Concept of Mind (1949) is a sustained attack on the Cartesian philosophy of mind, or dogma of the ‘ghost in the machine’. The behaviourism it substitutes is a little too brisk, but Ryle did a great deal to lay the groundwork for late developments such as functionalism. The brio and verve of his work are unusual in analytical philosophy, and come out further in Dilemmas (1953), and Plato's Progress (1966).
| Columbia Encyclopedia: Gilbert Ryle |
Ryle, Gilbert, 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. His other works include Dilemmas (1954), Plato's Progress (1966), and Collected Papers (2 vol., 1971).
Bibliography
See G. Pitcher and O. Wood, ed., Ryle (1971).
| Wikipedia: Gilbert Ryle |
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This article includes a list of references, related reading or external links, but its sources remain unclear because it lacks inline citations. Please improve this article by introducing more precise citations where appropriate. (February 2008) |
| Western Philosophers 20th-century philosophy |
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| Full name | Gilbert Ryle |
| Born | 19 August 1900 |
| Died | 6 October 1976 (aged 76) |
| School/tradition | Analytic |
| Main interests | Language, Ordinary language philosophy, Philosophy of mind, Behaviourism, Meaning, Cognition |
| Notable ideas | Ryle's Regress, Ordinary language philosophy, The Ghost in the machine |
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Gilbert Ryle (19 August 1900-6 October 1976), was a British philosopher, and a representative of the generation of British ordinary language philosophers influenced by Wittgenstein's insights into language, and is principally known for his critique of Cartesian dualism, for which he coined the phrase "the ghost in the machine". Some of his ideas in the philosophy of mind have been referred to as "behaviourist" (not to be confused with the psychological behaviourism of B. F. Skinner and John B. Watson). Ryle himself said that the "general trend of this book [The Concept of Mind, p. 327] will undoubtedly, and harmlessly, be stigmatised as 'behaviourist'."
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Life
Ryle was born in Brighton, England in 1900. The young Ryle grew up in an environment of learning. His father was a generalist who had interests in philosophy and astronomy, and passed on to his children an impressive library. Ryle was initially educated at Brighton College. In 1919, he went to Queen's College at Oxford, initially to study Classics but was quickly drawn to Philosophy. He would graduate with first class honours in 1924 and was appointed to a lectureship in Philosophy at Christ Church, Oxford. A year later, he was to become a tutor. Ryle remained at Christ Church until World War II.[1]
A capable linguist, he was recruited to intelligence work during World War II, after which he returned to Oxford and was elected Waynflete Professor of Metaphysical Philosophy and Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford. He published his principal work, "The Concept of Mind" in 1949. He was president of the Aristotelian Society from 1945 to 1946, and editor of the philosophical journal Mind from 1947 to 1971. Ryle died on 6 October 1976 at Whitby, North Yorkshire.[1]
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.”[1]
Ryle offers the analogy of philosophy as being like cartography. 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 geography. 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.[2]
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.[3]
The Concept of Mind
In The Concept of Mind (1949), Ryle admits to having been taken in by the body-mind dualism which permeates Western philosophy, and claims that the idea of Mind as an independent entity, inhabiting and governing the body, 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 machine, and that human nature is a smaller machine with a "ghost" in it to account for 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 action. He also claimed that the nature of a person's motives are defined by that person's dispositions to act in certain situations. There are no overt feelings, pains, 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 Regress.
Criticism
The famous American classicist and philosopher Allan Bloom was harshly critical of Ryle's understanding of Platonic 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."[4] 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,
| “ | The usual criticism of men of Ryle's persuasion is that they are dry and unable to deal with important problems. Although this is largely an accurate description, the decisive objection to them is that they lack that very precision on which they pride themselves... Although Ryle professes great interest in Plato's understanding of the soul, he pays no attention to eros, which is undeniably for Plato one of the most important constituents of the soul. But, for Ryle, eros is another one of those sub-philosophic things like politics which mature professors at Oxford learn to get over. | ” |
Legacy and reputation
Ryle's notion of thick description, from "The Thinking of Thoughts: What is 'Le Penseur' Doing?"[5] and "Thinking and Reflecting", has been an important influence on cultural anthropologists like Clifford Geertz.[6]
The Concept of Mind was recognized on its appearance as an important contribution to philosophical psychology, and an important work in the ordinary language philosophy movement. However, in the 1960s and 1970s the rising influence of the cognitivist theories of Noam Chomsky, Herbert Simon, Jerry Fodor and others in the neo-Cartesian school became predominant. Chomsky even wrote a book entitled Cartesian Linguistics. In philosophy the two major post-war schools in the philosophy of mind, the representationalism of Jerry Fodor and the functionalism of Wilfrid Sellars posited precisely the 'internal' cognitive states that Ryle had argued against. However as influential modern philosopher and former student Daniel Dennett has pointed out, recent trends in psychology such as embodied cognition, discursive psychology, situated cognition 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 Mind.[7] Ryle remains a significant defender of the possibility of lucid and meaningful interpretation of higher-level human activities without recourse to an abstracted soul.
Writings
Books
- The Concept of Mind (1949)
- Dilemmas (1954), a collection of shorter pieces
- Plato's Progress (1966)
- On Thinking (1979)
Notes and references
- ^ a b c Tanney, Julia (Winter 2003). "Gilbert Ryle". Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Stanford, CA: The Metaphysics Research Lab. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ryle/. Retrieved 2008-03-05.
- ^ Ryle, Gilbert (1971). "Abstractions". Collected Papers (London: Hutchinson) 2: 440–442.
- ^ Ryle, Gilbert (1971). "Abstractions". Collected Papers (London: Hutchinson) 2: 444–445.
- ^ Bloom, Allan (April 9, 1970). "Plato". The New York Review of Books 14 (7). ISSN 0028-7504. http://www.nybooks.com/articles/10998. Retrieved 2008-04-08.
- ^ Ryle, Gilbert (1968), The Thinking of Thoughts: What is 'Le Penseur' Doing?, , University Lectures, (The University of Saskatchewan) (18). Reprinted in his Collected Papers, 2, London: Hutchinson, 1971, pp. 480–496, and (linked) in Studies in Anthropology (Centre for Social Anthropology and Computing) 11, 1996-08-21, ISSN 1363-1098
- ^ Geertz, Clifford, "Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture", The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays, New-York: Basic Books (published 1973), pp. 3–30
- ^ Dennett, Daniel C. (2002). "Re-Introducing The Concept of Mind". Electronic Journal of Analytic Philosophy (7). http://ejap.louisiana.edu/EJAP/2002/Dennett.html. Retrieved 2007-12-20.
External links
- Gilbert Ryle in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- Gilbert Ryle at PhilosophyPages.com
- About Ryle's Concept of Mind
- The Philosophy of Gilbert Ryle
- Ordinary Language, the Philosophical Review LXII (1953)
- Symposium: Use, Usage and Meaning. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volumes 35 (1961): 223-242. (with J. N. Findlay)
- The Electronic Journal of Analytic Philosophy - Issue dedicated to Ryle
- Profile at UXL Newsmakers
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