Gilbert Ryle (1900-1976) Professor at Oxford University
Looking at Category-mistakes
Category-mistake: we speak of one sort of thing as if it were another sort of thing.
Question: what's your favorite flavor of ice cream?
What's your favorite flavor of Mondays?
Doctrine from Descartes
Every human being has both a body and a mind.
Harnessed together until death.
Bodies in space and public
Minds not in space, and private
According to this view, we have two collateral histories-one of the body, the other of the mind.
We, individually, are aware of our private states through consciousness, self-consciousness and introspection
Dualism: two lives: mental and the physical.
The inner and outer.
What about the connection between them?
-kind of mysterious Ryle notes
Dualism: two different kinds of existence or status (125, 1)
Physical and mental existence.
It is a necessary feature of what has physical existence that it is in space and time; it is a necessary feature of what has mental existence that it is in time but not in space. What has physical existence is composed of matter, or else is a function of matter; what has mental existence consist of consciousness, or else is a function of consciousness.
We can know each other's bodies-but the only kind of mind knowledge available is of one's own mind.
Remember: Transparency of mind: mind aware of its own stream of consciousness.
Ryle raises Freudian doubts of this state of affairs.
Tributary channels like the unconscious mind.
Nonetheless 125, 2
Holders of the official theory tend, however, to maintain that anyhow in normal circumstances a person must be directly and authentically seized of the present state and workings of his own mind.
We can take a non-optical "look" at our own minds.
One problem here: we have no access to anyone else's mind, so why should we even believe that other minds exist?
Again, nonetheless-our use of language-describing mental activities of others: their hoping, fearing, intending, etc. seems to refer to things in that hidden stream of consciousness.
How do we know it's true that someone else "feels" a certain way?
(2) THE ABSURDITY OF THE DOCTRINE
126, 2 The Dogma of the Ghost in the Machine
Ryle says 126, 2
I hope to prove that it is entirely false, and false not in detail but in principle. It is not merely an assemblage of particular mistakes. It is one big mistake and a mistake of a special kind. It is, namely, a category-mistake. It represents the facts of mental life as if they belonged to one logical type or category … when they actually belong to another.
Ryle wants to explode this myth.
First: what is a category-mistake?
Visit Folsom Lake College-see all the individual buildings, but asks, "where is the college"
The college is not some new collateral institution, but just the way things are organized.
Problem with showing a "picture of the college" on the school web page.
Not recognizing that the parts make up the whole.
[Textbook author: the Chicago Bulls team, v. a collection of the individual players]
Watching a cricket match: who is responsible for team spirit?
These are trivial category-mistakes
What about the theoretically interesting mistakes?
Example: The British Constitution v. The Home Office
Better: John Doe can't be a relative or a friend of The Average Taxpayer
If we think of the Average Taxpayer as a fellow citizen, we'll think of him as a ghost who is everywhere yet nowhere.
[[The average family with 2.3 children--does that mean the average woman in the average family is pregnant?]
Ryle-a family of category mistakes is responsible for the double-life theory of the ghost in the machine.
(3) THE ORIGIN OF THE CATEGORY MISTAKE
History: Galileo's mechanical theory of the universe challenged Descartes
Could accept that the physical world was mechanistic
Descartes couldn't accept that humans were
Escape route: mental-conduct words construed as signifying the occurrence of non-mechanical processes.
Category-mistake: minds are "things," but different sort of things from bodies.
Different causal laws apply.
Problem then: how do you move from mental to physical or back.
How can willing cause spatial movements like the movements of the tongue?
How can a physical change in the optic nerve have the effect of the mind's perception of light.
Minds become "not- things"
Not spatial, not public, not clockwork, not matter
Rather: just ghosts harnessed to machines.
Second problem:
If minds and bodies are both "things," then if bodies are determined by causal laws, minds must also be determined by causal laws-rigid non-mechanical laws.
Thus eliminating: responsibility, choice, merit and demerit.
Problem of free-will comes out of this category-mistake
Finally, Ryle's view:
129, 1 If his view is successful: we get rid of the contrast between mind and matter.
Ryle's view: Mind v. Body is an Illegitimate contrast: like comparing the sentences:
She came home in a flood of tears with
She came home in a sedan chair.
The idealism, materialism distinction also falls.
Ryle concludes 129,2
It is perfectly proper to say, in one logical tone of voice, that there exist minds and to say, in another logical tone of voice, that there exist bodies.
But these expressions do not indicate two different species of existence.
Philosophy of Language: Two different senses of the word exist.
Ultimately: Saying prime numbers exist, or Wednesday's exist, or both minds and bodies exist is just kind of a good or bad joke.
