1. Compare differing conceptualizations of the mind and how the mind is studied.
2. Address the influence of internal and environmental conditions on what is recalled from certain kinds of memory/representations (e.g., things remembered rote, such as one’s phone number vs. interpreted things like a mother’s affect last time she was seen).
3. Determine the necessity for a one-to-one correspondence between a specific representation in the mind and a physico-chemical condition in some specific neurons/synapses in the associated brain.
4. Analyze fundamental differences between representations from: (a) Visual stimuli vs. those from speech stimuli; (b) Experienced stimuli (instantiated; things that happened externally, the last pizza you ate) vs. imagined stimuli (uninstantiated; anticipating-imagining something for dinner that you’ve never had before).

(philosophy) Gilbert Ryle on mind body dualism

Ryle begins his Concept of Mind by exposing what he refers to as the “official doctrine” of the mind-body relationship, which he attributes mostly to Descartes, though implicating quite a few others. A translation of this doctrine could sound like this. Human bodies exist in space and are subject to the laws that govern spatial relationships, i.e., they are subject to mechanical laws. Each human body also possesses a mind, which does not inhabit the spatial realm, thus are not subject to these spatial/mechanical laws. The mind and body, then, participate/interact in their respective realms in different ways: the body, in physical ways, the mind, in metaphysical/mental ways. Even though they are “harnessed” together by some relationship (usually referred to in philosophy as mind-body dualism), they exist entirely separate from one another. Since the body exists in the physical world alongside other physical objects, observations and measurements can be made to describe its actions, making it a “public” object, i.e., it could be entirely accounted for under the correct conditions. However, since the mind does not inhabit this material world, the same types of observations and measurements cannot be made of it, making it a “private” object, i.e., one that cannot be accounted for under any conditions. Therefore, only through means of physical, mechanical interactions, presumably dictated/controlled by the mind, could any two minds hope to impact each other — which is to say that no person could ever have direct knowledge of another’s mind, or even know for sure if another’s mind existed. Through introspection and reflection one can have direct knowledge of his/her own mind, but are forced to rely on speculations deduced from physical data to provide accounts for another. Despite the secondary nature of knowledge of another mind, we often make claims about others’ minds pretending to have become acquainted with them, or even understand them, which must be a false understanding according to dualism, for Ryle.

Struggling to Meet Your Deadline?

Get your assignment on Philosopher Gilbert Ryle Assignment done on time by medical experts. Don’t wait – ORDER NOW!

Meet my deadline

Philosopher Gilbert Ryle

Ryle refers to this dualistic relationship as the “Ghost in the Machine” dogma of psychological and philosophical thought: a relationship he considers to be absurd, and (what he coined) a “category mistake”. To provide an understanding of what a category mistake entails, the reader is asked to imagine a foreign student visiting Oxford University and being guided through every building compiling the university: the library, cafeteria, lecture halls, dormitories, etc. Upon completing the tour, imagine the guide asking the student if he had any other questions, and the student responding “yes, where is the University?” According to Ryle, the student would be making a category mistake by assuming the university was itself a physical object or structure separate from the other buildings on campus, but in a similar category — one in which he could similarly view the “university” aside the other individual buildings (which come together to form the actual university).

In another example, the reader is asked to imagine an individual spectating a game of cricket for the first time: learning the roles of the bowlers, batsmen, fielders, umpires, and scorers. After all of this is explained, the spectator then asks to be shown the component of “team-spirit” on the field, assuming it to exist in a similar category as the players/positions. Here, too, the spectator is guilty of a category mistake because he assumes incorrectly that team spirit is a physical thing represented on the field. It would then need to be explained to the spectator that team spirit does not exist separate from the individual players, but as a component of each player individually.

Philosopher Gilbert Ryle

Ryle would describe both of the category mistakes above as the person’s (initial) inability to “wield the concepts [of] University, … and team-spirit.” It is this same category mistake –for Ryle — that exists in mind-body dualism. The human mind and the human body are both erroneously understood as separate, complicated systems, but of the same category, i.e., functioning in a similar way, albeit in response to different physical/metaphysical forces and laws. Because of this category mistake, we apply the same words and phrases to account for both the body and the mind, and in turn attribute similar mechanical functions to both. In other words, dualism sees both the body and the mind as machines, operating in similar (yet distinct) functions, which for Ryle may be a more-serious crime than murder. Indeed, contrasting the two at all would be to participate in a category mistake because they are not of the same logical type, and inhabit separate “species of existence (wherein existence has multiple senses, just as “’rising’ has different senses in ‘the tide is rising,’ ‘hopes are rising,’ and ‘the average age of death is rising.’”).”

Ryle is aware of the implications this formulation has on the foundations of psychological study, which is universally constructed on the notion that the mind is a separate, superior machine, controlling the body in the ways a machine interacts with physical objects. Because this dualist notion is assumed, psychology is seeking the ‘un-seekable’ by attempting to place mechanical explanations on things that cannot be observed, thus are not mechanical at all. The only data available for observation are the physical occurrences in space, which are attributed to mental phenomena, but never considered mental phenomena on their own. This is a major problem for Ryle. He concedes that much of psychology — particularly certain experimental disciplines — has been accurate in their study of what were considered outward expressions of inner mechanical functions (mostly due to their need of studying something real) but again, the “actions, grimaces and utterances of lunatics and idiots, of persons under the influence of alcohol, fatigue, terror…“ were never understood to be exactly what psychologists had been looking for all along.

This makes further sense when Ryle discusses the “programme of psychology.” An important facet of the error made by psychology is the misunderstanding of it even being a scientific study at all: its study is not conducted in the ways all other physical sciences are pursued (through a series of data collection and various testing of the evidence). But Ryle believed that the actual data for psychologists had been there all along, but the fundamental assumptions of the discipline have prevented them from being viewed as what they are: mental phenomena. Thus, as Ryle adds, studying Napoleon’s triumphs in Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries are not only data for the historian, but for the psychologist as well. Being happy is not a state of mind, and the outward expressions of happiness are not due to mechanical maneuverings our brains inflict on our bodies. The outward expressions, themselves, are happiness. Being sad is not a switch that is flipped in our minds, but is the actual act of displaying sadness. Stupid really is as stupid does. This unified understanding of the mind and body is typically called behaviorism.

Philosopher Gilbert Ryle

This formulation is Ryle’s greatest contribution to philosophy, and was as game-changing as (and quite similar to) Wittgenstein’s theories of language games: the notion that the history of philosophy could perhaps be viewed as a series of misunderstandings among philosophers, i.e., philosophers participating in separate, sometimes opposing language games. At first glance, it may seem as though Ryle is ignoring what seems to be a truism: that the mind exists and operates in mysterious ways, perhaps separate from the body. This is a misrepresentation of Ryle’s behaviorism. He recognizes classes of behavior that must have something to do with happenings in the mind, e.g., dreaming/daydreaming, shyness, procrastination, optical illusions etc. However, the quest to discover the causality of behavior is a wasted venture and a category mistake, for Ryle. Therefore, when Rene Descartes uttered his famous line “I think therefore I am,” he was mistakenly assuming a similar existence between the acts of thinking and being.

So, we are left wondering if Ryle’s assertions were accurate. First, there is no definitive answer to this question, at least not yet. However, advancements made in the various cognitive sciences since the publication of Ryle’s book (in 1949) point to the conclusion that mental processes actually can be studied appropriately in scientific ways. This idea is argued for by Hillary Putnam, using what he called functionalism, or the idea that the processes in the brain can only be viewed as parts of a system, and are not entirely separate (as in the case of dualism), but also not one in the same (as is the case with behaviorism). It is the function of the brain we wish to understand, not its essence. Putnam believes this can be deduced empirically, albeit indirectly. This indirect nature was a problem for Ryle, but not for Putnam — in the same way, Putnam suggests, the information you receive from a reflection in a mirror, while not direct, can still relay accurate, empirical information. Things we cannot see are accurately deduced from the things we can see all the time!….