神马文学网Gilbert Ryle
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Gilbert Ryle
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Western Philosophers
20th-century philosophy
Name: Gilbert Ryle
Birth:August 19,1900
Death:October 6,1976
School/tradition:Analytic
Main interests:Language,Ordinary language philosophy,Philosophy of mind,Behaviourism,Meaning,Cognition
Notable ideas:Ryle‘s Regress,Ordinary language philosophy, TheGhost in the machine
Influences:Descartes,Schopenhauer,Wittgenstein
Influenced:J. L. Austin,A. J. Ayer,R.M. Hare,Wilfrid Sellars,Daniel Dennett
Gilbert Ryle (Brighton,19 August1900–Oxford,6 October1976), was aphilosopher, and a representative of the generation of Britishordinary language philosophers influenced byWittgenstein‘s insights intolanguage, and is principally known for his critique ofCartesian dualism, for which he coined the phrase "theghost in the machine". He referred to some of his ideas as "behaviourism" (not to be confused with thepsychologicalbehaviourism ofB. F. Skinner andJohn B. Watson).
He was born inBrighton,England in1900 and educated atBrighton College, like his brothers John and George (In later life, Gilbert was a governor ofBrighton College and the school named a dayboy house in his honour). A capable linguist, he was recruited tointelligence work duringWorld War II, after which he becameWayneflete Professor of Metaphysical Philosophy at Oxford, and published his principal work, "The Concept of Mind" in1949. He was president of theAristotelian Society from 1945 to 1946.
Contents
[hide]
1 The Concept of Mind2 Legacy and Criticism3 Other writings4 Notes and references5 External links
[edit] The Concept of Mind
InThe Concept of Mind (1949), Ryle admits to having been taken in by the body-mind dualism which permeatesWestern 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 of17th and18th century thinkers (such asDescartes andLa Mettrie) that nature is a complexmachine, 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 againstcognitivist theories of explanation,Ryle‘s Regress.
[edit] Legacy and Criticism
"The Concept of Mind" was recognized on its appearance as an important contribution to philosophical psychology, and an important work in theordinary language philosophy movement. However, in the1960s and1970s the rising influence of thecognitivist theories ofNoam Chomsky,Herbert Simon,Jerry Fodor and others in theneo-Cartesian school became predominant. Chomsky even wrote a book entitledCartesian Linguistics. In philosophy the two major post-war schools in thephilosophy of mind, therepresentationalism of Jerry Fodor and thefunctionalism ofWilfrid Sellars posited precisely the ‘internal‘ cognitive states that Ryle had argued against. However as influential modern philosopher and former studentDaniel Dennett has pointed out, recent trends inpsychology such asembodied cognition,discursive psychology,situated cognition and others in thepost-cognitivist tradition have provoked a renewed interest in Ryle‘s work. Ryle remains a significant defender of the possibility of lucid and meaningful interpretation of higher-level human activities without recourse to an abstracted soul.
Aspects of Ryle‘s work have been an important influence on cultural anthropologists likeClifford Geertz who approvingly quote his notion of ‘thick description.‘
Allan Bloom, the classicist and Greek scholar whose 1968 translation ofPlato‘s Republic became the canonically preferred text in the second half of the 20th century, wrote of Ryle:
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.[1]
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.
[edit] Other writings
His other books are Plato‘s Progress (1966) and Dilemmas (1954), a collection of shorter pieces. He was also editor of the philosophical journal Mind from1947 to1971.
A text which has influenced anthropologists is ‘The Thinking of Thoughts: What is ‘Le Penseur‘ Doing?‘[1]
[edit] Notes and references
^http://www.nybooks.com/articles/10998
[edit] External links
Gilbert Ryle at PhilosophyPages.comAbout Ryle‘s Concept of MindThe Philosophy of Gilbert RyleOrdinary Language, the Philosophical Review LXII (1953)
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilbert_Ryle"
Categories:Wittgensteinian philosophers |Philosophy academics |20th century philosophers |Analytic philosophers |British philosophers |Philosophers of language |Philosophers of mind |Fellows of Christ Church, Oxford |1900 births |1976 deaths
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This page was last modified 19:59, 18 June 2007. All text is available under the terms of theGNU Free Documentation License. (SeeCopyrights for details.)
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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to:navigation,search
Western Philosophers
20th-century philosophy
Name: Gilbert Ryle
Birth:August 19,1900
Death:October 6,1976
School/tradition:Analytic
Main interests:Language,Ordinary language philosophy,Philosophy of mind,Behaviourism,Meaning,Cognition
Notable ideas:Ryle‘s Regress,Ordinary language philosophy, TheGhost in the machine
Influences:Descartes,Schopenhauer,Wittgenstein
Influenced:J. L. Austin,A. J. Ayer,R.M. Hare,Wilfrid Sellars,Daniel Dennett
Gilbert Ryle (Brighton,19 August1900–Oxford,6 October1976), was aphilosopher, and a representative of the generation of Britishordinary language philosophers influenced byWittgenstein‘s insights intolanguage, and is principally known for his critique ofCartesian dualism, for which he coined the phrase "theghost in the machine". He referred to some of his ideas as "behaviourism" (not to be confused with thepsychologicalbehaviourism ofB. F. Skinner andJohn B. Watson).
He was born inBrighton,England in1900 and educated atBrighton College, like his brothers John and George (In later life, Gilbert was a governor ofBrighton College and the school named a dayboy house in his honour). A capable linguist, he was recruited tointelligence work duringWorld War II, after which he becameWayneflete Professor of Metaphysical Philosophy at Oxford, and published his principal work, "The Concept of Mind" in1949. He was president of theAristotelian Society from 1945 to 1946.
Contents
[hide]
1 The Concept of Mind2 Legacy and Criticism3 Other writings4 Notes and references5 External links
[edit] The Concept of Mind
InThe Concept of Mind (1949), Ryle admits to having been taken in by the body-mind dualism which permeatesWestern 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 of17th and18th century thinkers (such asDescartes andLa Mettrie) that nature is a complexmachine, 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 againstcognitivist theories of explanation,Ryle‘s Regress.
[edit] Legacy and Criticism
"The Concept of Mind" was recognized on its appearance as an important contribution to philosophical psychology, and an important work in theordinary language philosophy movement. However, in the1960s and1970s the rising influence of thecognitivist theories ofNoam Chomsky,Herbert Simon,Jerry Fodor and others in theneo-Cartesian school became predominant. Chomsky even wrote a book entitledCartesian Linguistics. In philosophy the two major post-war schools in thephilosophy of mind, therepresentationalism of Jerry Fodor and thefunctionalism ofWilfrid Sellars posited precisely the ‘internal‘ cognitive states that Ryle had argued against. However as influential modern philosopher and former studentDaniel Dennett has pointed out, recent trends inpsychology such asembodied cognition,discursive psychology,situated cognition and others in thepost-cognitivist tradition have provoked a renewed interest in Ryle‘s work. Ryle remains a significant defender of the possibility of lucid and meaningful interpretation of higher-level human activities without recourse to an abstracted soul.
Aspects of Ryle‘s work have been an important influence on cultural anthropologists likeClifford Geertz who approvingly quote his notion of ‘thick description.‘
Allan Bloom, the classicist and Greek scholar whose 1968 translation ofPlato‘s Republic became the canonically preferred text in the second half of the 20th century, wrote of Ryle:
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.[1]
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.
[edit] Other writings
His other books are Plato‘s Progress (1966) and Dilemmas (1954), a collection of shorter pieces. He was also editor of the philosophical journal Mind from1947 to1971.
A text which has influenced anthropologists is ‘The Thinking of Thoughts: What is ‘Le Penseur‘ Doing?‘[1]
[edit] Notes and references
^http://www.nybooks.com/articles/10998
[edit] External links
Gilbert Ryle at PhilosophyPages.comAbout Ryle‘s Concept of MindThe Philosophy of Gilbert RyleOrdinary Language, the Philosophical Review LXII (1953)
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilbert_Ryle"
Categories:Wittgensteinian philosophers |Philosophy academics |20th century philosophers |Analytic philosophers |British philosophers |Philosophers of language |Philosophers of mind |Fellows of Christ Church, Oxford |1900 births |1976 deaths
Views
ArticleDiscussionEdit this pageHistory
Personal tools
Sign in / create account
Navigation
Main pageContentsFeatured contentCurrent eventsRandom article
interaction
About WikipediaCommunity portalRecent changesFile upload wizardContact usMake a donationHelp
Search
Toolbox
What links hereRelated changesUpload fileSpecial pagesPrintable versionPermanent linkCite this article
In other languages
DeutschEestiEspañolFrançaisMagyar日本語PolskiPortuguêsRomân?Sloven?inaSuomiTürkçeNederlands
This page was last modified 19:59, 18 June 2007. All text is available under the terms of theGNU Free Documentation License. (SeeCopyrights for details.)
Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of theWikimedia Foundation, Inc., a US-registered501(c)(3)tax-deductiblenonprofitcharity.
Privacy policyAbout WikipediaDisclaimers