Gilbert Ryle
Gilbert Ryle ( born August 19, 1900 in Brighton, † October 6, 1976 in Oxford) was one of the most influential British philosophers of the 20th century. He taught at the University of Oxford. Ryle applies with John Langshaw Austin and Ludwig Wittgenstein as the main representative of the ordinary language philosophy or philosophy of ordinary language, which is in addition to the ideal philosophy of language one of the two classical currents of analytic philosophy. In the tradition of George Edward Moore and Ludwig Wittgenstein is here trying to clarify philosophical problems through language or conceptual analysis with reference to the ordinary or normal usage.
Life
The Concept of Mind
Ryle's main work, The Concept of Mind (translated as "The concept of the mind" ), was published in 1949. In it, the thesis is developed that philosophy since Descartes under the spell of the myth of a " ghost in the machine" stand. Thus Ryle said the idea that the mind and the body are two different things that stood interact. According to Ryle This leads to insurmountable difficulties: how does mental causation ( as manages the disembodied spirit to set the mindless body in motion? ), And how we can avoid solipsism, ie how to justify the assumption that there is another consciousness except the ever own, and how can we know if a ghost is present in a foreign body? In addition, it remains at the official doctrine (official doctrine ) unclear how a non -spatial, so do not localizable, mind could be in a physical (ie, spatial ) object.
In contrast to the official doctrine Ryle suggested conceptually interpreted mental states as behavioral dispositions. Intelligence therefore not is to run immaterial, unobservable mental acts as observable body movements, but in the particular way how these body movements are performed. Therefore Ryle is widely regarded as the representative of a philosophical behaviorism. Unlike some representatives of positivism as Rudolf Carnap and Carl Gustav Hempel, however, Ryle does not assume that records can be replaced about mental states by sets on purely physical behavior: According to Ryle can the behavioral dispositions that are our intellectual properties, not otherwise than even our familiar from everyday mental vocabulary bring ( intelligent, witty, carefully) expression. How we talk everyday about our mental properties, for Ryle is therefore a undeceivable horizon of understanding for each theory of mind. Therefore Ryle wants as he emphasizes in the preface of the concept of mind, do not present new facts about the human mental life - these are already well known from everyday life and from the literature - but the conceptual relationships within which those facts are collected, new pose.
A momentous consequence of the official teaching is the intellectualist misunderstanding for Ryle, according to which every intelligent action must be preceded by an internal, purely spiritual ( intellectual ) weighing of action-guiding principles. This keeps Ryle is wrong because numerous intelligent actions - be prime example of the node knotting also play chess - can vonstattengehen spontaneously and without the inner forestay recitation of the relevant rules. Ryle tries to show that intelligence (ability to practical action ) and intellect ( ability to theorizing ) the other way around behave as it says the misunderstanding: the ability to theorizing is only a practical ability among many others. In their exercise it comes to wise apply rules, which can be done even without inner monologue. In this context, Ryle makes the distinction between knowledge ( knowing that) and skills ( knowing how), to show that any knowledge is preceded by a skill.
Category mistake
In The Concept of Mind there is also a classic formulation of the idea of a category error. Such is after Ryle ago when one perceives in terms of different categories statements straight, so ignored their type diversity.
An example of a category error is as follows: To say that a team enters a stadium means that the individual players of this team enter the stadium. It would be absurd to assume that in addition to the players also have a team comes on to the pitch. This would require to conceive the concept and therefore the same team in the same category to be assigned as the term player to accept. Likewise, it would be nonsensical According to Ryle, to ask for the player who is responsible for the team spirit of a team.
According to Ryle, a category mistake lies in the assumption that the concepts of mind and body belong to the same category. Faulty part is that body called the material carriers of actions, mind, however, the decisions that are based on these actions. Both are therefore, like team and players, different categories. The category mistake led us to look for a spirit beside the body: that would be the way to keep next to the players even after their team out.
Effect
The work Ryles dominated the philosophy of mind in the fifties. With the decline of the psychological behaviorism and the beginning of the cognitive revolution in the life sciences but also the philosophical behaviorism Ryles became increasingly unpopular. His theses were first displaced by the identity theory, and later by the functionalism. However, there are still philosophers who are of the opinion that the identification of mental states is a category mistake with neural or functional states. This assumption is talking about, such as take some theorists that even today popular identity theory ( mind the same brain processes) have not solved the mind-body problem and could not conclusively explain why mental concepts such as remember not to brain processes, but intellectual Experience related and can not be reduced to a physical ( physical ) level.