Analytic & pragmatist · 1900–1976
Gilbert Ryle
Oxford philosopher who mocked the “ghost in the machine”
Treating the mind as a hidden inner thing is a “category mistake”, like looking for the university over and above its colleges; talk of minds is talk of abilities and dispositions to behave.
Life and thought
Gilbert Ryle (1900–1976) spent his whole career at Oxford, as a tutor at Christ Church and from 1945 as Waynflete Professor of Metaphysical Philosophy. He edited the journal Mind from 1947 to 1971, helped create the BPhil degree that drew graduate students from around the world, and more than anyone made postwar Oxford a centre of philosophy; Ayer and, later, Dennett were among his students.
The Concept of Mind (1949) attacks what Ryle called “the dogma of the Ghost in the Machine”: Descartes’ picture of a private inner mind steering a body. The picture rests on a category mistake, like that of a visitor shown Oxford’s colleges, libraries and laboratories who then asks, “But where is the University?” To say that someone is intelligent, vain or speaks French is not to report hidden inner events but to describe how they are disposed to act. Knowing how to do something is not a matter of knowing that certain facts are true. Critics called this behaviourism; Ryle said he was mapping the logic of our mental concepts.
Works
Shaped by
1889–1951Ludwig WittgensteinViennese-born Cambridge philosopher who overturned his own first philosophyStudents
1910–1989A. J. AyerRyle was Ayer’s tutor at Christ Church, Oxford, and suggested he go to Vienna in 1933.1942–2024Daniel DennettDennett wrote his Oxford doctorate under Ryle.Argued against
1596–1650René DescartesThe Concept of Mind attacks Descartes’s dualism as “the dogma of the Ghost in the Machine”.Meanwhile, in other traditions
1895–1990Feng YoulanHistorian of Chinese philosophy and builder of a “new principle learning”1895–1973Max HorkheimerDirector of the Frankfurt Institute who defined critical theory1898–1979Herbert MarcuseFrankfurt School exile who became the New Left’s philosopher1900–1990Nishitani KeijiKyoto School thinker of nihilism and emptiness1900–2002Hans-Georg GadamerHeidegger’s student, who made hermeneutics a philosophy of understanding1903–1969Theodor W. AdornoFrankfurt philosopher, music theorist and critic of the culture industryOn the record
The Chinese title of Ryle’s Dilemmas (1954) is given as 《两难》.
Dilemmas collects Ryle’s Tarner Lectures on apparent conflicts between theories. No published Chinese translation could be found, so 《两难》 remains a descriptive rendering of the title.
Sources: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Gilbert Ryle”
Ryle was Ayer’s tutor at Christ Church and suggested he go to Vienna in 1933.
Ryle was one of Ayer’s tutors at Christ Church, Oxford; having met Schlick in 1930, he encouraged Ayer to attend the Vienna Circle, which Ayer did from January to March 1933.
Sources: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Alfred Jules Ayer”