Ryle points out that the foreigner's puzzle arose from his inability to understand how to use the concept of 'the University'
— Andrew M
But Ryle is creating a straw man because no one thinks like that. — Andrew4Handel
In the UK we have The Open University where you study from home.
I think most people understand that a University is more than just a collection of buildings and that it is not just one building but a learning institution with a wide reach. — Andrew4Handel
It is not synonymous with the problem of squaring mental states with brain states and physicality with non physicality. — Andrew4Handel
There is a doctrine about the nature and place of minds which is so prevalent among theorists and even among laymen that it deserves to be described as the official theory. — The Concept of Mind - Gilbert Ryle
Such in outline is the official theory. I shall often speak of it, with deliberate abusiveness, as ‘the dogma of the Ghost in the Machine’. 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. — The Concept of Mind - Gilbert Ryle
That is, the university is something we can see by virtue of being creatures with minds.
— Andrew M
I think Ryle, (and certainly I,) would prefer to say that the university is something that we do together; if the building is lost, and the library burns, we can meet under a tree for a tutorial on whatever we can remember of the course. — unenlightened
Ryle's purpose there was to illustrate what is meant by the phrase "category mistake". — Andrew M
There are the ducks, and there is the row. When you have seen the ducks, you have seen the row. But there are not four things. Yet the row is no ghost. — unenlightened
After giving an outline, he goes on to say:
Such in outline is the official theory. I shall often speak of it, with deliberate abusiveness, as ‘the dogma of the Ghost in the Machine’. 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.
— The Concept of Mind - Gilbert Ryle — Andrew M
what Ryle said was the correct view of the matter — Wayfarer
You only exist in relationship. — J.Krishnamurti
Ryle gave a paper called “Phenomenology versus ‘The Concept of Mind,’” the latter being the title of his most famous book. That “versus” captured his pugnacious mood. In this paper, Ryle outlined what he regarded as the superiority of British (“Anglo-Saxon,” as he put it) analytic philosophers over their continental counterparts, and dismissed Husserl’s phenomenology as an attempt to “puff philosophy up into the Science of the sciences.” British philosophers were not tempted to such delusions of grandeur, he suggested, because of the Oxbridge rituals of High Table: “I guess that our thinkers have been immunised against the idea of philosophy as the Mistress Science by the fact that their daily lives in Cambridge and Oxford colleges have kept them in personal contact with real scientists. Claims to Führership vanish when postprandial joking begins. Husserl wrote as if he had never met a scientist—or a joke.”
But here I’m trying to get an analysis specific to recent Western philosophy in particular. I never particularly warmed to Gilbert Ryle — Wayfarer
Just refresh my memory about what Ryle said was the correct view of the matter, if this is the incorrect view? — Wayfarer
This book offers what may with reservations be described as a theory of the mind. But it does not give new information about minds. We possess already a wealth of information about minds, information which is neither derived from, nor upset by, the arguments of philosophers. The philosophical arguments which constitute this book are intended not to increase what we know about minds, but to rectify the logical geography of the knowledge which we already possess. — The Concept of Mind - Gilbert Ryle
There have always existed in the breasts of philosophers, including our own breasts, two conflicting tempers. I nickname them the "Reductionist" and the "Duplicationist" tempers, or the "Deflationary" and the "Inflationary" tempers. The slogan of the first temper is "Nothing But ..."; that of the other "Something Else as Well ..." — Thinking and Saying - Gilbert Ryle
Descartes left as one of his main philosophical legacies a myth which continues to distort the continental geography of the subject.
A myth is, of course, not a fairy story. It is the presentation of facts belonging to one category in the idioms appropriate to another. To explode a myth is accordingly not to deny the facts but to re-allocate them. And this is what I am trying to do.
To determine the logical geography of concepts is to reveal the logic of the propositions in which they are wielded, that is to say, to show with what other propositions they are consistent and inconsistent, what propositions follow from them and from what propositions they follow. The logical type or category to which a concept belongs is the set of ways in which it is logically legitimate to operate with it. The key arguments employed in this book are therefore intended to show why certain sorts of operations with the concepts of mental powers and processes are breaches of logical rules. — The Concept of Mind - Gilbert Ryle
Yes. Some theories of Consciousness as a form of Information (e.g. Integrated Information Theory) attempt to construct Self-Awareness by adding-up bits of encompassing environmental information until the aggregate seems to automatically point inward toward the Observer. This is a Holistic concept, but reductive analysis will miss the essential element that binds isolated parts into functioning wholes : a complete circuit. Metaphorically, the light goes-on when the circuit is complete.I had never thought of it as information until I read a couple of threads on this site on consciousness and information. To some extent, that perspective works, but what seems to be missing is both sentience and narrative identity in the construction of an autobiographical sense of self identity. — Jack Cummins
Descartes proposes substance dualism and Spinoza a few of decades later countered with, for all intents and purposes, property dualism. Remember: Spinozism was almost completely suppressed for over two centuries after Spinoza's death while Cartesianism (via Kantianism) has been all but celebrated since the mid-17th c. I guess most contemporary neuroscientists like Damasio find experimental agreement with property dualism and reject substance dualism (which has become a Cartesian-folk philosophy that thinkers from Witty, Dewey, Ryle, Dennett, Churchland & Churchland ... to the Buddhist neurophilosopher Thomas Metzinger refute).I will look out for the one on Descartes, especially as Descartes' shaped so much of current thinking of the mind body/relationship. — Jack Cummins
Unfortunately, when I refer to the feedback loops in Mind & Nature, in terms of "Holism", I get negative feedback -- as-if the notion is anti-scientific. Even when I switch to "Systems Theory" the scent of New Age Consciousness theories remains. Bateson's ideas and terminology were quickly adopted by New Agers, so he is also sometimes tarred with the feather of pseudo-science. Yet Consciousness has always lingered just beyond the reach of Reductive Science. So, I'm willing to give Holistic (Systems) Science a shot at understanding the "difference that makes a difference", along with the connections that make a conception. Bateson referred to his Holistic worldview as an "Ecology of Mind". :smile:Thanks for your thoughts on information and it does lead me to think of systems theory. I can remember how when I was studying biology, it made so much sense of everything by seeing the integral links. This did involve the connections between the mind and body, such as how the vague nerve, in response to stress leads to an increase in blood pressure, as well as the whole process of homeostasis in the body. The whole processes of minds or minds also make sense in the cybernetic theory of Gregory Bateson. — Jack Cummins
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