(13)The kind of thinking which advances biology is not the kind of thinking which settles the claims and counter-claims between biology and physics. These inter-theory questions are not questions internal to those theories. They are not biological or physical questions. They are philosophical questions.
There is a seemingly endless set of divisions within and across these distinctions. — Fooloso4
mistake when he attempts to cleanly and neatly divide things along the lines of categories, — Fooloso4
With so little time on my hands , would like to nail down a remark by Wittgenstein that helps me get into the essential crux of the matter upon which to build subsequent structure , so as to recollect some way of commenting a-posterior . — Bella fekete
I'm sorry, I don't understand this./\ — Bella fekete
I think you've got him upside down. He sets up his target:- — Ludwig V
...whether Ryle is making his own version of category mistake — Fooloso4
This comparison is actually grounded on an inverse topological layout — Bella fekete
That series of conjectures is more convincing than not even by the progression within this here forum, of the con-foundation of intended disposition — Bella fekete
Then perhaps he is on about something else. — Banno
(9)As a man of scientific genius he [Descartes] could not but endorse the claims of mechanics, yet as a religious and moral man he could not accept, as Hobbes accepted, the discouraging rider to those claims, namely that human nature differs only in degree of complexity from clockwork. The mental could not be just a variety of the mechanical.
... since mechanical laws explain movements in space as the effects of other movements in space, other laws must explain some of the non-spatial workings of minds as the effects of other non-spatial workings of minds. The difference between the human behaviours which we describe as intelligent and those which we describe as unintelligent must be a difference in their causation ...
The differences between the physical and the mental were thus represented as differences inside the common framework of the categories of ‘thing’, ‘stuff’, ‘attribute’, ‘state’, ‘process’, ‘change’, ‘cause’ and ‘effect’. Minds are things, but different sorts of things from bodies; mental processes are causes and effects, but different sorts of causes and effects from bodily movements.
(11-12)I am not, for example, denying that there occur mental processes. Doing long division is a mental process and so is making a joke. But I am saying that the phrase ‘there occur mental processes’ does not mean the same sort of thing as ‘there occur physical processes’, and, therefore, that it makes no sense to conjoin or disjoin the two.
If my argument is successful, there will follow some interesting consequences. First, the hallowed contrast between Mind and Matter will be dissipated, but dissipated not by either of the equally hallowed absorptions of Mind by Matter or of Matter by Mind, but in quite a different way.
For the seeming contrast of the two will be shown to be as illegitimate as would be the contrast of ‘she came home in a flood of tears’ and ‘she came home in a sedan-chair’. The belief that there is a polar opposition between Mind and Matter is the belief that they are terms of the same logical type.
No matter matter who, the important difference is Unlike topological dimensions, the fractal index can take non-integer values, indicating that a set fills its space qualitatively and quantitatively …‘
-Fool — Bella fekete
Minds are things, but different sorts of things from bodies
But cross-disciplinary studies such as biophysics seems to contradict this. The boundaries are not natural or immutable. Understanding biology at some point requires an understanding of physics. — Fooloso4
More helpful is what Ryle himself says in the section "The Origin of the Category- Mistake" from The Concept of Mind — Fooloso4
What I get from this is the last paragraph in which he looses the path where the ground below that can no longer can be recalled. — Bella fekete
This logical subtly was present ages ago in the the Eastern World, where such distinctions need not require a mechanistic interpretation. — Bella fekete
I will try and find time to listen to some of the materials. — Wayfarer
Yes. I do think that this is the weakest point in the book. I much prefer the more complex - and elusive - ideas that emerged from Wittgenstein's private language argument. But the main point, which I think is precisely that qualia are not distinct objects in their own right, stands.The idea that mental activity is somehow behavioral dispositions seems incoherent to me. — schopenhauer1
Yes, I agree that they are not really satisfactory. But once one has seen the light about "qualia" it is hard to see what would satisfy the demand. That's how the hard problem of consciousness is created. Hardly a satisfactory solution itself.Emergentism and “integration” weasily conceits that always try to save the day as a spoon stirring dissolves the powder into the liquid as if magic. — schopenhauer1
I must be missing your point; nothing in that is about "cross-disciplinary studies such as biophysics". — Banno
The kind of thinking which advances biology is not the kind of thinking which settles the claims and counter-claims between biology and physics. These inter-theory questions are not questions internal to those theories. They are not biological or physical questions. They are philosophical questions.
In "Dilemmas", he identifies them as puzzles about "public" concepts — Ludwig V
Biology does indeed welcome physics, chemistry and similar disciplines. But it also welcomes inputs from psychology, sociology and other sciences. — Ludwig V
... biophysics studies living organisms as physical systems ... — Ludwig V
... molecular biology studies them as chemical systems — Ludwig V
That's a very good characterization, from Ryle's point of view. The key is that Descartes thought in terms of different "substances" which is how people thought about this issue. One problem about this way of thinking is that there was never a satisfactory characterization (definition) of that term. Famously (as I expect you know), Locke was reduced to saying that substance was "something, I know not what". Berkeley leapt on this to deny that any such thing existed. Probably rightly. Effectively physics identified substance in terms of mass and extension (Locke's "primary qualities), which didn't help Cartesian dualism at all. Ryle is simply substituting "categories" in place of "substance", shifting the issue from one of metaphysics to one of language. What is at stake is the idea that the mind is an entity that exists in its own right, independently of physical objects.Ryle's own category mistake is in this way the same as Descartes, thinking in terms of the framework of the categories of his time. — Fooloso4
If that was all that was at stake, I would want to argue that one could not expect Descartes to think in any other way than in terms of the concepts available in his time. But Cartesian Dualism survived, so the issue survives, and Ryle's target is not just a change in ways of thinking.What I am suggesting is that Descartes' mistake was not categorical in the sense of failure to recognize differences between fixed categories, but rather his mistake resulted from the application of the framework of the categories of his time. — Fooloso4
Well, Ryle argues that there are not a fixed number or type of categories, so he's pretty much on your page. (See pp. 8 (last line of page) to 11.)There are not fixed logical types of thinking. — Fooloso4
.This is my first time reading Ryle. I took it as an opportunity to fill in some gaps. To read some things I had intentionally neglected. My comments and questions are intended as a mode of inquiry. — Fooloso4
Yes. In a sense, he's speaking metaphorically - there's a lot of metaphors in his writing. He means that only specialists use the "private" concepts, whereas everybody, including specialists, uses "public" concepts. He's just trying to carve out a field for philosophy, which is still trying to recover from the sciences spinning off as independent disciplines.Perhaps this will become clear as I continue reading, but from the first lecture I do not see where he makes a distinction between public and private or how it comes into play. — Fooloso4
Yes, that's a good way of putting it. But the subject matter of biology differs in important ways from the subject matter of physics, and applying only the methods of physics would ignore what makes living systems different from non-living systems. The methods of physics do not allow that distinction to appear. That's where the category question comes in. But he takes for granted that there is some such distinction to be drawn and that was contested then and still is.It (biophysics) studies living organisms as biological systems, but makes use of the principles and methods of physics. — Fooloso4
The key is that Descartes thought in terms of different "substances" which is how people thought about this issue. — Ludwig V
Remember, for many people Dualism is the basis for survival after death — Ludwig V
Well, Ryle argues that there are not a fixed number or type of categories, so he's pretty much on your page. (See pp. 8 (last line of page) to 11.) — Ludwig V
I believe and hope that you won't regret filling in this gap - whether you agree with him or not. — Ludwig V
He means that only specialists use the "private" concepts — Ludwig V
But the subject matter of biology differs in important ways from the subject matter of physics, and applying only the methods of physics would ignore what makes living systems different from non-living systems. The methods of physics do not allow that distinction to appear. — Ludwig V
Consider, for example, is the question regarding the determining factors between what is living and what is not a biological or a philosophical question? Is the question itself problematic because we lack the conceptual clarity this distinction presupposes? Is it exasperated by the assumption that there are conceptual and categorical boundaries to disciplinary domains? Does the question of life itself contain a category mistake in boundary cases? — Fooloso4
It seems to me somewhat crude to take the one example to undermine Ryle's point when there are others at hand that serve him better. We might better understand his work if we are a bit more charitable. — Banno
My comments and questions are intended as a mode of inquiry. — Fooloso4
"I have said that when intellectual positions are at cross-purposes in the manner which I have sketchily described and illustrated, the solution of their quarrel cannot come from any further internal corroboration of either position." — Banno
These inter-theory questions are not questions internal to those theories. They are not biological or physical questions. They are philosophical questions.
(13)The kind of thinking which advances biology is not the kind of thinking which settles the claims and counter-claims between biology and physics.
If it is your first time reading Ryle, then let's read Ryle. — Banno
The danger is that we trot out the pat rejoinders rather than pay attention to the text at hand. — Banno
The quote is Ryle, not I; so it's not I who does not say. One charitably presumes that here, in the first chapter, he is setting a direction, on which he continues in the remainder of the book.And why is that? You do not say. — Fooloso4
It seems from this that you think making a category error as carving stuff up wrong. I hope it's clear from the SEP article that it's more about taking a term from one category and misapplying it in another. It's not failing to clearly differentiate between colour and texture, but "the number two is blue". The "pat rejoinder" is to attempt to apply Ryle's own processing to himself, while apparently misunderstanding what that process is.Ryle is making his own version of category mistake when he attempts to cleanly and neatly divide things along the lines of categories, as if cutting along the inherent joints of things rather than in conformity to some disciplinary practice. — Fooloso4
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