CONTENTS
Bibliography
Introduction
PART ONE - EXPOSITION AND INTERPRETATION
The Nature and Method of Philosophy
Ryle's Philosophy of Man
Characterizing Ryle's Philosophy
PART TWO - CRITICISM AND EVALUATION
A General Appraisal of Ryle's Philosophy
Some Points in Ryle's Philosophy of Mind
The Austrian engineer-philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein is the central figure in the Analytical Movement and also the most contoversial. After Russell, Wittgenstein seems to have derived most from the philosophical studies of Gottlob Frege on the nature of meaning and reference. He was also acquainted with St. Augustine's Confessions and with the Prima Pars of the Summa of St. Thomas, but neither Saint seems to have had any perceptible influence upon his philosophy.1 Wittgenstein came to philosophy as an amateur, interested in Schopenhauer, knowing something of Mach and Hertz, and a little about Meinong and Husserl.2 Although the Vienna Positivists appropriated his ideas for their own special purposes, he had nothing to do with the founding of the Vienna Circle, nor was he ever a member of it, and he completely disowned any relations with the Logical Positivists. He himself discouraged propaganda and made no attempt to form a school. His philosophical originality was such that he completely transcended his situation. His relations with the philosophers who claim to derive from him are not easy to define, and he has complained that his thoughts have been variously misunderstood, mangled and watered down.3
Ryle recalls that in the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus Wittgenstein, followed in this by the members of the Vienna Circle, took over Russell's true-or-false or meaningless criterion in order to distinguish science from philosophy. Science seeks to establish truth. Philosophy distinguishes meaning from nonsense. But since what is nonsensical cannot be meaningfully expressed or said or stated, Wittgenstein in the Tractatus arrived at the frustrating conclusion that while Philosophy could show something or other, it could not say anything at all, just as a map cannot indicate its own whereabouts.4
The Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1921) deals with the whole of philosophy in less than two hundred pages, and shows that the method of formulating philosophical problems rests on a misunderstanding of the logic of language. A confusion between formal concepts and proper concepts runs through the whole of the old logic. Words thought about in abstraction form any actual use are liable to pose as having peculiar uses which they do not really have. Behind the old way of thinking lurks a superstition produced by grammatical illusions. This is at the bottom of the senseless pseudo-propositions of metaphysics. The forms of answers which a question suggests are not always appropriate to that question, since some expressions cannot rightly be interpreted in the kind of way that their forms seem to suggest. We cannot give answers to metaphysical questions at all, but only state their senselessness. It is senseless to attempt to get outside the limits of the world, the limits of thinking, the limits of language. But metaphysical propositions try to think both sides of the limit.5
In the first part of the Tractatus Wittgenstein is thus mainly concerned with a formal logical inquiry; he is not saying what the facts are or what kind of world the world actually is. But there is also, besides the logical, the inexpressible, the mystical, which cannot be said, but which shows itself. What solipsism means is quite correct, although it cannot be said. This view contrasts with that of Ryle for whom the problemof other minds is a pseudo-problem. The philosophical I, according to Wittgenstein, the thinking subject, as thinking subject, is, in a sense, not a part of the world which is being thought about. The subject does not belong to the world but is a limit of the world. What we mean by saying that the world is and that it is the totality of the facts is also quite correct, although it cannot be thought or expressed or said. According to the early Wittgenstein, and the early Ryle, existential propositions are meaningless.6 We have the feeling of the world as a limited whole, and this is a mystical feeling. But the propositions of metaphysics, logic, epistemology and philosophical psychology are meaningless. Wittgenstein's own propositions in the Tractatus are, he adds, for this reason senseless, but something is shown by them.7
Wittgenstein would appear to be here adopting a third-person approach to language, viewing language as a public fact rather than as a personal possession. Language seems to be regarded as incapable of saying anything that cannot be used to exemplify the procedures of formal logic. The logical principle of non-contradiction is highly respected and exploited, but the principle of sufficient reason is not, perhaps, given sufficient recognition. This may shed light on Charlesworth's strictures. Wittgenstein, he says, implies that what is meant or shown by at least some meaningless propositions is some fact about the logical structure of language, but it is difficult to see exactly what there is to be meant or shown. Logical necessity cannot be explained in terms of logical syntax, since the rules of logical syntax are distinguished from the rules of grammatical syntax precisely by the fact of their being logically necessary. The distinction between what can be said and what can be shown has no real foundation, and it is hard to see how the Tractatus escapes from self-contradiction. While Wittgenstein is saying: "It is senseless to say that the world is not my world," he seems to insinuate that it would be sensible or significant to say "the world is my world." But to make this insinuation is to slide from a purely formal logical observation into an extra-logical assumption.8 Wittgenstein states that unconditionally true propositions are in fact tautologies because they exclude no possibilities, and hence he considers metaphysical propositions to be tautologies. But metaphysical propositions exclude self-contradiction and absurdity. Of course self-contradiction and absurdity are not real alternative possibilities, and so metaphysical propositions do not exclude in the ordinary sense, but they do excluse in some sense, and accordingly they are meaningful in some sense.9
In the Tractatus Wittgenstein located the real link between language and reality in the relation of atomic facts and atomic propositions. An atomic fact is a combination of objects, entities, things. The elements of these facts on the side of language are names, simple demonstrative symbols. All propositions of any actual language are truth-functional compounds of atomic propositions, the rules of construction being roughly those given in Principia Mathematica. Sets of words not thus construted have no meaning. On the side of reality the elements of these facts are objects, particulars. But particulars cannot be, as Russell had supposed, such things as white dots. Objects must not themselves be configurations, they must be simple.10 In this connexion it is well to emphasise that Wittgenstein never subscribed to the Verification Principle. His identification of meaningful propositions with the propositions of natural science is meant to be a post factum conclusion, and not an a priori principle. Moreover, he did not consider that the idea of G-d is meaningless, rather it belongs to the realm of the mystical and must be shown. How it is shown, we are not told.11 If it is correct to say that Wittgenstein takes a third-person view of language, then his position would have the merit of showing that the approach to the problem of G-d, even when rational, is essentially personal.
The subsequent history of English philosophy has largely been a matter of interpreting, misinterpreting, and developing the doctrine of the Tractatus.12
Within the space of a few years after 1919 Wittgenstein came to reject the view that language is essentially used for one purpose, the stating of facts, and that sentences essentially get their meaning in one way, namely through picturing, or that language ever has the clear and firm structure of the formulæ in a logical calculus.13 Russell's theory of types, and his distinction of different levels in inquiry and in meaningful discourse, Ryle tells us, set Wittgenstein free from his self-imposed confinement, and allowed him to make philosophically meaningful statements. For the later Wittgenstein Philosophy is Semantics, in the sense that its task liies in linguistic clarification, in the determination of the possible significance and co-significance of words. And, in contrast with his earlier position, the significance or meaninglessness of an expression is not tested by the method of seeing if it will fit into one of the slots in a linguistic stencil of possible atomic patterns, but by what can be called a process of linguistic tea-tasting. Wittgenstein, to vary the metaphor, discovers the exact shade of colour of an expression by successively matching it against various other expressions of known hue.14
The posthumous Philosophical Investigations (1953) is a revision or correction of the Tractatus which, while standing by its essential doctrine, develops it, and translates its ideas into a new key, giving them a new context and applying them in a different way.15 As Ryle puts it, Wittgenstein now abandons entirely the picture of language as the assembling of molecules out of homogeneous linguistic atoms. He likens the way we use language to the way we play a game, and linguistic rules to the rules of a game. In the game of chess the six pieces operate in different ways, and the game of chess cannot be played unless all six sorts of pieces are used in the ways proper to them. So in language: words of different types fulfil different functions, and can only operate at all by co-operating in living language, the various types of expressions working together to weave the complex pattern of our thoughts. Don't ask for the meaning of a world, Wittgenstein would say, I can't tell you; but ask me how it is used, and I may be able to show you. Colours are matched against colours, words against words; the latter process is, in Wittgenstein's view, philsophical elucidation.16 It is, then, misleading to ask what words mean, as though there were always an object to which one could point which was the meaning; we must ask rather how words are used, and naming or referring or standing-for is then seen to be only one of the ways in which words can be used. How many kinds of sentences are there? Countless kinds, and why need we suppose that some one essential use lies concealed beneath the endless diversity of language? Language is not as once it was represented. Many words cannot, for instance, be thought of as names of anything. Besides, what is giving a name? There are many different ways in which it could be understood. It is also a mistake to think that we first think or understand, and then afterwards, so to speak, express our thoughts by appropriate linguistic behaviour. Wittgenstein spends a great deal of his time combatting this separatist theory of meaning. Using a language is not only among the most ordinary things that we do; it is also in countless ways actually involved in many other things that we do, so that it without them is unintelligible, and they without it.17
The transition of Wittgenstein from philosophizing in terms of formal logic to philosophizing in terms of informal logic made it clear to Ryle that a good means of de-mythologizing logic was the study of ordinary language.18 But Ryle does not subscribe to Wittgenstein's apparent, though problematic, linguistic behaviourism, as will be shown later. Wittgenstein seems to say that metaphysics is senseless, but Ryle only says that the metaphysical mode of expression generates confused thinking, and he adds that such confusion is a healthy sign of mental growth.19 He also differs from Wittgenstein in thinking that some philosophical propositions can be true or false.20
An obvious difficulty in Wittgenstein's position is that "intention" and dispositions in general do not seem to involve actual behaviour. Ths objection mentioned by Charlesworth21 is an application of the more general one that a first-person world cannot be satisfactorily dealt with in a third-person language. Once this is seen one will be suspicious of the answer to the particular difficulty: a man can only be said to have the "intention" of playing chess if he really acts in such a way as to regard playing chess as a fulfilment of his intention. One could also raise Charlesworth's further objection that such a solution involves the admission that there can be no purely contemporaneous descriptions of intentions or other dispositions. But for Wittgenstein the meaning is the use.22 In Ayer's opinion Ryle's attempt to deal with such matters is more satisfactory than that of Wittgenstein.23 Ryle, as we shall see, rejects linguistic behaviourism in favour of what, not without danger of misunderstanding, may be called logical behaviourism.
Against Wittgenstein's claim that there are countless kinds of sentences, new language-games coming into being as others become obsolete, Charlesworth says it must be admitted that assertions have some kind of primacy, and that naming or referring has some kind of primacy - a point we will consider in its place. He adds that if difference of context by itself determines difference of use, a word will change its meaning every time it is employed, and if the notion of use is to be saved from such absurdity we must have criteria to determine what is to count as a use. If we have criteria, then there will no longer be countless different kinds of use, and it will be false to say that we can only investigate particular ones and not use as such.24
Wittgenstein teaches that the use of an expression is determined by its function in ordinary or everyday language, not in the sense that our actual usage is a criterion, but that we do know how to use language significantly without needing to have any philosophical justification or criterion of significance or sense to help us. And certainly such know-how exists. But what precisely is it in these contexts which makes the use of a word or expression appropriate? He does not tell us.25
What he does say is that philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language. The verbal or grammatical forms of our language are incomparably less various than are the actual uses of words. There are immense divergences of use, but it is not clear what these divergences are, and grammatical resemblance leads us to think that there are other resemblances, and even prevents us from noticing that there are not. Language, then, often conceals differences, and sometimes, too, falsely suggests resemblances, between the concepts that we employ; and hence, though in practice we fairly seldom misuse our concepts, in philosophy we are inveterately liable to misdescribe their uses, and so to fall into conceptual entanglement. Connected with this is our liability to be swayed, or even enslave, by what Wittgenstein calls "pictures," models, or standard cases - such as a fixed notion of proof.26
If controversy is, in Richards' phrase, the exploitation of a systematic set of misunderstandings for war-like purposes, and if sound philosophy is, as Wittgenstein claims, a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language, then the actual use of words must be identified and described. Misunderstanding and its remedies must be studied. This Philosophical Therapy takes different forms: showing that a given question is asked outside a particular language game and is therefore senseless, since it has no real use: constructing ideal languages in order to suggest illuminating comparisons; substituting one form of expression for another; showing that a question is concerned with the rules of a particular language-game or an element which functions as a paradigm and not with an element within the game. Certain questions are like asking the length of the standard-meter in Paris. Questions like "Does a man think and will?" are of this type, according to Wittgenstein, though they seem to be a special kind of empirical question. He has been interpreted as adopting a position of radical behaviourism: thinking and willing viewed as something behind our actual behaviour being just a conception suggested by the grammar of a particular language game.27 But this interpretation is not universally accepted.
Our liability to be led into confusion by means of language, says Warnock, is certainly one instance of our general liability to be misled, but there is no case for representing this source of confusion as not only pre-eminent but actually unique. In so far as Wittgenstein does this, he is surely mistaken. Not all philosophical problems are of this type. There are other ways in which a theorist may come to be damagingly saddled with a preconceived idea. It is a consequence of the limitations of our intelligence. And while philosophical therapy is undoubtledly part of the office of philosophy, it is not the whole of philosophy. Wittgenstein's conception of philosophy as a pure therapy cannot be justified. It is based on certain assumptions about language games which he claims implicitly are not senseless. By this implicit claim he is compelled to admit the possibility of a properly philosophical inquiry into meaning, and cannot maintain that all philosophical propositions are senseless.28 The careful description of the workings of language is, in Warnock's view, philosophically important. It can seem trivial, because it dissolves problems instead of solving them - but that the problems existed was never a trivial matter, just as the mental sickness cured by psychoanalysis is not trivial.29 A philosophical problem can have the form "I don't know my way about." This sort of problem arises typically in cases where certainly it is not ignorance that defeats us. We see all the pieces of the puzzle, but not how they fit together to form a picture. Successful treatment leaves me still in the same place, but now I do know my way about. And that is a great gain. It is also true, as Wisdom says and as Wittgenstein seems not to have noticed, that philosophical paradoxes can on occasion be the product not of linguistic confusion, but of linguistic penetration - the philosopher who propounds a paradox of this sort has sometimes noticed something which is apt to be overlooked.30 Charlesworth's conclusion is that Wittgenstein is important, but that his view of philosophical description is incomplete, and his disparagement of philosophical explanation unjustified.31
Wittgenstein seems to have sought a third-person and scientific philosophy ruled in its genesis and in its dialectic by the normative principle of non-contradiction. But instead of abandoning ordinary language in favour of an as yet unknown ideal language, as Russell seems to have done, he modified his position to meet the requirements of language. Contradiction is still excluded, but only logical contradiction: verbal confusion and contradiction is accepted and accounted for by the doctrine of language games. The danger is, of course, that real contradictions will be explained away as mere linguistic appearances, instead of being squarely faced. Nor is it easy to believe that language is just a game.
Notes:
1. 1959, Charlesworth, 76.
2. 1957, Passmore, 354.
3. 1959, Charlesworth, 77-78.
4. Logic and Professor Anderson, 150-51; Thinking and Language, 81; Ludwig Wittgenstein, 1; The Theory of Meaning, 254.
5. 1959, Charlesworth, 83-85.
6. 1953, Miles, 65 note 1: "According to Lord Russell (Mind, July 1951), Wittgenstein once held that all existential propositions were meaningless. Possibly Wittgenstein was thinking along the same lines as Berkeley and Ryle." But cfr Ryle's own denial in his already quoted personal communication above.
7. 1959, Charlesworth, 86-87.
8. Ibid., 94-99.
9. Ibid., 88-89.
10. 1958, Warnock, 64-66.
11. 1959, Charlesworth, 100-01.
12. Ibid., 103.
13. 1958, Warnock, 67.
14. review of Communication, 368; Logic and Professor Anderson, 151; Ludwig Wittgenstein, 79; The Theory of Meaning, 255. 262-63.
15. 1959, Charlesworth, 104.
16. The Theory of Meaning, 255-56; Ph. 71.
17. 1959, Charlesworth, 105. 108. 111; 1958, Warnock, 68-72.
18. 1955, Rossi-Landi, xxvii.
19. Ph. 29: "Quant aux rassemblances ou aux divergences qui peuvent exister entre le Ryle dernière manière et Wittgenstein, je crois que la différence essentielle est celle-ci: je sors d'un milieu médical, où j'ai pris l'habitude de distinguer très nettement les maladies qui vous mettent mal en point, et les autres états de santé, qui n'ont pas sur vous le même effet. Wittgenstein parle comme si les problèmes philosophiques étaient les symptômes d'un mal dont il faut guérir ses patients. Je considère, pour ma part, que c'est la marque d'une stupidité insigne, que de n'éprouver devant ces problèmes aucun embarras. En conséquence, j'emploie un langage, disons, moins clinique que celui de Wittgenstein, et je suis moins porté que lui à pratiquer la chirurgie. Et en partie pour cette raison, en partie aussi pour d'autres raisons, je n'éprouve aucune componction à l'idée de dire que certaines des choses que disent les philosophes sont vraies, et que certaines autres sont fausses."
20. Ph. 29: "Wittgenstein répugne à employer des mots comme 'vrai' ou 'faux' parce qu'il veut éviter d'effacer la digne de démarcation qui existe entre la philosophie et les sciences, come on avait trop tendance à le faire autrefois. Pour des raisons qui lui sont propres, Il estime que le mot 'vrai' revient ou devrait de droit revenir à la science. Je ne vois, pour ma part, aucune raison valable pour en réserver l'emploi à la science. Je crois que dire qu'une proposition philosophique est vraie, et dire qu'une proposition scientifique est vraie, ne veut pas dire qu'il s'agit de deux propositions du même ordre. Et je ne vois aucune raison de ne pas utiliser le mot 'vrai' - et plus souvent le mot 'faux' - dans les deux cas." This passage may usefully be borne in mind when reading such statements as: 1955, Gianquinto, 376-77: "Ryle sviluppa le tesi delle Philosophische Untersuchungen di Wittgenstein con una richezza culturale assai più notevole." 1958, Warnock, 94: "Though The Concept of Mind preceded by four years the publication of the Philosophical Investigations, its general aim is entirely in harmony with Wittgenstein's ideas."
21. 1959, Charlesworth, 109.
22. Ibid., 109-110.
23. 1958, Ayer, 118: "Ryle montre, d'une manière plus effective même que Wittgenstein, que nous faisions sérieusement fausse route en supposant que ce qui passe pour des descriptions de la vie mentale se réfère toujours à des processus internes."
24. 1959, Charlesworth, 111-12.
25. Ibid., 112-14.
26. 1958, Warnock, 81-85. Cfr Richards I. A., The Philosophy of Rhetoric, Oxford University Press, New York, 1936, pp. ix-138: p.3 - "Rhetoric, I shall urge, should be a study of misunderstanding and its remedies." p. 11 - "The stability of the meaning of a word comes from the constancy of the contexts which give it its meaning. Stability in a word's meaning is not something to be assumed, but always something to be explained." p. 39 - "A controversy is normally an exploitation of a systematic set of misunderstandings for war-like purposes." pp. 90-91 - "I have just been echoing Shelley's observation that 'Language is vitally metaphorical; that is, it marks the before unapprehended relations of things and perpetuates their apprehension, until words, which represent them, become, through time, signs for portions or classes of thought instead of pictures of integral thoughts: and then, if no new poets should arise to create afresh the associations which have been thus disorganised, language will be dead to all the nobler purposes of human intercourse'." p. 92 - 2In philosophy, above all, we can take no step safely without an unrelaxing awareness of the metaphors we, and our audience, may be employing; and though we may pretend to eschew them, we can attempt to do so only by detecting them. And this is the more true, the more severe and abstract the philosophy is. As it grows more abstract, we think increasingly by means of metaphors that we profess not to be relying on. The metaphors we are avoiding steer our thought as much as those we accept. So it must be with any utterance for which it is less easy to know what we are saying than what we are not saying. And in philosophy, of which this is almost a definition, I would hold with Bradley that our pretence to do without metaphor is never more than a bluff waiting to be called."
27. 1959, Charlesworth, 115-17.
28. Ibid., 124-25; 1958, Warnock, 109-10. 114-15.
29. 1958, Warnock, 88.
30. Ibid., 88-91. 80.
31. 1959, Charlesworth, 124-25.
Wisdom is, perhaps, the most outstanding figure in Wittgenstein's entourage. His position stems apparently from the consideration that if metaphysical arguments are about facts, one would be hard put to it to see why they are never settled, and if they are merely verbal disputes then surely they would not keep recurring. One plausible way of regarding such arguments is to see the various parties to the dispute as making conflicting linguistic proposals. The plausibility of such a view is, however, reduced by the consideration that the same questins and disagreements seem to arise again over the value of the various linguistic proposals.1
Wisdom would say that in philosophy it isn't a matter of making sure that one has got hold of the right theory, but of making sure that one has got hold of them all. Like psychoanalysis philosophy is not a matter of selecting from our inclinations some which are right, but of bringing them all to light. In this sense every philosophical question when it is fully asked, answers itself. The difficulty is that whereas there is a generally accepted norm of mental sanity, there is no such norm of philosophical sanity. So how decise philosophical questions?2
It may be that philosophical conclusions are not just clarified by exposing the different senses of the expressions concerned, but by showing up, too, the features which incline one to describe the situation in one way, and the features which incline one to describe it in another - to set out the various linguistic proposals not by themselves but accompanied by their purposes, supporting reasons, and especially related facts. But how does Wisdom know that no absolute answer can be given one way or the other? Why can we only know certain facts by means of philosophical paradoxes? to say that therapeutic analysis is justified by its results in dissolving many hitherto unresolved philosophical puzzles is really to beg the question.3
As Ryle puts it, in his review of Other Minds,4 Wisdom is effective as an anti-scholastic demonstrating the inefficacy of certain dichotomous divisions, and the tenets of the Solipsist, the Sceptic, the Realist, etc. But he neither does much original philosophizing of his own, nor does he pay much attention to actual historical exponents of Solipsism, Scepticism, Realism, etc. He pricks consciences, rather than forms them.
Gellner has suggested a sort of musical scale of eight modulations of Linguistic Philosophy, the first very much in sympathetic vibration with the eighth. One might suspect Wisdom of being found of the first, second, and eighth notes, i.e., of being interestd in words and in language for their own sake, and of denying the existence of non-linguistic philosophical problems.5 Obviously it is rather doubtful whether such a suspicion would be entirely justified.
Notes:
1. 1959, Charlesworth, 151. 153-55.
2. Ibid., 157-58.
3. Ibid., 159.
4. The Listener, Dec. 4th 1952.
5. 1959, Gellner, 166. Here is his philosophical scale:
After the death of Wittgenstein the centre of philosophical interest in England moved from Cambridge to Oxford, where among the main figures one may name John Austin and Gilbert Ryle. Other Oxford philosophers are H. L. A. Hart, P. F. Strawson, S. Hampshire, S. E. Toulmin, R. M. Hare, P. Nowell-Smith and I. Berlin. Most of these emphasize the important of Ordinary Language, but differ among themselves about its status.1
Austin believes that there is much to be learned from language and about language that is worth learning, whether or not we begin our researches in the grip of antecedent confusion. The analytic technique is seen no longer as a philosophical end-all, but rather as a begin-all. The positivistic or reductionist tendency in Analysis is almost wholly eliminated, and analysis is regarded no longer as the whole of philosophy, but as an instrument of philosophy. Without its being denied that there has been a revolution in philosophy, there is a greater stress on tradition. It is also felt that there is a great deal to be learned from the immensely various everyday idioms that we find in the vocabulary of sense-perception, but rather less from artificial philosophical jargon.2 Austin, for instance, says the word "what" in "I know what he is feeling" is an interrogative conjunction, and cannot rightly be replaced by the relative conjunction "that which"; we do not know his feelings themselves. 3 The theory that expressions can only have meaning in a context brings into relief Austin's categroy of performatory utterances. He rejects the positivist true-or-fale or meaningless dichotomy, and denies the existence of analytic statements. Charlesworth thinks there is a great deal to be said for this theory of meaning, but performatory utterances must in some way be based upon what is the case, must signify some reality. I am not sure that I like the word "signify", but would agree that there cannot be a pure performatory utterance, and that we cannot conclude that the meaning of a word is strictly relative to the particular contexts in which it is used - if that were so there would be no common words. If one accepts the Idiosyncracy Platitude that every expression has its own peculiar logic, and supposes that the prime task of philosophy is the elucidation of expressions such as they are, it becomes impossible to show that any proposition at all is meaningless.4 If language is just a game, then it may be possible to reduce linguistic knowledge-that to linguistic know-how. But as language users we want to know not only how to play the game, but also how to decide the score, and whether or not the game is worthwhile.
The Analysts suppose that ordinary language is ipso facto meaningful in itself, and that it can be examined scientifically, impersonally, objectively, in its context to be sure, but in a third-person way. Thus Professor Ryle tells us that "voluntary" and "involuntary" in their ordinary use are applied only to actions which ought not to be done. Professor Austin, on the other hand, states that we may join the arm or make a gift voluntarily, we may hiccough or make a small gesture involuntarily.5 But while Ryle is making a generalization that allows of lawful exceptions, Austin is producing statements as individual instances of what is said in a language.6 This illustrates a difference between them. The Analysts admit that Ordinary language has its drawbacks, but think that it must be accepted in philosophy, since the ideal language is not realizable. Philosophizing is a complicated and long drawn out enterprise, but meanwhile we have common-sense beliefs to live by, and perhaps to justify our philosophical reliance on ordinary language. The nature of belief, and its relation as well as that of perception to knowledge is obscure, and is not much illuminated by linguistic method. If words are symbols, it would not seem to follow that knowledge of such symbols is knowledge of the symbolized. The study of words may be interesting, may be necessary for their correct use, but has it any non-linguistic value? This would appear a point to be considered. Of course for the Oxford Philosophers the method of analysis is not the only method, nor necessarily the best method of doing philosophy.7
This brief examination of Linguistic Analysis appears to warrant the conclusion that the first problem facing linguistic philosophers is that of the apparent non-existence of any special subject matter, or special form object for philosophy. Hamlet told Pollonius there are more things in the world than are dreamt of in philosophy, the modern problem seems to be that there may be rather less. The second problem of Analysis seems to be that of determining the method of philosophy. Philosophy tends to be wholly critical, a pure method without doctrines of its own, but what philosophical method is is far from clear. The Oxford philosophers, at any rate, take pains to stress that Analysis may not be the only, nor even the best method, it may be only a begin-all. At all events the study of language is in itself very illuminating.8 Not all words are names. the Descriptive Fallacy must be rejected.9 Every expression has its own sort of verification. (This theory is called by Wisdom the Idiosyncracy Platitude).10 Since only in use can we find the link between subject and predicate, there are no analytic propositions.11 Since use is varied, all forms of reductionism, especially Positivist reductionist, are ruled out.12 Even propositions which are neither true nor false can be meaningful performatory utterances.13 The third problem or group of problems facing the Analysists is, of course, this: how is one to apply the new methods to the solution of the traditional and eventual less traditional problems of philosophy? This work will attempt to show how Professor Ryle faces these issues.
Notes:
1. 1959, Charlesworth, 168.
2. Ibid., 169-70; 1958, Warnock, 149-50.
3. 1957, Passmore, 449.
4. 1959, Charlesworth, 172-75. 182-84.
5. 1958, Mates, reprint pp. 66-68.
6. Cavell S., ibid., 77-81.
7. 1959, Charlesworth, 190.
8. Cfr 1955, Rossi-Landi, xxvi: "La filosofia di Oxford [viene rimproverata] di essere una filosofia che si occupa della lingua, mentre, almeno nella sua parte migliore, è una filosofia che si occupa del linguaggio." xxix: "La strada consiste nel giungere al linguaggio attraverso una lingua." In English these two sense of "language" are sometimes confused.
9. 1964, Gozzellino, 166-67: "Hanno in comune… un profondo rispetto per il linguaggio ordinario, fondato su di una dottrina del senso sostanzialmente uguale per tutti. La dottrina del senso della scuola di Oxford pone come punto di partenza una serrata critica alla teoria del senso-oggetto, detta anche 'Descriptive Fallacy'… perchè nasce dal ritenere che se alcune parole hanno senso in quanto descrivono o nominano qualche cosa, tutte le parole debbono averlo nello stesso modo."
10. 1959, Charlesworth, 171.
11. Ibid, 173.
12. Ibid, 183.
13. Gozzellino, 167.
Philosophical neutrality is said to constitute the originality of the philosophy of Analysis, but though it is not a form of the Logical Positivism of the Vienna Circle or the contemporary American movement of Logical Empiricism, Logical Positivism respresents, Charlesworth tells us, a kind of congenital temptation for the philosophy of Analysis. There is little of the Logical Positivist about Ryle,1 though he was Ayer's tutor. He has criticized the Verification Principle. He is far away from ethical nihilism. He has no pretensions to language reform. However, some, though by no means all Analysts hope that Analysis will reveal a positivist view of the world. All of them, it is true, consider Positivism to be on exactly the same level as other and more traditional philosophical positions - like them, it is the result of a certain kind of radical confusion; the anti-metaphysics of Positivism must be eliminated no less than metaphysics proper. Certainly, to have positivist hankerings is not to found Analysis upon positivist principles. All the same, intimate if unavowed and even disclaimed connexions remain between Logical Positivism and Linguistic Philosophy.2
Logical Positivism is initially a first person philosophy, i.e., one in which the position of the knower is central, at least in epistemology. It holds that language divides into reports of experience and a logically coherent scheme of classification, into the two categories of factual reports and logical classifications. And it makes this division in such a way as to exclude as meaningless all ethical, æsthetic or religious statements. The Vienna Circle, says Ryle, under the inspiration of Mach, insisted that metaphysics is not physics, nor biology, nor psychology, nor mathematics; that philosophy is not science - a thesis to which Ryle himself also subscribes.3
After Schlick's death in 1936 the Vienna Circle disbanded - Neurath, Carnap, Feigle and Frank going to American Universities, Waismann and Popper settling in England. According to Charlesworth the influence of Logical Positivism in English philosophy has been largely due to one man, A. J. Ayer, and to one book, Language, Truth and Logic, which first appeared in 1936, and which presents the main theses of the Vienna Circle in the language of Linguistic Philosophy.4 Ayer was especially influenced by Schlick and Carnap. He also claims that his ideas derive from the doctrines of Bertrand Russell and Wittgenstein, which are themselves the logical outcome of Berkeley and Hume, and for good measure he admits to having learned a great deal from Professor Moore.5
Ayer is not an Analyst, and the Analytical movement and Logical Positivism are, as Gozzellino says, quite distinct. But Wittgenstein did have a considerable influence upon the Vienna Circle in the later 1920's, and part of his early book, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, are susceptible of a Logical Positivist interpretation. Wittgenstein repudiated such an interpretation, however, and Ayer's Language, Truth and Logic has never been accepted by any of the principal Analysts. But its doctrine is commonly taken to be what the Analysts would like to say, the Weltanschauung which Analysis would accept if it were consistent with itself. Thus the influence of Logical Positivism has been to obscure the real nature of Analysis.6
The main features of the so-called Vienna Circle, from which Logical Positivism originated, were two, respect for science and mathematics, and distaste for metaphysics. Its main aim, says Warnock, was to devise some clear criterion by the use of which science and mathematics would be proved acceptable, and metaphysics by contrast would be condemned.7 It found such a criterion in the Verification Principle, Ryle's criticism of which we shall see later.
The Verification Principle states that a sentence has literal meaning if and only if the proposition it expresses is either analytic (the laws of logic and mathematics) or empirically verifiable (i.e., if any empirical observation would be relevant to the establishing of its truth or falsity).8 The alleged statements of metaphysicians, theologians and the like are condemned by the principle as meaningless. Of course one could say that all the principle really required one to do was to accept the linguistic convention of reserving the appellation "statement" for empirically verifiable or analytic (in Ayer's vocabulary synonymous with true by definition, a priori, tautologous, linguistic, verbal) utterances. While this would be to take the principle too lightly, it at least ough to have been on the other hand clear from the start that the principle did not apply to forms of words which in no way aspired to the status of statements: that not all utterances were required to pass the test of verifiability in order to be considered meaningful.9 But there are valid objections that may be made.
While Ayer pretends that the verification principle is a purely logical one, he at the same time draws the ontological conclusion that the only facts are emprical facts, and the epistemological conclusion that all our factual knowledge is reducible to sense-data. But why should this be supposed to be so?10 And if it is so, then the verification principle itself is reduced to the simple statement of a mere contingent linguistic rule.11 If it is true, Charlesworth argues, that a logically necessary proposition is really a non-necessary or contingent proposition describing a certain arbitrary linguistic usage, one will never be able to define necessity in terms of linguistic rules - since necessary propositions must concern and so be presupposed by linguistic usage in all possible languages. Thus the verification principle cannot even be stated. One really is left only with a Positivist use of the word "nonsense" according to which "nonsensical indicative sentence" means the same as "indicative sentence which expresses neither an a priori nor an empirical proposition." The relation of language to fact cannot be a topic of significant discourse.12
There were also other difficulties. If verification can occur only now or in future, how can one mean something about the past? How can two people mean the same thing? Either, Warnock observes, one must accept linguistic solipsism, or maintain that "I feel hot" can mean the same to others as it does to me only at the price of saying it refers to bodily condition and not at all to private feelings (Physicalism).13
According to Ayer ethical propositions do not have descriptive meaning but express attitudes of the speaker and so tend to call forth similar attitudes in his hearers. The presence of an ethical symbol in a proposition adds nothing to its factual content. One can never really dispute questions of value - one only tries to show the opponent that he is mistaken about his facts. But if he happens to have undergone a different process of moral conditioning from ourselves, we abandon the attempt to convince him by argument. There can be no way of determining the validity of any ethical system. Ethics, as a branch of knowledge, is nothing more than a department of psychology and sociology. To speak of there being a duty or obligation to adopt one certain attitude in preference to another, or even of any attitude as good, is senseless. No doubt Ayer is not, Charlesworth feels, a deliberate and conscious moral nihilist, but all philosophers must bear the consequences of their theories. Ayer does not provide any criterion at all for distinguishing moral attitudes from other attitudes.14
The Logical Positivists say we mistake the grammatical rules of our language for logical necessities. Linguistic legislation or reformation is, they think, the main task of philosophy, and this not only with regard to ethical language, or everyday language, but especially through the criticism and clarification of the concepts of science (a point which serves to distinguish Positivism from Analysis).15 One big drawback with their method of clarification is that it is too negative: to say, for instance, that a metaphysical assertion is not a meaningful empirical statement prompts the further question, then what is it? But it does not answer this question. Linguistic equations are not enough, says Warnock, non-verbal context must also be fully explored.16 And we can add that in that context the subjective condition and intention of the language-user cannot be safely neglected.
As Gozzellino points out, for the Positivists all experience is sense experience. Experience is passive in the sense that its occurrence is totally dependent on the activity of the object experienced. And experience is physical in the sense that it is constituted by a special relationship of sense-contents in space and time without any experiencing subject distinct from such experiences, and without any distinct efficient cause of such sense-contents.17 The verification principle can thus be expressed: Nothing has a meaning unless it can be understood by someone with a purely scientific outlook.18 This seems to be the nub of Logical Positivism.
Notes:
1. 1955, Rossi-Landi, xxii note 1 - "Nella stessa opera di Ryle si rintraccia almeno un residuo neo-positivistico."
2. 1959, Charlesworth, 5-6. 127. Cfr 1959, Gellner, 86: "Intimate if unavowed and disclaimed connections remain between Logical Positivism and Linguistic Philosophy… Linguistic Philosophy absolutely requires and presupposes Positivism, for without it as a tacit premiss, there is nothing to exclude any metaphysical interpretation of the usages that are to be found, and allegedly 'taken as they are,' in the world.… It is parasitic on the Positivism which it also destroys. Thus Logical Positivism is invoked as a tacit premiss when necessary. And, of course, it is also in all seeming sincerity disavowed when that is convenient, in virtue of being a theory of knowledge, and hence ex officio 'philosophical,' i.e., paradoxical, over general, etc., etc.
3. Ludwig Wittgenstein, 1-3.
4. 1959, Charlesworth, 128. The same author says (p. 149): "The logical positivist episode appears as a kind of crisis which the movement of Analysis had to go through in order to become aware of its own true nature." This is not exact; Ayer does not belong to the Analytical movement. Cfr Gozzellino, 156: "Le convergenze di Ayer con gli analisti toccano particolari più che la sostanza della dottrina.… Il nome di Alfred Jules Ayer non deve essere inserito tra quelli della filosofia analitica inglese, sia pure distinguendo col Copleston un'ala sinistra ed un'ala destra, perchè un simile inserimento confonde due orientamenti… del tutto distinti o almeno fa pensare the l'evoluzione del pensiero di Ayer sia stata sostanziale."
5. 1959, Charlesworth, 128-29.
6. Ibid., 129. 77-78.
7. 1958, Warnock, 44.
8. 1959, Charlesworth, 131.
9. Ibid., 135; 1958, Warnock, 45-47.
10. 1959, Charlesworth, 145-46. Cfr 1958, Warnock, 48: "Why, it might be asked, should it be supposed that these experiences must be sense-experiences?"
11. 1959, Charlesworth, 146.
12. Ibid., 134-35.
13. 1958, Warnock, 49.
14. 1959, Charlesworth, 139-44.
15. 1958, Warnock, 57.
16. Ibid., 59. 121.
17. Gozzellino, 11: "Chiameremo 'fisicismo' la teoria dell'esperienza, secondo cui l'esperienza è un rapporto originale, ma non metaspaziale, di contenuti sensoriali senza un soggetto e senza una attività efficiente. Chiameremo inoltre 'passività dell'esperienza' la dipendenza dell'esperienza dall'oggetto, una dipendenza che fa sì che essa si costituisca in forza dell'intervento dell'oggetto. In questo modo potremmo riassumere quanto è stato scritto sull'analisi della sensazione dicendo che essa conclude precisamente nel fisicismo e nell'affermazione della passività dell'esperienza."
18. Ibid., 26: "Nulla ha senso se non ciò che può essere inteso dalla mentalità scientifica."
Gilbert Ryle is best known as the author of The Concept of Mind. This important book1 is the first large-scale application of the method of analytical philosophy to a major philosophical issue.2 And there is no better way of coming to grips with Analysis in practice than that of reading it.3 Though less important, Ryle's second book, Dilemnas, also provides a handy introduction to linguistic philosophy,4 and exemplifies the new approach to old problems.5
Professor Ryle has faced all three of the main problems confronting Analysts. In his pre-war publications he developed the view that philosophy has no specific first-order object of its own to investigate. His Inaugural Lecture of 1945, Philosophical Arguments, is an important statement of his views as to the method of philosophy. The Concept of Mind and Dilemnas exemplify Ryle's application of his methods to traditional problems of philosophy.
Under the influence of Moore's campaign against ideas' being entities, and of Russell's discovery, later generalized by Wittgenstein, that some expressions are neither true nor false but meaningless, the early Ryle made use of the new linguistic techniques to argue for the rejection of the view that ideas, judgments and volitions are Third Realm entities, and that philososophical inquiry has these as its proper formal object. Like Wittgenstein, he agreed that existence-propositions are meaningless.6
Like Ramsey, he accepted Russell's theory of descriptions as the model for philosophy. Logical form differs from grammatical form and ordinary syntax is, in philosophy, the cause of much confusion. Systematically Misleading Expressions (1932) belongs to this first Wittgenstein period. Not all words are names. In opposition to Mooe, Ryle argues that the part does not come before the whole, nor the concept before the proposition. Concepts are abbreviated expressions for classes of propositions sharing some common logical power. To classify such concepts Ryle attempted to correct Russell's theory of types, suggesting that the device of trying to fit two expressions into the same sentence-frame was a negative rather than a positive criterion. Finally, under the influence of the later Wittgenstein, Philosophical Arguments (1945) provides a clear statement of Ryle's ideas on the nature and method of philosophy, stressing informal rather than formal logic. Ordinary language philosophy thus comes into its own. Wittgenstein's logical approach to philosophy, his insistence on clarification by appeal to ordinary use, his teaching that thought does not proceed but accompanies language, and his views on dispositions, all have their counterpart in Ryle's writings, though Ryle does not exclude truth from philosophy.
The recent work of Ryle is largely concerned with the philosophical treatment of special problems such as feelings, pleasure, thinking, inference,7 imagination and the like. But although the topics dealt with are particular ones, it is explicitly stated that a full answer requires the coordination of all one's findings in the unity of a single viewpoint. The Concept of Mind by its title invites one to suppose that here at least such a unified viewpoint is in large measure achieved. But the book is best seen as a collection of studies on various mental topics: knowing, imagination, willing, resentment, sensations, etc., loosely linked together by the rejection of the Cartesian myth.8
Notes:
1. 1951, Copleston, 332: "No British philosopher, whatever his 'colour', can afford to neglect it."
2. 1951, Sibley, 259. 278: "Here, for the first time is a book in which the method [of linguistic analysis] is applied on a large scale and with great detail and subtlety to a major philosophical problem… It is a safe claim that future attempts to construct an adequate theory of the mind will need to reckon seriously with this book and draw upon it heavily." 1956, Specht, 297: "Ist Ryles Buch die erste bedeutende un repräesentative Veröffentlichung der Nachkriegsphilosophie in Oxford." 1951, Hofstadter, 257: "Professor Gilbert Ryle's The Concept of Mind is the most brilliant attack on the mentalism in mind-body dualism that has appeared in a long time."
3. 1951a, Copleston, 404: "Quem desejar exemplificação precisa e nìtidamente redigida do género de análise linguística, que se concentra na 'lingagem ordinária,' o melhor que pode fazer é ler o trabalho do Professor Ryle." 1951b, Copleston, 332: "I know of not other work which gives so able and careful and acute an exposition and defence of the sort of view he advances."
4. 1956, Merland, 70: "The book could very well be used as the basis for an advanced, seminary-like introduction to philosophy."
5. 1954, Abbagnano, 439: "Dilemnas segna una nuova tappa nel recupero della problematica filosofica tradizionale da parte dell'odierna filosofia analitica inglese."
6. As already noted, this is not entirely true of him.
7. According to 1962, Blanshard, 301, Ryle's view of the rules of inference derives from Wittgenstein and the Positivists.
8. Ph 75: "Quoiqu'intitulé The Concept of Mind c'est en réalité l'examen d'une multitude de concepts mentaux spécifiques, tels que connaître, apprendre, découvrir, imaginer, faire semblant… et ainsi de suite. On pourrait décrire le livre comme un essaid soutenu de phénoménologie."
Ryle and the Phenomenological Movement (F. Brentano - Meinong - Husserl - Ingarden - Ryle)
Charlesworth laments what he calls "the almost complete lack of rapprochement between English and Continental philosophy," and thinks that "the Analysts tend to look upon the movement of phenomenology as a kind of philosophical joke," and that the phenomenologists "as far as they look upon the analysts at all… return the compliment."1 On the other hand, Van Breda says that many phenomenologists, following in the steps of Husserl, attempt analyses of the same kind as those undertaken at Oxford.2 Merleau-Ponty has expressed the view that Ryle is close to phenomenology.3 In this connection Shalom writes: "In a sense, one can perhaps say that Professor Ryle's analyses are phenomenological analyses, but one can only say this in a broad and inexact sense… this may explain Ryle's refusal, one may add, to recognize any convergence between English philosophical analysis and Phenomenology. It seems to me that the most interesting aspect of Merleau-Ponty's intervention was his assertion of such a convergence. To this Ryle replied that he very much hoped that at least there was no convergence of analysis towards phenomenology… In phenomenology, the place of descriptions is a certain philosophical doctrine. Now, from the point of view of English philosophy, all philosophical doctrine… must first be subjected to the process of analysis of the terms starting from living language."4 Phenomenology, on this view, is more ready to commit itself doctrinally than is Analysis. Phenomenology is not opposed to Analysis, apparently, but Analysis may be opposed to Phenomenology, and Ryle seems opposed to it.5
But though The Concept of Mind may be viewed as opposed to Phenomenology, notwithstanding the Phenomenologists' not being oppose to The Concept of Mind, any opposition there may be cannot but be conscious opposition. For some of Ryle's earliest philosophical writings were devoted to the examination of Phenomenology.6 It will be useful, then, to look at Phenomenology as Ryle sees it.
According to Ryle, "the major trends of philosophy of the past hundred years in both the English and the German speaking worlds have derived directly or indirectly from recoil against the British school of thought which began with Locke and culminated in John Stuart Mill. Subsequent theories of knowledge, perception, deduction, induction, probability, mathematics and semantics (not to speak of ethics, politics and political economy) can nearly all be traced back to revolts against the conclusions and the premisses of this school." Thus, "Mill's System of Logic (1843) stimulated (chiefly as an emetic) a galaxy of original thinkers into reconsideration of the principles of Logic, Epistemology and Psychology. The importation into England of the philosophies of Kant, Hegel, Lotze and Herbard had for its main motive not love of the Teutonic but nausea for Associationism. Jevons, Pearson and Venn were similarly moved to relay the foundations of the theory of scientific method. They with Caird, Green, Bradley, Cook Wilson, Grote, Sidgwick, Moore and Russell, were disunitedly united in the task of refuting dogmas of the Church of Hume." And, which makes to our present purpose, "in Austria Franz Brentano trained his whole school of philosophical psychologists upon the critical study of Locke, Berkeley, Hume, the Mills, Bain and Spencer."7 But before discussing Brentano, it will be convenient to mention Bolzano.
Bolzano, Frege and Russell, Ryle tells us, refused to see the laws of Logic as mere laws of Association, refused to subordinate mathematical and logical demonstration to the evidence of introspection, refused to consider truth as just a bit of human behaviour.8 Logic and Mathematics are neither inductive nor mental. Logic is not a branch of mental chemistry, nor ideas playthings of the laws of Association.9 Ideas exist in themselves and are what we name when we use, at any rate, certain of our words.10 Bolzano, as later Frege and Meinong, used what Ehrlich has called the Operation with Identity: the same judgment can be made by several persons, by one person several times, and again, the same proposition can be first surmised, then believed, then known. Our psychic acts are thus shown to be temporal visitors to eternal meanings.11 To save mathematics from the combined empiricism and psychologism of Stuart Mill's disciples, it was decided that Plato was right after all. There is the Third Realm and in it all sorts of abstract and fictional and even contradictory mental entitites enjoy objective existence.12
F. BRENTANO
Brentano also "convinced that the physiological and associationist psychologies were radically false… had to examine and reject their presuppositions… that mental life is a mere avalanche of atomic 'ideas' and that these 'ideas' are in no sense of anything."13 He maintained, too, that not all the realities which manifest themselves in consciousness are ideas. Judging and feeling are psychic phenomena which presuppose but cannot be reduced to ideas. Though ideas exist, a judgment is not formed by joining ideas together. A judgment is made by adding to a single though complex idea the element of affirmation or negation, acceptance, that is, or rejection. Judgment is an ultimate and irreducible psychic fact. Many of the nominatives that occur in sentences are not semantic but synsemantic, i.e., syncategorematic. Brentano believed that simple existence-propositions, such as "Mary Smith exists," contain one term only; that most subject-predicate propositions like, e.g., "Mary Smith is angry," are really conjunctions of existence-propositions with attributive propositions; and that universal affirmative propositions such as "all men are mortal" are really concealed negative-existential-propositions of the form "there is no immortal man."14
Feelings of likind and disliking, i.e., wanting and aversion, are likewise irreducible to, though rooted in ideas. Ideas, judgments and feelings are always of something; they necessarily have an immanent object or content; an idea is an idea of; a judgment is a judgment of; a feeling is a feeling of. Ryle, partly under the influence of Cook Wilson, was very suspicious of this Phenomenologist theory that consciousness is cenral in epistemology, and that all consciousness is consciousness of. While approving of Phenomenology as a method, he has rejected the doctrine of ideas, judgments and volitions as some sort of Third Realm entities, just as he rejects Locke's doctrine of ideas being psychological entities. But, as Ryle points out himself, when Brentano calls the immanent content of a psychic act its intentional object, and says that all acts intend their objects, and that these objects do exist, he takes himself to be clarifying the meaning of the words "idea," "judgment" and "feeling" - he does not regard himself as inventing something new.
It is this clarification of words that Ryle approves of in Phenomenology, not its existential commitment. Brentano says that the intentional object of an act of consciousness is not an extramental reality, but is something immanent in the consciousness of which it is the content. So while our knowledge of things outside us is always precarious and questionable, being based on knowledge of ideas whose contents we have no way of comparing with the real objects we assume them to represent, the judgments which we make about what is in our own consciousness are self-validatin. Here there is identity between knower and the known. Inner perception gives us, as nothing else can, a source of self-evident, affirmative, existential judgments about our own psychic phenomena.15
Ryle also mentions how Brentano distinguished factual and conceptual inquiries. It is one thing to gather together items of information, it is another to understand what they mean. Sometimes it is possible out of mental acumen alone to make self-evident negative judgments, say that no circles are triangular, but all positive knowledge is or rests on inner perception. Brentano considers descriptive psychology, the science of the objects of inner perception, superior to and essential for all other sciences. Without its guiding light to analyse and describe the general types of psychic phenomena, i.e., the general modes of intentionality which the particular intentional acts all severally exemplify, genetic psychology can get nowhere. And since by genetic psychology Brentano understands inductive, experimental, statistical, anthropological, evolutionary and pathological or physiological psychology, his claims for descriptive psychology are quite general. The conclusions of genetic psychology are at best only probable generalizations; descriptive psychology attains certitude. How? By the intuitive, direct inspection of individual instances of psychic phenomena in which the universal type structure of ideas, judgments and feelings can be infallibly read.16
MEINONG.
Ryle also examines the theory of ideas in a pupil of Brentano, Meinong. Meinong agreed with Locke that there are ideas, and with Brentano that judgments and feelings cannot be reduced to them. But the doctrine of immanent contents he dismissed as a myth, denying that what an act is of is essentially contained in or adjoined to the act. Contents are not internal parts of mental functioning, since, if they were, introspection would bring them to light. Objectives, as Meinong calls them, are not sensations nor echoes of sensations. This does not mean that there is any need to relapse into a Humean dream-world. For while only if there is such a thing as a world of objective meanings is there anything for Logic to be about, it can be proved that there are objective meanings. Meinong, assuming that "meaning" is somehow univocal, takes it that "one" and "existence" signify attributes, and hypostatise not only abstract nouns, but general nouns, all substantival verb expressions, including descriptive phrases, sentences and optatives. Like Frege he affirms the reality of non-entities and contradictions, maintaining that there must be square circles for us to be able to denty existence of them. In much the same way as the younger Russell, says Ryle, Meinong took to be names of genuine objects all expressions which could be grammatical subjects of verbs. For him, as at first for Frege, all names were proper names, with the result that his Gegenstandtheorie out-Platonized Plato.17
HUSSERL
Turning to Husserl, another pupil of Brentano, Ryle tells us that he was initially interested in the special field of arithmetical ideas, and was thence led on to consider the general problem of the nature, status and origin of ideas. For Husserl, then, the philosophy of mind was the fundamental part of philosophy.18 Taking a cue from Brentano, he argued vigorously that Logic is independent of and prior to Psychology. Acts of thinking have logical meanings as their intentional objects. As Ryle points out, "meaning" is a dangerous word. In one sense, thinking is sometimes meaning. In another sense, my meaning is what I am thinking, not the fact of my thinking it. Words, sentences, mathematical symbols and pictures also have, or can have, a meaning. And it does not seem absurd to ask what is the meaning of meaning. Husserl's Phenomenological study of psychic acts with logical meanings, i.e., of acts of thinking, was not meant to be an inductive or deductive inquiry. Husserl criticized Spinoza's attempt to construct a geometrical philosophy and condemned any metaphysical system-building or deductive approach. Philoosophy for Husserl moved forward by essential or exemplary intuition. It is an observational science, not of things in space and time, but of objects of a higher order. Universals or essences as well as propositions can be perceived by eidetic intuition on the occasion of the accompanying ordinary perception of any real or imaginary ordinary particular exemplifying the universal in question. The nature of these higher-order objects, which are correlates of our acts of conceiving and judging, is not very clearly stated in Husserl's writings, and he does not seem to have reached a settled opinion in the matter. At the same time, it is at least clear that all consciousness is consciousness of something or other. It is also a fact that not all consciousness is of the same type. Regret differs from and presupposes remembrance. Remembrance does not presuppose regret. Both regret and remembrance and all other intendings suppose an Ego or an intending Subject. All meanings and intentions are the gifts of the conscious Ego which constitutes them by meaning and intending them. All that exists is either a meaning or intention of a subject, or is itself a pure subject of experience. We and all that we have experience of are so many experiences or intentions or meanings of some Transcendental Ego. Hence, another name for Phenomenology is Descriptive Transcendental Egology.19
INGARDEN
Ryle's first publication was a review of Ingarden's Essentiale Fragen. Ryle points out that the Phenomenological doctrine of the Third Realm of objective essences has to meet the Nominalist objection that predicates, universals, definitions, etc., are merely completely arbitrary schemes devised by human beings for classification purposes. Ingarden admits that men are free to choose whatever principles of classification best suit them. Sometimes the question "What is this?" merely means "To what class does this belong?" But there is also the seriously meant and far different question, "What is this> - What reality is this? - What is the nature of this? - What is this essentially?" The fact that we can ask questions of this type, proves beyond reasonable doubt that there are essences. For it would be absurd to deny in principle the possibility of an answer to a serious question.20
RYLE
One of the problems Ryle thinks must be tackled is how to evade Platonism without falling into a Nominalistic interpretation of of universals, predicates and definitions.21 He joins forces with the Phenomenologists in their rejection of Nominalism and Associationism. He agrees with Husserl that philosophy is not deduction or some sort of empirical induction. He recognizes that philosophy is concerned with meaning. On the other hand, he also rejects the "Fido"-Fido theory of meaning, or the Descriptive Fallacy. He denies that words are, strictly speaking, symbols, or have meanings. Hence he rejects Idealism. While he approves of the Phenomenological concentration on meaning, he thinks that their conception of knowledge as some sort of looking has beguiled them. Following Cook Wilson, he says that knowing and not consciousness is central in epistemology, let alone consciousness of. But while his doctrinal divergence from Phenomenology is, in his view, considerable, he does take from them the valuable clue supplied by Ingarden: viz. that much is to be gained in philosophy from careful attention to the forms of our questions, and to the implications of these forms. Ingarden distinguished types of questions, Ryle, following Russell, types of expressions. Language, one may perhaps say, transcends Associationism, but does not tempt one into Platonism very easily. We will see that this is one thing that attracts Ryle to the methods of Linguistic Analysis.
Notes:
1. Charlesworth, op.cit., 193 note 72.
2. Ph.86.
3. Ph.93
4. 1958, Shalom, 535.
5. Ph.93
6. 1927: review of Ingarden's Essentiale Fragen; 1929: review of Heidegger's Sein und Zeit; 1932: Phenomenology; etc.
7. review of Foundations of Phenomenology, 263.
8. Are there Propositions?, 97.
9. review of Sein und Zeit, 360; Phenomenology, 68-69; Are there Propositions?, 97: "Bolzano and (quite independently of him) Frege, saw that if the prevalent Kantian and psychologistic theories of knowledge were true, then the objects of which mathematics is the study must be mental events and states, i.e., such things as 'ideas'. But if so, then mathematics and with it Logic, of which mathematics is a branch, could possess no objectivity, rigorousness or exactness. The laws of Logic would be of a piece with laws of association; demonstration would be subordinate to introspection, and truth, if it were anything at all, would be just a bit of human behaviour."
10. review of Meaning and Necessity, 69; The Theory of Meaning, 243.
11. review of Sein und Zeit, 357-59; Are there Propositions?, 99. 102; Phenomenology, 78; Categories, 77; review of Foundations of Phenomenology, 264; Revolution in Philosophy, 9; The Theory of Meaning, 243. 251.
12. Ludwig Wittgenstein, 2; The Theory of Meaning, 251.
13. Phenomenology, 69. Cfr review of Sein und Zeit, 362; review of Foundations of Phenomenology, 263
14. review of Foundations of Phenomenology, 263-64; The Theory of Meaning, 245-48.
15. review of Sein und Zeit, 356-58; Phenomenology, 68-69; review of Foundations of Phenomenology, 263-64; The Theory of Meaning, 259.
16. review of Sein und Zeit, 357-59; Phenomenology, 68-69; Ph 65.
17. review of Sein und Zeit, 357-59; Are there Propositions?, 99. 102; Phenomenology, 78; Categories, 77; review of Foundations of Phenomenology, 264; Revolution in Philosophy, 9; The Theory of Meaning, 243. 251.
18. Ph 65-67.
19. review of Sein und Zeit, 359-62; Are there Propositions?, 99. 102; Phenomenology, 70-77; The Theory of Meaning, 261; Ph 67.
20. Essentiale Fragen, 366-70, esp. 368: "When we do not know what X really is and when we ask 'What is X?' we take it for granted that it would be absurd to suggest that X hasn't got a What. It is, therefore, 'Essential' to an object, as such - and it is known to be Essential - to have an Essence. Or, given that an unknown X is presented to us as an object, we know already that X must have an Essence, before we know what that particular Essence is."
21. review of Essentiale Fragen, 368.
RYLE AND THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY (Socrates - Plato - Aristotle - post-Aristotelian thinkers - the rise of Modern Philosophy - Descartes - Locke - Berkeley - Hume - Kant - Mill - Frege - Ryle)
The purpose of this section is not to discuss the relevance of Ryle's thought to the general history of Philosophy, but to continue to attempt to place Ryle by noting, in this instance, what he has to say about the thought of some of his numerous predecessors.
SOCRATES
Ryle considers Socrates' question: why is it that human excellence cannot be taught?The first part of his answer is that we can be instructed in truths, but we can be only disciplined in methods. Discipline may take the form of either drill in habits or of training in methods. While drill dispenses with intelligence, training enlarges it. Skills do include and suppose habits, but intellectual progress is not the accumulation of truths, but the cumulative mastery of methods. And we learn how by practice - schooled indeed by criticism and example, but often without receiving any lessons in theory.1 Ryle's full answer to Socrates is that virtue is taught by inspiring an ideal, kindling aspirations, infecting with enthusiasm. Admiration for a person, for instance, is not an effect but an example of this knowledge.2
PLATO
Ryle's answer to Socrates can be viewed as an argued analysis of our use of the verb to teach. Philosophy, in Ryle's view, aims to clarify notions; it does not set out to establish any new concrete facts. Its task is not information but elucidation. In this sense it is true to say that philosophy only tells us what we knew before. Philosophy for Ryle always consists in the analysis or clarification of concepts, which is only a rather high-sounding way of saying that it is concerned with the determination of the meaning of general terms: there are no such things as ideas.3 In support of his claim he points out that from the time of Plato and Aristotle onwards at least a part - and a considerable part - of philosophical thinking has been concerned with the analysis of what is meant by knowing, believing, opining, perceiving, being mistaken, imagining, remembering, inferring, abstracting, desiring, intending, choosing, regretting, blaming, being ashamed, approving, and so on.4 Philosophers have always been applying the methods of phenomenology and analysis, just as M. Jourdain early began to talk prose. But let us examine the details of Ryle's treatment of Plato.
Plato in the Republic, for some purposes of his own, advanced the view that the soul is tripartite, but the reasons he brings forward are very unconvincing.5 Plato's view has had many repercussions,6 and Ryle joins with Heidegger in lamenting that Platonic mental-categories have so often gone unchallenged in philosophy.7 It was, for instance, Platonist and Aristotelian theories of intellect that shaped the scholastic doctrine of the immortality of the soul,8 though neither Plato nor Aristotle can be blamed for the theory of volitions.9 Plato said that in thinking the soul is talking to itself. Ryle finds that as a definition this is too wide. Old people can talk a lot and have vast stores of information, but they are not normally considered busy thinkers. A child may unthinkingly recise a poem that it has learned by heart. An actor on the vigil of a theatrical performance may find the words of his part running through his head all the time, distracting him from his thoughts. Plato's definition is also too narrow. The poet thinks as he searches for words in which to express himself; when he finds the words he wants, he no longer needs to think. Modelling plasticine, assembling jig-saw puzzles, playing chess or bridge, all call for thought, but not for words. The explorer who has found his way home intelligently need not be able to describe his route or to sketch it on a map. Even the person who says that he is thinking "in French" is not just having words; he is using them - they meet his intellectual needs, they correspond to his thoughts. The philosopher's thinking is a special professional brand: its results have to be expressible in words, and words are normally the subject around which it revolves. But philosophical thinking is not the only thinking. Not all deciding is deciding what is the case; we more commonly have to decide what to do.10
Ryle says that Plato had some excuse for falling into the "Fido"-Fido fallacy, since the one Greek word hónoma had to do service for our three words "word," "name" and "noun."11 He first realized the need for a theory of types or categories in the Sophist,12 and the Parmenides, in which Plato shows how the supposition that Eidê are substances leads to antinomies, is an early essay in the genre. Plato shows that whether or not Unity is supposed to exist, both it and everything other than it both have and lack every predicate, including in each case that of Unity itself.13 Proper names stand for simples, but we do not know simples - one can only know what one can be mistaken about, and it is impossible to judge rightly or wrongly "that seven" or "that five". In the Sophist (261d) Plato makes the point that an integral sentence is the minimum vehicle of a truth or falsehood, and on this account the minimum expression of knowledge, belief or conjecture. What isolated words convey are not atomic thoughts, but propositional functions, that is, abstractable thought features or thought differences. We learn what they convey not by apprehending their meanings on their own, but only by comparing partly similar, partly dissimilar complete truths and falsehoods. And as in every word there must be a vowel, if the word is to be pronounceable at all, so a verb is necessary for a sentence to have any assering force. Nominative expressions call for verbs, as consonants call for vowels. Nouns and verbs can vary independently in sentences, as consonants and vowels in words, but they cannot function by themselves, just as letters cannot be pronounced in isolation. Sentences are not just lists, they state facts, they state what is the case. And we judge, e.g., rightly "that seven and five are twelve" or wrongly "that seven and five are eleven." Plato used this argument in the Theætetus to prove that knowledge cannot possibly be sense-acquaintance. Proper names are elements in sentences, but sentences are not proper names nor lists of proper names. The simples of sense-acquaintance are elements in what we know, but we know facts, and facts are not simples nor bundles of simples. There is a co-functioning of distinguishable and varied factors in truths and falsehoods. This is why it is nonsense to regard things, processes or entities as the meanings for which our factual statements stand. And this is why it is nonsense to say that knowing is an intuiting of essences, as the Phenomenologists and perhaps the Existentialists seem to do. The fact that the pseudo-sentence "This is (or is not) identical with this" lacks the required complexity to be a statement indicates that it is without significance. There is no such predicate as "this" or "being the particular that it is." But, Plato explains in the Sophist and in the Theætetus, although a word is not just a list of letters and a sentence is not just a list of words, the spelling of a word is not an extra letter, nor is the syntax of a sentence an extra word. You cannot have syntax without words, nor can you have spelling without letters. In the same way, "exists," "if" and so on, cannot function apart from their collocation in sentences, but they are not extra ingredients in the sentence, somewhat as recipes are not ingredients in cakes. Moreover, Ryle adds, just as the consonants cannot be pronounced by themselves, being not sounds, but consonants, so words do not have significance in isolation, in Plato's view, but only in their propositional setting. Elsewhere Plato shows that the word "not" makes its particular contribution in sentences to the saying-about that the verb does, not to the mentioning-of-the-subject that the nominative does. We cannot speak about the nonexistent. There are no negative things to make true or false assertions about, but about anything you please there are true or false denials to make. "Not" is, in different ways, an internal part of the force of any verb. To say something is always to deny some other things. The verb is the main word in a sentence. In the Cratylus, Ryle thinks that Plato's etymological derivations are based on the idea that the original seeds of language were expressions for happenings, undergoings, doings, havings, gettings, startings, stoppings, viz., verbs. The greatest kinds in the Sophist (254 et seq.): kinesis, stasis, being, identity and otherness are in Ryle's opinion basic verb forms, not the summa genera of nameable things. In the second part of the Parmenides Plato deliberately avoids using verbal nouns, as though he thought that verbal nouns conceal important things which operations with live verbs display. From the Euthyphrus (10) onwards, he frequently contrasts poieiv with pascheiv, acting with being acted upon. Loving and being loved are not the same thing though the verbal noun "love" is the same for both. Verbs have tenses, and not only the timeless is real (Sophist 148-49. 262d); not only the timeless is knowable (Philebus 61d, 62b; Theætetus 201b-c). Knowledge always involves verbs, and verbs are never proper names.14
Finally, Plato in the Parmenides argues that we cannot know G-d and that He cannot know us. His argument seems to be that the knowledge of G-d is the universal Form of knowledge of which our human knowledge is a particular series of instances. But if G-d exists, says Ryle in contrast with Harris, He is s particular individual, not a universal; a reality, not just an idea. And so, Ryle concludes, it cannot be shown in this way that He cannot know us, nor we Him.15
Notes:
1. Knowing How and Knowing That, 14-15; CM 42-45.
2. On Forgetting the Differenence between Right and Wrong, 147-59.
3. Phenomenology, 83; Systematically Misleading Expressions, 11. 13-15; Internal Relations, 167; review of Communication, 368; review of Nature of Thought, 326-27; PA 343.
4. Phenomenology, 70.
5. review of Open Society and its Enemies, 169-70.
6. A Rational Animal, 3-6.
7. review of Sein und Zeit, 362.
8. CM 23-24.
9. Ibid., 64-65.
10. CM 27. 282-83; Thinking and Language, 69-70. 73-81; A puzzling element in the notion of thinking, 129-30.
11. The Theory of Meaning, 243.
12. Plato's Parmenides, 316.
13. Ibid., 141-51. 302-11.
14. Are there Propositions?, 110-11; Plato's Parmenides, 140-51. 316-21; PA 339; review of Foundations of Phenomenology, 266-69; review of Meaning and Necessity, 69; Theory of Meaning, 249; Letters and Syllables in Plato, 430-50.
15. Plato's Parmenides, 140-41.
ARISTOTLE
Ryle finds also in Aristotle instances of his application of an "analytic" or "phenomenological" method. Aristotle, he says, was quite correct in asserting (in De Interpretatione 16b) that "is" and "is not" only operate significantly when they are used to express some synthesis; and that they cannot even be thought of except together with what is combined in such a synthesis.1
Aristotle's Practical Syllogism is, in Ryle's view, circular and explains nothing.2 He also asks whether it is possible to improve on Aristotle's way of assigning words to categories.3 Aristotle provided what Ryle calls the first elementary type-distinctions in his well-known doctrine of categories, and he anticipated the modern discriminating device of sentence-frames by his list of typical questions: words that can significantly answer the question "how big?" go into the category of Quantity, and so on. It has often been claimed that Aristotle's division into eight or ten categories contains several redundancies; Prof. Anderson, for instance, seems only to admit the categories of Quality and Relation.4 In fact, there is an unlimited number of categories. Another mistake of Aristotle was to separate his treatment of categories from that of the syllogism: he saw that the syllogism was tied up with the logical force of the words "all," "some" and "not" but did not assign these words to any category. But as in grammar, so in logic parsing cannot be separated from syntax.5
Aristotle shows, too, how absurdity results from using the word "pleasure" in certain ways.6 And he also remarks (Metaphysics, XI, vi, 710) that one can say "I have seen it" as soon as one can say "I see it." Seeing is in this respect like winning a race. Unlike a race, its result is normally self-adjudicated - but there are illusions, and children have to learn how to interpret their experience. So, like enjoying, seeing is not an effect, state, process or phenomenon at all.7 The end of a poem is neither long nor short.
We will see later that Ryle himself favours an Aristotelian view of dispositions. One such disposition is, perhaps, the Practical Reason of Kant, or Aristotle's phróvesis which was internally connected with èthikè 'areté.8 In the Nicomachean Ethics (1100b17 and 1140b29) Aristotle asks why it is ridiculous to say that one has forgotten the difference between right and wrong. It is not because daily life gives us constant reminders of the difference. And it is not because knowing this difference is knowing how and not knowing that. Skills are sorts of knowing how, but they can be forgotten for lack of practice. Aristotle suggests that although virtues are not forgotten in this way, their difference from skills is one of degree and not a sortal difference. But moral drill is necessary if we are to keep ourselves up to scratch. The problem is that when we contract some vicious habit, we are not supposed to have forgotten the difference between right and wrong. Virtues in fact are types of educated tastes and preferences. Likings can be lost, and tastes can deteriorate, but just as likings and tastes cannot be remembered, so they cannot be forgotten. Here lies the answer to Aristotle's problem. To know the difference between right and wrong is to have learned not only how to recognize, but also to appreciate, i.e., like, admire, and try for the good, and dislike, despise and avoid the bad. Without this, we can know the difference between "right" and "wrong", i.e., between what people call "right" and "wrong," but we do not yet know the difference between right and wrong. Ceasing to care about this difference is not forgetting. We use the word "forget" for the non-retention of information and for the falling-off in skills; these forgettings involve a loss in our equipment - to cease to care about the difference between right and wrong involves a loss not in our equipment, but in ourselves. Unlike a discriminating taste in wines, knowledge of the difference between right and wrong is not a specialized technique, says Ryle, but common-knowledge. Charity does not fit one to perform some special task, to take pride in a job well done. It should also be noted, he remarks, that if two people experience something evil, and one is more shocked than the other and cares more about it, this does not mean that he knows more differences between right and wrong, or that he knows the difference better. Again, one can be either instructed or misinstructed in archery or sword-play, but there is, Ryle thinks, something logically contradictory about "moral miseducation." Maybe this explains why so many people believe in the Moral Law, he concludes, but to go beyond that would lay him open to the charge of discussing Ethics.9
Cameron admits the possibility of an Aristotelico-Thomistic interpretation of what Ryle says in The Concept of Mind.10 And it has been said that Ryle's treatment of perception and pleasure in Dilemnas adopts Aristotle's view of act and entelechy.11 One may, at any rate, agree with Passmore: "Ryle was educated in the Cook Wilson tradition; Aristotle is always his natural point of departure."12
Notes:
1. Plato's Parmenides, 313.
2. A Rational Animal, 3-6.
3. Cfr 1955, Rossi-Landi, xxiv.
4. Logic and Professor Anderson, 142-46.
5. Categories, 70-71: "… By distinguishing varieties of sorts of questions, Aristotle is using a general method for exhibiting varieties of type of the factors which would be answers to those questions or complements to those gap-signs. On the other hand his procedure is defective in the following ways. He only attempts to classify the tyes of a small sub-class of proposition-factors, namely the constituents and components of simple, singular propositions. Let us call these… 'terms.' All terms are factors but most factors are not terms. He proffers no test of when a sentence-factor does and when it does not stand for a term, and seems to assume that a grammatically simple word always stands for a constituent or component of a simple proposition. He relies, apparently, upon common sense and common parlance for evidence that a given factor is suited to fill a given gap. But worse than this, he does not recognize that the types of factors control and are controlled by the logical form of the propositions into which they can enter, except in the solitary case of particular substances which, he recognizes, cannot occupy the berths of qualities, relations, magnitudes, positions, kinds, etc., in what he takes to be simple propositions… It is as though a grammarian were in his first chapter to give definitions of the types of speech… and in a later chapter to give a quite independent discussion to the rules of syntax… To know all about the logical form of a proposition and to know all about the logical types of its factors are to know one and the same thing." Cfr ibid., 65-70. 75-81; Plato's Parmenides, 140-41; PA 332-34; CM 142-46; D 9-11.114.
6. Proofs in Philosophy, 155.
7. D 100-09.
8. Conscience and Moral Conviction, 156-64.
9. On Forgetting the Difference between Right and Wrong, 147-59.
10. 1950, Cameron, 232.
11. 1958, anon in Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale, 499.
12. 1957, Passmore, 440.
POST-ARISTOTELIAN THINKERS
Ryle does not say very much about ancient philosophers other than Plato and Aristotle, nor does he speak much of medieval theologians. He mentions that the Megarian and Stoic logicians investigated the inferential implications of "and," "or" and "if."1 He reminds us that St. Augustine admitted that he did not know what Time was.2 He thinks Stoic-Augustinian theories of the will entered into the Calvinist doctrine of sin and grace. Fear of ineluctable Predestination, he says, foreshadowed seventeenth century fear of Determinism.3 He recognizes the mediæval logicians' realization that words such as "and," not," "the," "some" and "is" are not independently significant but syncategorematic.4
He considers the Ontological Argument in some detail, but his aim here is speculative rather than historical. Like St. Thomas Aquinas, Ryle rejects the argument as invalid, as we will see.5
Perhaps at this point in our Introduction a Catholic thinker may be allowed to record a few lines of thought suggesting the possibility of a comparison of Ryle with Thomas Aquinas. Ryle's basic justification of his position is in terms of reasonableness. St. Thomas justifies his own system by an appeal to wisdom.6 Ryle insists that we don't infer to, but follow the workings of mind. Aquinas teaches that what is understood is understood in sense-presentations,7 accepting on this point the teaching of Aristotle.8 Like Ryle, Aquinas insists that it is through the intelligent grasp of our own thinking, and not by the analysis of any a priori conception of what thinking ought to be, that we understand our rational nature.9 Ryle rejects the materialist, sensist, positivist, pragmatic or sentimentalist view according to which the sense of reality which we share with the animals is also the criterion of reality. Hence, he denies that there are sense-data. Ryle also rejects the idealist, phenomenological theory according to which reason and not sense is the criterion of reality, but this reality is defined in terms of the sense of reality. Hence, he denies the existence of an eidetic intuition on Platonic, Scotist or phenomenological lines, and stresses that knowledge is not of simples. This would seem to imply the adoption of the Thomist view, according to which reason is not only the criterion of reality but also that in terms of which it is defined - being is what is known in true judgment. We have noticed already Ryle's recent attention to Plato's comparison with sentence vowels of live verbs.
If science is knowledge of the properties of things in consequence of a knowledge of their essence, then philosophy can only be knowledge by either accepting the determinism of Spinoza or at least the moral optimism of Leibniz, or alternatively by moving in a world of abstractions after the manner possibly of Scotus and accepting for the concrete a voluntarist doctrine. If science is precise knowledge of things in their causes, philosophy could be conceived as a science with Aristotle in terms of the ten categories and the four causes, only by restricting it to the realm of the necessary to the exclusion of the contingent. Thus, Aristotle did in fact exclude science of the per accidens,10 and tried to minimize the consequences of this position by recourse to the influence of the celestial bodies.11 It is, of course, possible to say that chemistry is a science that furnishes us with precise knowledge of things in their causes, in so far as the gradually increasing experimental and analytical knowledge of chemistry becomes synthetically intelligible by postulating the periodic table of the elements. But philosophy cannot be a science in this way, since being universal in its object the analytic experimental stage of inquiry would never be sufficiently complete. Ryle does, in fact, deny that Philosophy is a science, as we will see at some length.
Now Aquinas does not deny Aristotle's theory that science is of the necessary. But he does completely transform it: science is of the factual, and hence usually only of the hypothetically necessary - only G-d is absolutely necessary.12 Since G-d's efficacy extends to all things and events, the category of the per accidens relative to G-d is non-existent.
Partly for this reason the Thomist view of causality is not open to the strictures Ryle places on any para-mechanical view of causation. For Aquinas, and for Aristotle as he interprets him, a cause is not something between the agent and the effect, nor is it anything added to the agent in so far as the agent is a cause, but it is the relation of dependence of the effect on its agent cause. Otherwise one would be faced with an infinite regress of movers, or with an infinite regress of acts of self-determination within the agent.13 Thus, in Aquinas' opinion, there is no change in the agent cause as such when an effect is caused, when posse agere or potentia agendi becomes actu agere or ipsa actio.14 St. Thomas is, therefore, in agreement with Ryle's rejection of, for example, volitions. His explanation of human freedom is not in terms of the operation of para-mechanical causes, but of four facts we can reasonably affirm: Several courses of action are objectively possible;15 the human mind is capable of working out alternative courses of action;16 what we actually do is not automatically determined by the first possibility we think of;17 the will is self-determining.18
Perhaps some indication has been given of the possible utility of a comparison of Ryle's thought with that of Aquinas.
Notes:
1. D 114.
2. Abstractions, 5.
3. CM 23-24.
4. The Theory of Meaning, 253.
5. St. Thomas and many Catholic thinkers say the Anselmian argument attempts a fallacious extrapolation from the logical or ideal to the real or ontological order: it is either a priori or at least a simultaneo, while any valid demonstration of G-d's existence must proceed a posteriori. But L. Farinelli suggests, in Filosofia e Vita (1961, I, 41-53), that the Anselmian argument is a posteriori, quoting Anselm's Resp. ad Gaunilonem: "At si quis catholicus hoc neget, meminerit, quia invisibilia Dei a creatura mundi per ea, quae facta sunt, intellecta conspiciunture, sempiterna quoque eius virtus et divinitas." As the Anselmian argument has recently attracted a certain amount of attention, this view is worth considering. For St. Thomas' rejection of the argument cfr S.T., I, q. 2, a. 1, ad 1um.
6. S.T., I, q.1, a.6 c., "Sapientis est ordinare et iudicare."
7. In Boet. de Trin., q.6, a.2, ad 5m., "Phantasma comparentur ad intellectum ut obiecta in quibus inspicit omne quod inspicit."
8. Met., III, 7.
9. S.T., I, q. 88, a.2, ad 3m., "Dicendum quod anima humana intelligit seipsam per suum intelligere, quod est actus proprius eius, perfecte demonstrans virtutem eius et naturam."
10. Met., VI.
11. Phys., VIII; Met., XII.
12. Cfr C.G., II, 28-30.
13. Phys., 3, lect.5, par.4; Met.,11, lect.9, par.2308-13.
14. Phys., lect.5, par.15; 1 dist.32, q.1,a.1; De Pot.,q.7, a.8.
15. De Ver., q.22, a.6.
16. S.T., q.83, a.1
17. 2 dist.25, q.1,a.2.
18. De Malo, q.6, a.1.
THE RISE OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY
Although Plato perhaps realised that not all nouns are names, it is easy to fall into the trap. Children wonder why they can't look at the Equator or be shown pictures of the North Pole. We hope to meet, perhaps, the Economic Man or the Average Schoolboy. And where is the Poultry World? According to Professor Ryle, Occam would tell us that there really is no North Pole and no Poultry World. These things can be abstracted from reality by thought, but they cannot be extracted from it for our inspection. If by the North Pole you understand some specific object, there is no such thing. This is not to deny, he would add, that there is a North Pole in the sense that there really exists a terrestrial globe, and that there is a point on its surface due South of which all other points are to be located. The guiding principle that "entities are not to be needlessly multiplied" discards with the separate North Pole. This principle is known as Occam's razor.1
Hobbes and Gassendi, we are told, thought that thinking was just the making of certain complex noises and movements.2 Word-meanings stand to sentence-meanings as atoms to molecules. Ryle holds such a view to be erroneous, since, among other things, propositions are prior to, not subsequent upon ideas or terms.3
DESCARTES
To support their teaching that men have no need of confessors to know the will of G-d, Protestants stressed, says Ryle, the doctrine of the interior light of conscience or voice of G-d. When Galileo's discoveries made Descartes afraid of having to regard man as some sort of machine, he evolved the para-optical doctrine of consciousness4 in orer to avoid not the need of confessors, but the necessity of sensations' being able to have spiritual or mental effects. Minds have conscious existence, and knowing is a conscious process that takes place in consciousness and in introspection, and which is freed in this way from illusion, confusion or doubt. Developing the analogy with ordinary light, Locke referred to introspection as "reflexion."5 The causal inferences we make to the present existence of substances beyond ourselves gives us, he says, an assurance which we can call knowledge. But the only way in which we can be directly acquainted with instances of characters is by sense-perception or introspection.6 For Brentano, as we have seen, all positive knowledge is founded on inner perception.7 Husserl, following Descartes, assumes that while we can have direct and self-evident perception of our experiences, or Erlebnisse, we can have it of nothing else.8
According to Ryle we can speak of "conscious" in the sense of vaguely aware, embarassed, self-critical, sentient or attentive, but Cartesian constant conscious awareness is a myth. Apart from the fact that consciousness of consciousness involves an infinite regress, conscious looking could never explain knowledge, because knowledge is not looking at an object simply, but judging that something is the case.9 It is, of course, as we shall see in its due place, possible to accept Ryle's distinction between looking and judging, without accepting his account of consciousness.
Ryle points out that introspection or self-inspection is not infallible - or else the vain man would be the first to realise his own vanity, instead of being the last. If all knowledge depended on consciousness or on introspection, we would have to admit either an infinite regress of introspection of introspection or of consciousness of introspection. And if this regress is excluded, then we don't know, presumably, that introspection exists - and so there is no problem to solve. In any case, Hume realized that even if there is such a thing as introspection, we cannot introspect panic or fury - they are states of mind that exclude the necessary calm. Similarly, we cannot introspect our joking, since joking excludes the necessary seriousness. Introspection would seem to be merely remembrance controlled by special interest.10
According to the Cartesian view of man, then, there are two types of existence - material and spiritual. Matter exists in space and time and obeys mechanical laws. But, though he respected Galileo, it was offensive to Descartes' religious conscience to suppose that minds were machines. Minds, according to Descartes, exist in time, but not in space, and enjoy conscious existence.11 The transactions between soul and body are mysterious. We know our own minds, but, telepathy apart, we know other minds only by analogy.
Ryle considers the Cartesian theory to be an improvement on the para-political theory of man as a small state. But although it is not a baseless fairy-story, it is a misleading myth. The question how we get to know other minds is an artificial problem, Ryle thinks. The Cartesian para-mechanical account of mental activities in terms of mental cause and effects assumes the very mechanism he rejects, and if the existence of other minds really was the problem it is claimed to be, we would not even possess sufficient grounds for raising the question at all. Solipsism is a pseudo-problem, and so far from our having difficulty in publishing our thoughts, skill is needed to conceal them.12
Ryle, as Carcano says, tries to free philosophy from the influence of Cartesianism, the conception of knowledge as inner seeing, the influence of formal logic and Euclidean geometry, and certain traditional, especially pædagogical theories.13 Like Heidegger he laments the influence in philosophy of Descartes' body-soul dualism, mental chemistry, and the central position occupied by psychology.14
Notes:
1. Systematically Misleading Expressions, 32: "Occam's prescription was, therefore, in my view, 'Do not treat all expressions which are grammatically like proper names or referentially used "the"-phrases, as if they were therefore proper names or referentially used "the"-phrases'."
2. CM 327-28.
3. The Theory of Meaning, 242.
4. CM 23 [This is misquoted in 1960, Long, 386.]
5. CM 11-24. 159.
6. Locke on the Human Understanding, 33.
7. review of Sein und Zeit, 357-59.
8. Phenomenology, 75-76.
9. CM 156-58.
10. Phenomenology, 82; Conscience and Moral Conviction, 156-57; CM 166.
11. CM 13. 18-19.
12. Knowing How and Knowing That, 3; CM 8. 11-24. 32-40. 319-30; review of Other Minds, 953; The Physical Basis of Mind, 76-79.
13. 1951, Carcano, 286.
14. review of Sein und Zeit, 362.
LOCKE
John Locke worked out a theory of the sciences in which he distinguished mathematics, history, theology, common sense, ethics and metaphysics not only in subject-matter, but also in logical form, evidential foundations and mental standing.1 Ryle commends him for this refusal to be satisfied with any magical, miraculous or transcendent account of human mental functioning.2 Just as there is no North Pole or Equator, so there are, says Ryle, according to Locke, no such things as centaurs, unicorns, sea-serpents, golden mountains, substantial forms or essences. These are merely "fantastical ideas" - there are for Locke no innate ideas. So, although the North Pole does not exist, Locke unlike Ryle would say that the idea of the North Pole exists, the idea of a unicorn exists, the ideas of golden mountains and centaurs and sea-serpents and other essences exist.3 Ryle tells us that sometimes by ideas Locke, like Berkeley and Hume, means images or pictures in the mind's eye. At other times Locke regards any feeling or sensation as an idea - Locke considered sensations to be passive not only in the sense that they go on willy-nilly, but also because they are inflicted on us and are not of our creating.4 Our ponderings and musings are also ideas. The specific act of thinking about something as such and such is an idea. The characters, attributes or concepts thought of are likewise ideas. To these five senses of the word "idea" Lock adds one more: idea in any of the senses of "idea" so far mentioned are all species of idea in the sense of mental object. Such mental objects accordingly, in Locke's view though not in Ryle's, exist.5 On the other hand, Locke holds that certain "scientifical knowledge" does not directly describe real existences.6 The inductive laws of Huygenius, Boyle, Newton, Sydenham and the rest provide us with only probable opinion, and yield only probable conclusions. The evidential force of matters of fact is only to increase or decrease the probability of general or particular hypotheses.7 This fits in with Ryle's own view that, although it may come as a surprise to common-sense, law propositions are never known; they are only established.8
Ryle finds that Locke's failure to adopt a relational view of space was probably determined by his deference to the authority of Newton. He also feels that Locke's account of relations, substance-attribute forms, term-relation forms, and the principle of cause and effect show that Locke theorized under the influence of contemporary physiological theory, which he supposed to be sound.9 Thus, unlike Ryle, Locke thinks that the existence of G-d can be apodeictically demonstrated from the joint consideration of our own present personal existence, and of the evident principle (to be later challenged by Hume) that whatever has a beginning must have been produced by something else. The proposition 2I now exist" is taken to be a certain one and particular in form.10
Notes:
1. Locke on the Human Understanding, 38.
2. Ibid., 16.
3. Ibid., 24-25.
4. Ibid., 28.
5. Ibid., 17-20.
6. Ibid., 30.
7. Ibid., 30; Taking Sides in Philosophy,326; review of Nature of Thought, 328; PA 329.
8. Induction and Hypothesis, 37-38.
9. Locke on the Human Understanding, 27. 29.
10. Ibid., 33.
BERKELEY
Ryle hardly ever refers to Berkeley, but Miles has drawn a comparison between the philosophy of Berkeley and the doctrine of Ryle in The Concept of Mind.1 Berkeley says that there is no such thing as Matter; that sentences about Matter, if by "Matter" you mean an unknown substratum, are meaningless; that the things we see, feel, etc., are matter. Ryle says that there are no Mental Events; that sentences about Mental Events, if by "Mental Events" you mean events in the life of a ghost, are meaningless; that people see jokes, solve puzzles, etc., and these are mental events.
Miles thinks that both Berkeley and Ryle are in a better position to be rid of needless perplexity than holders of the Cartesian view. "Some may suppose that moral and religious beliefs are relevant to our views about 'the self', and that it is easier to 'think nobly of the soul' if we regard it as a substance. Certainly on Ryle's view it seems that the noble things will have to be said in a different way; but the lurking suspicion that Ryle has forbidden us to say them at all is quite unjustified… Although Berkeley and Ryle both lend themselves to 'metaphysical' interpretation - not 'matter' only 'spirit,' not 'two worlds' but 'one world' - I do not think that such an interpretation does justice to the philosophical insight of either."
Miles' comparison offers a basis for interesting discussion, and in such discussion it should, I think, be remembered that Ryle denies not only the existence of the Cartesian ghost, but also of Matter; not only of para-mechanism, but also of mechanism. Ryle's rejection of dualism seems to stem from his refusal to adopt a para-optical theory of knowledge.
Notes:
1. 1953, Miles, 61-71.
HUME
According to Hume the ultimate elements of thought are ideas in the sense of images or pictures in the mind's eye, and sense-data, images and concepts can all be classified as ideas in this sense. Mental life is a mere avalanche of ideas, which are mental atoms. Not only does the conscious subject know no past nor future nor any reality outside himself, but he himself threatens to dissolve into an evanescent shower of evasive atoms. Meaning thus gives way to brute conjunction.1 In its more placid moments the mind cannot grasp all the implications of this doctrine; at other times it may be driven to the despair of either self-destruction or self-indulgence.2 Ryle does not praise Hume for his doubts, but because he has taught us to be reasonable enough to maintain our sanity in the midst of theoretical doubt and perplexity, by having recourse to that badge of reason which is the sense of the ridiculous, the reductio ad absurdum of scepticism.
Ryle escapes from the scepticism of Hume, from the chaos of Associationism and from the arbitrariness of Nominalism by distinguishing knowledge from perception. There are, he says, no such things as sense-data. Hume's psychic atomism was further from the truth than Hartley's theory, and his impressions, ideas and passions are not the genuine point de départ of his psychology, but they are the abortive fruit of mistaken theory.3 Hume was a sceptic particularly in matters religious, saying that the existence of G-d is not logically necessary, and that there are no sound grounds in experience for our affirming it.4 Ryle, following Locke, would say that theological assent may be grounded in an at best historically probable traditional revelation, or in a (for others problematic) personal illumination, or in authority, or in faith, but that belief is belief and not knowledge, even when it be whole-hearted in its assent, elevated in its effects, transcendent in its object, probable enough and more than probable enough for the confident and wise conduct of life.5 But while Ryle allows that Hume has the merit of having shown that factual conclusions, feelings, moral principles and the control of human passions cannot be explained in terms of syllogistic reasoning and logical implication,6 he considers that Hume's psychological account of induction is vitiated by his failure to distinguish between conditioning or mere habituation and genuine discipline or training. Hume fails to explain how we can describe a belief as both confident and silly.7 Scientists' general propositions are neither commands, signals, statements or recommendations of habits. They are not just imperatives or optatives to think, talk or behave in certain ways. They are truths or falsehoods.8 However, Hume himself, Ryle notes, was big enough to see that induction cannot really be adequately explained in terms of established custom and conditioning, since sometimes only a few instances, and those instances not privileged ones but any few, suffice to establish a law.9
Ryle also mentions that Hume raised the question whether knowing I exist implies knowing whom or what I am.10 And he thinks Hume failed to provide a satisfactory account of Chance.11 His own account we will see later. Finally, Hume, following Hutcheson, noticed that while some passions are intrinsically violent, others are calm, and that a violent passion could, on occasion, be vanquished by a calm one: anger is not to be overcome by syllogizing in soliloquy, but by the bringing into play of some compensating passion. Ryle agrees that inclinations are controlled by balances, but thinks that the distinction to be made is not one of degree between violent and calm passions, but of kind between inclinations and agitations.12
Notes:
1. HUME D., A Treatise on Human Nature, ed. T.H.Green & T.H.Grose, 1874, Bk. I, Pt. IV, sect. 6: "Were all my perceptions removed by death, and could I neither think, nor feel, nor see, nor love, nor hate, after the dissolution of my body, I should be entirely annihilated, nor do I conceive what is further requisite to make me a perfect nonentitity. If any one, upon serious and unprejudiced reflection, thinks he has a different notion of himself, I must confess I can reason no longer with him. All I can allow him is, that he may be in the right as well as I, and that we are essentially different in this particular. He may, perhaps, perceive something simple and continued, which he calls himself; though I am certain there is no such principle in me. But setting aside some metaphysicians of this kind, I may venture to affirm of the rest of mankind, that they are nothing but a bundle or collection of different perceptions, which succeed each other with an inconceivable rapidity, and are in a perpetual flux and movement. The mind is a theatre where several perceptions successively make their appearance… The comparison of the theatre must not mislead us; they are the successive perceptions only that constitute the mind.
2. Ibid.: "But what have I here said, that reflexions very refined and metaphysical have little or no influence upon us? This opinion I can scarce forbear retracting, and condemning from my present feeling and experience. The intense view of these manifold contradictions and imperfections in human reason has so wrought upon me, and heated my brain, that I am ready to reject all belief and reasoning, and can look upon no opinion even as more probable or likely than another. Where am I, or what? From what causes do I derive my existence, and to what condition shall I return? Whose favour shall I court, and whose anger must I dread? What beings surround me? and on whom have I any influence, or who have any influence on me? I am confounded with all these questions, and begin to fancy myself in the most deplorable situation imaginable, environed with the deepest darkness, and utterly deprived of the use of every member and faculty. Most fortunately it happens, that since reason is incapable of dispelling these clouds, nature herself suffices to that purpose, and cures me of this philosophical melancholy and delirium, either by relaxing this bent of mind, or by some avocation, and lively impression of my senses, which obliterates all these chimeras. I dine, I play a game of backgammon, I converse, and am merry with my friends; and when after three or four hours' amusement, I would return to these speculations, they appear so cold, and strained, and ridiculous, that I cannot find it in my heart to enter into them any further."
There are perhaps many to whom such sedatives, even if accessible, would be wholly ineffective. And there are many to whom the very idea of taking them would seem too like intellectual cowardice. It has been said that Hume's curiosity was extreme, but that it was broad rather than deep, and that we could hardly imagine Kant's adopting a similar attitude. But others have praised the remarkably ordered emotions of a man clear-headed enough to see that a sceptic should be sceptical of his doubts and retains his respect for himself and others.
3. Hume (1711-1776), 206.
4. Ibid., 208.
5. Locke on the Human Understanding, 37.
6.Hume (1711-1776), 207.
7. Internal Relations, 169; Knowing How and Knowing That, 15.
8. Internal Relations, 168; Induction and Hypothesis, 36.
9. Hume (1711-1776), 208
10. Locke on the Human Understanding, 33.
11. Abstractions, 5-6.
12. CM 83-94; Feelings, 61-65; Hume (1711-1776), 207.
KANT
Ryle commends Kant for having appreciated that there is a variety of sentence-factors and of sentence-couplings. Sentences can be universal, particular or singular in Quantity, Kant says; affirmative, negative or infinite in Quality; categorical, hypothetical or disjunctive in Relation; and assertoric, problematic or apodeictic in Mode. But Kant does not distinguish attributive from relational propositions, does not provide a category for sentences of the form "most…" and does not tell us how to classify conjunctive propositions. He does not seem to notice that disjunctive, problematic, apodeictic and his sort of universal propositions are all types of hypothetical proposition. Moreover, his so-called infinite propositions are a fraud.1
A further tribute to Kant is Ryle's acknowledgment that until the appearance of the Critique of Pure Reason there was no general attempt to distinguish between the procedures of philosophy on the one hand, and of the pure or inductive sciences on the other. Weldon thinks it useful to compare The Concept of Mind with the Critique of Pure Reason: like Ryle, Kant was aiming at the destruction of a harmful myth. "He saw clearly that philosophical progress was being held up by the pseudo-sciences of rational ontology, cosmology and psychology… Existence is not a predicate, and… no empirical conclusion can be drawn from purely logical premisses.2 Weldon is right in saying that Ryle shares these two basic tenets of Kant. But he also thinks that the Phenomenalists did well to dispense with Kant's inference from sense-data to noumenon.3 And it may be doubted whether Weldon is right in saying that "in a few years the false disjunction of mind and body wil be like the ontological argument, and the puzzle will be to understand how anybody ever came to take it seriously." For one thing, the ontological argument still provides matter for discussion. And it may be suspected that the dualistic conception of man will remain with us as long as man preserves his apparently natural tendency to conceive of knowing, at least initially, in terms of para-optics. Such philosophic confusion, Ryle would say, is the indication of normal healthy growth. Weldon also writes: "But the Dialectic is not the part of the Critique which has been most fruitful. Like Ryle's demolition of his ghost, it was and was meant to be destructive. In both cases the question that interests us is 'What happens next?' " It is still hard, he says, to evaluate Kant's account of material objects, moral attributes, purposes, etc., positive terms. And it is similarly difficult to evaluate Ryle's account in terms of type fallacies and category mistakes.4 But Ryle's mature account appears to be fundamentally in terms of reasonableness, and Ryle himself has hinted at a comparison between some aspects of his thought and Kant's Practical Reason.5
Notes:
1. Categories, 72-75.
2. review of Communication, 366.
3. CM 235.
4. 1950, Weldon, 266-67.
5. Conscience and Moral Conviction, 156-64.
MILL
It will be remembered that Ryle attributes the rise of Idealism in England not to Teutonic yearnings, but to dissatisfaction with Associationism. The doctrine come to Physiological and Associationist psychology as far as Bain and Spencer,1 and which underlies the logic of Stuart Mill, is that the objects of logic, universals, facts, implications, relations, types, wholes, etc., are all simply varieties of mental states, processes and dispositions.2 These mental phenomena are not thought of as effects of spiritual causes. For Herbart had rejected the older Faculty Psychology, and maintained that the ultimate data of Psychology are the particular manifestations of consciousness.3 The denial that these mental phenomena are effects of spiritual causes blocks any inference to the subject; the doctrine that they are "ideas" coupled with the impossibility under which any representational theory of knowledge labours of bridging the gap between the representation and what it represents underpins the sceptical implications of the theory. "Mill, following Hobbe's lead, starts off his account of the notion of meaning by considering single words. As we have to learn the alphabet before we can begin to spell, so it seemed natural to suppose that the meanings of sentences are compounds of the components, which are the meanings of their ingredient words. Word-meanings are atoms, sentence-meanings are molecules." And Ryle comments: "I say that it seemed natural, but I hope soon to satisfy you that it was a tragically false start."4 Nevertheless, while regarding most words as names, Stuart Mill knew that "of," "or," "all," "not," "often," "if,"is" and "the" are syncategorematic.5
Notes:
1. Phenomenology, 59; review of Sein und Zeit, 362; review of Foundations of Phenomenology, 263.
2. Sein und Zeit, 360.
3. Phenomenology, 68.
4. The Theory of Meaning, 242. Cfr Locke on the Human Understanding, 25; Revolution in Philosophy, 10.
5. The Theory of Meaning, 245-46.
FREGE
While adopting initially the "Fido"-Fido theory of meaning, Frege, following Mill, saw that the morning star and the evening star are identical in reference (Bedeuten) though twofold in meaning (Sinn). This led him to say, if with Ryle we may express his view in the language of Mill, that significant expressions in discourse denote truth-values but connote propositions. But really, Ryle feels, expresions do not have meaning by acting as names at all. Dictionaries give the meanings of words, but they do not give the meanings of names. Who ever asked "What is the meaning of Robinson Crusoe?"1 Frege and Russell were, in any case, compelled to work out their doctrine of incomplete symbols, as a corrective to their former "Fido"-Fido theory. For the sense of a complete sentence is often logically prior to the senses of at least some words in it.2 Only the context in which they are used gives meanings to "if," "and," "not," "exists," "some," "all," "other," "several," "is an instance of," "is a species of" and "implies."3
Notes:
1. review of Meaning and Necessity, 69; The Theory of Meaning, 249.
2. Letters and Syllables in Plato, 448.
3. Plato's Parmenides, 151; PA 339; review of Foundations of Phenomenology, 266-67.
RYLE AND THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY
Ryle notes that James equated emotions of felt apprehension and pride with sensations.1 He thinks that despite Heidegger's attempts to seek light by going back to the language of the primitive village or the baby's pram, it is in science and philosophy that man may hope to effect his at least partial escape from the bondage of metaphor.2 Ryle thinks that Heidegger, while recognizing that ideas and judgments are not feelings, does seem to regard them as efflorescences of or constructions upon feelings and volitions - not in the beginning was the word, but in the beginning was the cry!3 Ryle has also discussed Anderson's philosophy. Anderson regards even geometry as an empirical study, and in theory does not distinguish science and philosophy. He thinks that knowledge is some kind of relation, and that like belief it is some sort of mental process. Anderson has said that the propositions "this body is hot," "this body is fiery" and "fire is hot" are all of the same order, and that their terms are of the same order. But while it is true that "fire is hot" does not mention any relation or attrribute possessed by the universal "fire," Ryle thinks it is false to suggest that it names the relation or attribute of a particular something, somewhere, somewhen.4
So far in this Introduction Ryle has been related to various members of the movements of Analysis and Phenomenology and to other Philosophers of whom he has revealed a certain knowledge. It will have been noticed that Ryle's interest is not that of the historian of philosophy. Even when he does pay considerable attention to the details of someone else's thought, he does so with a view to the better resolution of some problem of his own. And to some extent older thinkers are approved of in so far as they have anticipated, and criticized in so far as they have not measured up to his own requirements in philosophy. These requirements appear to be the adoption of the phenomenological method of investigating meaning, together with the exclusion of any Platonizing tendencies Phenomenology may have. Ryle also seems to hold that the adoption of the linguistic techniques of Analysis helps one to avoid the temptation to Platonize, a temptation which is normal to the earlier stages of philosophical development, largely because of a para-optical epistemology, that has to be overcome. "Ryle does not think that a phenomenology of natural language can be counted on to solve philosophical problems. In this he is opposed to the views of his colleague, the late J. L. Austin, who was inclined to think that one's native language harboured all the distinctions worth making and that, in consequence, a phenomenology of it would reveal most of the categories worth revealing. This, in Ryle's opinion - and Austin conceded the point - would be a back-sliding into the procedures proper to science."5 Underpinning this view is Ryle's sharp distinction between knowing and looking, or, as Howard puts it: "Ryle's main point… is the full generalization of the denial that the sense of a concept consists in its reference. (Logically proper names, if there are any, would be exceptions.) It is, in other terms, the adoption of a functionalist as opposed to a denotationist theory of meaning."6
Ryle's thought has been influenced by others, and he is eager to learn from others. But he is a member of no school, and no one's disciple. Neither has he committed himself to any hard and fast doctrine, nor to any stereotyped method of doing philosophy. When doctrines are well-established, and methods of inquiry clear, he would say that there was no longer need to philosophize. The philosopher is necessarily a pioneer. For this reason I prefer to leave the statement of his position to the body of the work, rather than to attempt a summary outline here.
Notes:
1. CM 83-84.
2. review of Sein und Zeit, 364.
3. Ibid.
4. Logic and Professor Anderson, 138-53.
5. 1963, Howard, 156.
6. Ibid., 145.
This examination of the philosophy of Gilbert Ryle falls naturally into two parts: the first, Exposition and Interpretation; the second, Criticism and Evaluation. The order followed in the exposition is principally logical, although not without a certain correspondence in Ryle's chronological development. Ryle's thought has evolved and continues to evolve, but there has been no sudden volte-face and even no clear break in the movement towards his mature position. This rendered the logical approach possible and preferable. The study of Ryle's views on the nature and method of philosophy is followed by the particularized examination of thinking, feeling, knowing, imagining, being pleased, being agitated, having scruples, wishing, etc. A synoptic view of Ryle's thought is then attempted.
The second part, which draws heavily on such published criticisms of Ryle as there are, follows a similar order in criticizing and evaluating his position. Attempts have been made by various thinkers to evaluate Ryle's general linguistic approach, his view on type-fallacies or category-mistakes, and his distinction in the mental field of dispositions and occurrences. The application of his general technique to the special topics of sensation, imagination, knowing and willing, and especially to the problem of the Self, has been subjected to scrutiny. There has also been a certain amount of discussion as to whether Ryle is a behaviourist, though no general agreement has been reached on the question. His thought has been compared in varying degrees and under different aspects with that of Berkeley, Kant, Sartre, Wittgenstein, Aristotle and Aquinas. Historical gaps have been brought to light in his statement of the problem of mind, in his views of biology and psychology, and with regard to some lesser points. It has been claimed that the linguistic techniques that Ryle uses are insufficient for the full resolution of his philosophical problems. On the other hand, it is felt that his personal type of linguistic analysis represents a definite step forward in method in the linguistic movement as a whole. Hence, a great deal has already been written about Ryle's philosophy.
However, most that has been written about Ryle has centred on The Concept of Mind, and of the remainder the greater part regards his other book Dilemnas. Only slight attempts have so far been made to view Ryle's philosophy as a whole, and to see it against the general historical background. It is hoped that the present study by filling in this gap at least partially will contribute to a growth in understanding both of the philosophy of Ryle and of Analysis as a whole.1
Note:
1. In 1960, Father Peter Robinson published his useful thesis, Gilbert Ryle's Concept of Mind compared with Scholastic Psychology, which contains, in its published form, 58 pages, comprising an introductory account of English philosophy since 1900, a chapter on the "Cartesian Myth" and Ryle's philosophical method, four chapters on the nature of knowledge, self-knowledge, mental privacy and mind respectively, and a reprint of the bibliography in Rossi-Landi's Lo Spirito come Comportamento. The original thesis, we learn, also comprised chapters on acts of the will, sensation and imagination. Robinson writes: "The dissertation takes no account of Ryle's views on the emotions, a matter of secondary importance and which in no way effects our general conclusions" (p.5). And again: "No attempt has been made to discuss or report every aspect of Professor Ryle's views on the nature of the mind… Much has been omitted in discussing his treatment of sensation.
After all the above was first written L. Addis published Ryle's Ontology of Mind in L. Addis & D. Lewis's Moore and Ryle: Two Ontologists (University of Iowa, 1965, pp. VIII-184, pp. 1-01). That work considers the main theme of The Concept of Mind in the light of Ryle's earlier work, without any reference to work later than 1949. Stress is laid on the structure of this theme rather than on Ryle's attitude to it: "While close attention will be paid to what Ryle says, it would yet be inaccurate to call this essay a study in intellectual biography." (pp. 1-2.) Ryle is judged to be a Materialist, crypto-Materialist, Aristotelian or Nominalist - these terms being thought roughly synonymous. It is said that Ryle accepts the reality of (a) substances or bodies, and (b) doings, happenings, events, occurrences or processes, while denying the reality of dispositions, properties or attributes (which he reduces to collections of doings), and a fortiori of mind. I cannot myself accept this interpretation (as I show later). One merit of Addis's work is his realization that "structurally language plays a smaller rôle in Ryle's thought than he himself believes. It is also structurally of less importance in him than in the thought of most of those in the movement to which he belongs." (p.11.)
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