THE PHILOSOPHY OF GILBERT RYLE

Preface

CONTENTS

Bibliography

• Writings of Gilbert Ryle
• Writings relating to Gilbert Ryle

Introduction

• Ryle and the Analytical Movement - G. E. Moore - B. Russell - L. Wittgenstein - J. Wisdom - J. Austin - a note on Logical Positivism - G. Ryle
• Ryle and the Phenomenological Movement - F. Brentano - Meinong - Husserl - Ingarden - Ryle
• 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 and the History of Philosophy
• Arrangement of this study

PART ONE - EXPOSITION AND INTERPRETATION

The Nature and Method of Philosophy

• The Nature of Philosophy
• Philosophy as Type-discrimination
• Philosophy and Language
• Proofs in Philosophy - The Existence of God
• Collaboration in Philosophy

Ryle's Philosophy of Man

• The Concept of the Person
• The non-existence of volitions
• The reduction of the voice of conscience and of agitations to inclinations
• Inclinations, especially pleasure, emotions and moods
• Feeling, Sensing and Perceiving
• Thinking
• Knowledge and Perception
• Knowledge and Belief
• Induction
• Avowals and Imagination

Characterizing Ryle's Philosophy

PART TWO - CRITICISM AND EVALUATION

A General Appraisal of Ryle's Philosophy

• Ryle's Use of History
• Ryle on Thinking and Verification
• Ryle on Dispositions
• Ryle, Logic and Philosophy
• Knowledge and Belief

Some Points in Ryle's Philosophy of Mind

• Perception
• Avowals
• Imagination
• Pleasure
• Volitions
• The Human Person

Conclusion

 

PART ONE - EXPOSITION AND INTERPRETATION

Chapter Two The Nature and Method of Philosophy

The solution Ryle gives to certain philosophical problems, or at any rate to certain problems traditionally raised in philosophy, is partly determined by his views on the nature of philosophy. As well as being a contribution to the study of one of the central issues in the Analytical movement as a whole, then, this chapter, in which we consider Ryle's theory of the nature and, consequently, of the method of philosophy, provides indispensable information for an eventual evaluation of his work. We will consider from a single viewpoint the whole of his writings bearing on the matter. However, we can mention here as of special significance: Are there propositions? (1930), Phenomenology (1932), Systematically Misleading Expressions (1932), Taking Sides in Philosophy (1937), Categories (1939), Philosophical Arguments (1945), Ordinary Language (1953), Proofs in Philosophy (1954) and Letters and Syllables in Plato (1960).

After some general remarks on the nature of philosophy, I will examine Ryle's view of philosophy as the resolution by argument of type-confusions or category-mistakes. From this, I will go on to discuss the relation between philosophy and language. After taking note of Ryle's appeal for collaboration and dialogue in philosophy, the chapter comes to a close with an inquiry into the ticklish point as to whether or not philosophers can ever prove anything, say the existence of G-d, in philosophy.

The Nature of Philosophy

The revolution that has taken place in English philosophy as a result of the laicisation of our culture and of the attainment by philosophers of a certain professional status,¹ has led, Ryle feels, among other things, to considerable inquiry into the nature, objectives and method of philosophy. The experimental sciences have made undeniable and notable advances in the recent past, and philosophers have felt obliged to ask themselve why their own speciality did not appear to be equally fruitful. The progress made in mathematical logic has raised the standards of scientific exactitude, and while the positive sciences have passed their tests with flying colours, and produced impeccable, logical credentials, philosophers have been somewhat nonplussed about the status of their own peculiar discipline.²

Ryle thinks that the philosopher's task is not to apply principles, but to consider them; not to answer questions merely, but to find out why they are raised, and whether or not they are the right questions to put.³ He thinks it important to find out what precisely is the nature and method of philosophy.⁴

For a long time philosophy was equated with science. The word "scientists" was only coined in 1840. Before that time scientists were all philosophers, and Mill even uses the word "metaphysics" in reference to the empirical study of mental states and processes.⁵ But, Ryle notes, when people wanted to distinguish science from philosophy, the way seemed clear: science deals with the physical world; philosophy with the mental world.⁶ But empirical psychology has also claimed to be a science of the mental world. And yet philosophy is hardly the science of objects in a Platonic heaven. The Vienne Circle, under the inspiration of Mach, insisted that metaphysics is not physics, nor biology, nor psychology nor mathematics. Philosophy is not science.⁷

Ryle thinks that philosophy is not a science. It is neither scientific nor unscientific. It does not supplement or complete the sciences - but in a real and important way it rectifies the sciences.⁸

Under the influence of Moore and others, philosophers in the 20th century, in England and Austria anyway, have been largely occupied with the theory of meaning,⁹ and it is sometimes said that philosophy is concerned merely with language, that it is essentially "linguistic." If by this is meant that philosophy is a branch of sociology consecrated to the determination of the latest linguistic trends, or that it is a branch of philology aiming to improve on current linguistic conventions, then Ryle maintains this is false.¹⁰ However, it is quite correct to say that the sole and whole function of philosophy consists in the systematic restatement in a form logically meaningful of what is frequently expressed in a form that is logically defective.¹¹ Genuine nonsense is an extremely rare occurrence, even in philosophy, but it often happens that what is said, is said badly, and needs to be restated, if it is to escape the charge of being a meaningless expression.¹²

Ryle draws our attention to the fact that it is generally only in philosophy that we need discuss what, e.g., false statements state, in order to find out that false statements don't state anything at all, but that they enable us to understand what would be (though in fact it is not) the case, if they did state something or other. In ordinary discourse, no confusion is caused by, e.g., asking what such-and-such a false statements states; we know what the speaker has in mind. But in philosophy, where ideas are easily mistaken for realities, confusion can arise. Concrete ideas do not give rise to any philosophical problems of this sort.¹³ Ryle suggest that this may be why Wittgenstein seems to regard the presence of philosophical problems as a sign of mental sickness. But in fact only a simpleton never feels these problems. Like all growing pains they are indications that one is in a healthy state.¹⁴ All abstract ideas can generate philosophical puzzles, because daily speech does not provide us with any adequate drill in their correct use. When we embark on abstract considerations, we are moving through waters which are as yet largely uncharted, and so it is only natural that we should found from time to time.¹⁵ What more normal, we must admit, than that a child should ask to be shown the North Pole! Ryle says that the abstract ideas of common sense, of scientific discours, and of philosophy itself all can, and do, bewitch us into talking nonsense.¹⁶ Thus, for instance, Frege found absurdities sprang from treating the word "two" as similar in its mode of significance to the word "green."¹⁷ Abstract ideas have different logical powers from concrete ideas, and these different powers also differ among themselves - failure to advert to this fact leads professional abstracters (be they scientists or philosophers) to fall into absurdity, and then we have a philosophical problem.¹⁸

Of course, not every lapse into absurdity confronts us with a philosophical problem. "The question is whether an account can be given of philosophically interesting absurdity. An account which does attempt to do this is offered by Ryle in Philosophical Arguments."¹⁹

The earliest philosophical problems arise from a chance meeting with a seeming contradiction in the employment of abstract ideas. Such contradictions especially abound when new sciences are in phase of development. New abstract ideas are formed, and no one has yet realized their logical possibilities and limitations. These can only be learned from experience; in the meantime contradictions and absurdities, and hence philosophical problems arise.²⁰ A typical instance of this is provided when the investigator finds himself confronted by either two apparently contradictory solutions, reached by different paths, to one and the same problem, or when he is faced with two solutions which are solutions, it is true, to different problems, but which, nevertheless, seem to contradict each other, while being both provided with strong evidence in their favour. Common sense assures me I am free and responsible for my actions, but on the other hand it is admitted that my way of acting is determined by temperament, heredity and environmental conditioning, and so on.²¹

It is the philosopher's privilege, says Ryle, to find an argument that cuts the Gordian knot, and by clarifying the meaning of the expressions involved, liberates us from confusion and apparent contradiction.²² The ideal is that the philosopher should bring about the smooth coordination of the various categories and ideas of all theories and disciplines.²³ Hence there can be no insulated departments in philosophy.²⁴ The meaning of expressions cannot be made clear by examing them one at a time, like broken-down cars in a garage. They must be studied in their actual working in coordination with other expressions, something like cars weaving through the busy thoroughfares. Philosophy is committed to the regulation of linguistic traffic-blocks. From this point of view, the names "Analysis" and "Linguistic Analysis," though harmless enough in themselves, are unfortunate. They wrongly suggest that the philosopher clarifies the meaning of one idea at a time. Whereas his task is essentially synoptic. The philosopher's work can never be done piecemeal.²⁵

The philosopher is sometimes said to be engaged in the clarification of ideas, the analysis of concepts, the study of universals, or the search for definitions. But Ryle insists that philosophy is not mere clarification, mere elucidation. He does not find the words "concept," "idea" and "meaning" unacceptable in themselves, but does not like their Platonic, Lockean and Meinongian overtones, and so says that philosophy is not the science of ideas.²⁶ Husserl said that abstract ideas are neither abstract nor in the mind, and that (to express his doctrine in terms of the temporal subject) the headache I had last night is the meaning of my remembrance of it this morning.²⁷ Ryle does examine the questions: are there ideas? are there objects? what is it to be an object? what is the essence of objectivity? what are ideas?²⁸ And like all Oxford analysts he denies the existence of ideas as mental objects, and sets out to confute the Descriptive Fallacy, which he calls the "Fido"-Fido theory of meaning.²⁹

Ryle's approach to the problem is briefly this. What we know are not ideas but facts. Knowledge and not consciousness is basic in human experience. Ideas are a myth due to linguistic confusion.

It is true enough that all the things and happening known to us are, whatever else they may be, constituents of our experience, which is at once cognitional, emotional and volitional.³⁰ But we are convinced, says Ryle, that when we know, we know not ideas, but facts.³¹ Although some philosophers erect a wall which cuts the knowing subject from the world, by accepting a bi-polarity of consciousness and being with the knowing subject conscious of being, and the problem consisting in how can consciousness get outside of or beyond itself to reach to being,³² really, of course, consciousness, if and so far as it exists, likes within and not beyond the frontiers of being. Knowledge and not consciousness is the basic element in human experience,³³ and since while we are conscious of, but know that, there is no need to construe the intentionality of knowledge as being an internal relation.³⁴ When I say that I know such and such to be the case, I do not make such and such's being the case seem to be dependent on my knowing it.

According to Ryle, then, knowing, not consciousness, is central. Acts of consciousness only have objects at ll in the degree in which they imply knowledge. Knowing facts involves, obviously, knowledge of facts; knowing hypothetical facts, or understanding what would be the case under certain conditions, is, in a sense, knowledge of symbols,³⁵ though words, phrases, sentences and arguments are, as Ryle later noticed, better not called symbols. For in the everyday sense, symbols stand for words.³⁶

There are, Ryle says, no such things as ideas. The theory that knowledge is to be explained in terms of representative ideas is worse than useless. It is put forward as an answer to the question, "How do we know things?" but the attempted answer leaves us wondering: How do we know ideas? How do we know what ideas are representations of? How do we know that a given idea represents a given reality? The whole theory explains nothing, needlessly multiplies the objects to be known, and cannot conclude to anything without either a petitio principii or an infinite regress.³⁷

Ideas, conceptions, thoughts and judgments are not things. The expressions "'The first man to land on the Moon' is a concept" and "'Virtue is its own reward' is a judgment" are instances of what Ryle calls systematically misleading expressions. It is true enough that I can say "the thought of having to say good-bye to my best friend for ever made me hesitate before emigrating," or "the idea of being the first man to set foot on Ruritanian sould filled me with emotion," but there are no entitities corresponding to the words "thought" and "idea."³⁸ We use propositions to speak about what reality is, or what is might be, or is not, or could not be, and so on, but propositions themselves are not real things.³⁹ Ideas are not objects, they are skills in the use of words.⁴⁰

Ryle would say that words like "tooth-paste," "tingle," "cabbage," "house" and "tea-cup" in their more ordinary use refer to concrete objects, when they refer to anything at all. Thus, to say "I feel a tingle" is to assert that I am at this present moment experiencing a tingling sensation; to say "I have run out of tea-cups" means that certain domestic commodities are missing from my store of goods. On the other hand, Ryle would remind me that I cannot point to the Average Taxpayer, nor to the Spaniel that is descended from the Wolf. In their concrete use, words refer directly to the similarities obtaining or failing to obtain between things; in their abstract use, words refer only indirectly to things - directly they refer to the similarities and dissimilarities between propositions about things, or between propositions about propositions about things.⁴¹ Only after learning to manipulate such concrete statements as "Peter is clever," "Henry is stupid" and "Francis is cautious" can I appreciate the bearing of statements of the pattern, "Necessity is the mother of invention," "Genius is akin to madness" or "Wisdom is a virtue."⁴²

But how are we to understand Ryle's teaching that ideas both concrete and abstract are, in different ways, skills in the use of words? First of all, it should be noted that he does not merely say that ideas are the uses of words. It is only by finding out if a man uses a word efficiently that we can ascertain his mastery of the corresponding ideas, but this is not to say that the use and the ability to use coincide. Skills are dispositions, and unlike acts or processes, dispositions are not, according to Ryle, temporal affairs. To possess is to inhabit and not to arrive at, to have and not to acquire. Thus I can truly say Michæl is a keen Rugby player, even though he is now asleep.⁴³

Only when we confuse abstract uses of words with their concrete use, are we troubled - as all of us are at some time or other - by the urge to photograph the North Pole, or to find out whether or not numbers are eternal, or whether Time began a million years ago.⁴⁴ We are familiar with the concrete, but unsure about the abstract.⁴⁵ Our first knowledge of how to use expressions is born of experience and practice. Theory only comes later. First of all we learn to manipulate concrete expressions, and only later can we deal with the abstract. The abstract presupposes and is parasitic upon the concrete.⁴⁶ Abstract ideas refer to the real world indirectly, being formed by noticing similarities not between things themselves, but between propositions about things. To talk about a proposition is to talk about what is expressed by a significant expression of no matter what grammatical form, or by any other expression of the same logical force, when such an expression is used, or at least could be used, by anyone at all in intelligible discourse.⁴⁷

Here there is a problem of interpretation. All expressions seem to be directly or indirectly about things, i.e., the abstract is all reducible to the concrete. But what is this concrete? What are these things? Hampshire has written: "The Concept of Mind has the radical incoherences natural to a book written in transition, the transition being from one conception of logic and philosophical method to another… Together with a peculiar theory of language, The Concept of Mind conveys a sharply personal and definite view of the world; a world of solid and manageable objects, without hidden recesses, each visibly functioning in its own appropriate pattern."⁴⁸ Several critics have felt that Ryle favours some sort of nominalism. They accuse him of being too suspicious of metaphor, and criticize him for adopting a literalist theory of language. It has been suggested that this neo-positivistic tendency is to be explained by his being under the influence of Logical Atomism.⁴⁹ But others favour or at least allow for an Aristotelian interpretation of his views.⁵⁰ Nor has he escaped the accusation of being a Platonist.⁵¹

Without going any further into the question at this stage, it will not be out of place to recall that Ryle wishes to steer a middle course between Platonism and Nominalism.⁵² Ryle maintains that what Aristotle saw to be the case with "is" and "is not," is really to some extent the case with most words we use.⁵³ Sentences are never mere lists - if they were, "Mary, rhinoceros, catgut" would be a sentence, or "he placed the plank upright against the tool-shed wall" would be just a list.⁵⁴ The unitary saying of a sentence is something not to be construed as just an assemblage of sense-atoms.⁵⁵ Thus, one cannot mistakenly judge that 7 or that 5, although one can mistakenly judge that 7 + 5 = 11.⁵⁶ Facts can be judged to be true, but cannot be pointed to; one cannot be either correct or mistaken about 7 by itself;⁵⁷ proper names do not have meanings.⁵⁸ While one can point to five boys, or name seven stars in isolation, one can only understand the number 5 or the number 7 as occupying a place in a system of relations. Understanding is seeing connections, we may say, and judgment follows on understanding.

Ryle, then, says that to talk of any idea at all is the same as to talk about propositions sharing some logical expressive force. At one level of astraction we can speak of the logical powers enjoyed by propositions; moving to a yet higher level of abstraction we can speak of the logical powers of ideas, concepts or terms, i.e., of some abstractible common factors common to certain ranges or families of propositions.⁵⁹ Propositions have all various logical powers, i.e., certain logical relations to other propositions; correspondingly, the logical type or category of a given abstract idea is the set of ways in which this idea can be legitimately employed.⁶⁰ In other words, there are either no such things as categorematic expressions, or they are extremely rare. Just as we do not separate parsing from syntax when we study the grammar of a language, so we should not separate the study of the category differences of terms from the investigation of the rules of inference. The vocabulary we use is, from a logical point of view, syntactical from the start, and most or all words are syncategorematic. To take for the moment just one example, the word "exist" changes its significance as it is moved from "President de Gaulle exists" to "there exist about nine thousand species of grasses,"⁶¹ The expressions "is," "exists," "is real," "is an object," "is non-existent" and "is a nonentity" are systematically misleading. Existence is not a generic word like coloured or sexed. We can speak of rising passion, rising prices, and rising walls, but there is something odd about saying that three things are rising: walls, prices and passions. In the same way we can say that Gilbert Ryle exists, despondency exists, and the bank-rate exists - but there is something odd about saying three things exist: Gilbert Ryle, despondency and the bank-rate.⁶² Ryle points out that, as Kant has shown, existence is not a predicate and does not signify a quality. It follows that existence-propositions with logically proper names for their subjects have no meaning as sentences. In the sentence "G-d exists" (to be examined separately later on) existence is not a quality and G-d is not a subject.⁶³ Existence is not a word to be examined like a coin lying idly in a museum showcase, says Ryle. Rather it is a word whose value lies in the actual use that is made of it in linguistic transactions, and it cannot be understood outside the context of that use.⁶⁴

To say that something is an object, or that something exists is, according to Ryle, to say nothing. To say that something is green, or a father, or irritated shows that the something in question is an object and exists. But to say that a determinate something is an object or that a determinate something exists, is neither necessary nor significant. It is not necessary, because the something under discussion is sufficiently determined either by being given its name, or by being given its determining description, as, say, green, or a father, or irritated. And it is not significant so say that a determinate something is an object, or that it exists, because to sy that something has some attribute or other, is not to endow it with any further attribute. To have attributes is not itself an attribute. On the other hand, it is absurd to say that a named or described something is not an object or that it does not exist - for there is in this case nothing about which the denial can be made.⁶⁵ The word "exists" has its uses, but it is not a predicate.

Ryle, then, denies that abstract nouns are proper names. Yellowness has no colour, circularity has no shape, punctuality is never punctual, justice is never just, and progress makes no progress. Things have colours and shapes, and people and ships can be punctual. But to talk about circularity, yellowness, punctuality, unpunctuality, justice, progress, equality and the like is not to talk about objects with these names, but (indirectly) to talk about objects as characterized in meaningful propositions in terms of these words.⁶⁶ Ryle would join with us in smiling indulgently at the child's request to be shown the North Pole, but he would less easily approve of a modern Philosopher's living in Ruritania.

Ryle grants that "the first American Pope" means something, but it does not mean somebody. "The third man to stand on the top of Mount Everest" did not, until recently, refer to anyone. On the other hand, the "morning star" and the "evening star" differ in meaning but refer to one and the same planet. Again, "the whale is not a fish but a mammal" can be true, even if no whales are known to exist. "The true Englishman never cheats at cards" can be true, even if no Englishmen exist. In other words, descriptive the-phrases are not proper names, nor are they necessarily used referentially every time they are used significantly.⁶⁷

Consider the sentence "Mr. Pickwick slowly replaced his pipe in his pocket, and, after consulting his watch, made his way back to the Club." Professor Ryle would tell us that the understanding of this sentence does not, by itself, increase our knowledge of the world. The sentence may not mean anything, it may not really state that anything at all is the case, but understanding the sentence involves that one must know what the words so assembled mean or would mean, if the sentences does or did state something to be the case. The meaning of a sentence is hypothetical. Sentences are intelligible if they purport to state what is the case - if it is the case, they are in a sense symbols, and they are about what they state; if it is not the case, they are only quasi-symbols, and they are only quasi-about what they quasi-state. Inspection of an intelligible sentence is not by itself sufficient to determine whether it is a propositional or only a quasi-propositional expression.⁶⁸ The novel The Pickwick Papers seems to state lots of facts about Mr. Pickwich, but is really sheer fiction and states no facts at all. The sentences in the novel are only quasi-propositions, and "Mr. Pickwick" is not a proper name but a pseudo-designation. The books is not a record of certain happenings, but a quasi-record of certain fictional or imaginary or pseudo-happenings.⁶⁹

"Humpty Dumpty sat on the wall" is about Humpty Dumpty in the sense that Humpty Dumpty is the grammatical subject of the verb "sat". In a less strict sense, "the mouse ran up the clock" is about the clock in that the clock is a substantival expression occurring somewhere within the sentence in question. A conversation may be said to be about the Pied Piper of the Pied Piper features as grammatical subject or as at least a substantival expression in the greater number of the sentences making up the conversation. But none of these senses imply that a sentence or conversation refers to what it is about. I can talk quite sensibly about the Wizard of Oz even when I know for a fact that there is no such personage for me to refer to. Some confusions in philosophy about Time and Chance and Being stem, in Ryle's opinion, from the not easily explained tendency of philosophers to construe all expressions about something in an ordinary sense, as being about something in the sense of referring to some entity or other.⁷⁰

But, Ryle insists, there is no such entity as the "defeat of the Labour party."⁷¹ And the fact of Jones' desiring something, does not entail that that something exists - "the object of Jones' desire" is not necessarily a referentially used the-phrase. Desires and fancies like ideas are not objects in a Platonic Third Realm. The "Fido"-Fido relation of expression to entity is a special not the general case. Most words are not names.⁷²

Notes:
1. Revolution in Philosophy, 144.
2. PA 329.
3. PA 327.
4. Mr. Collingwood on the Ontological Argument, 137: "Mr. Collingwood… is embarking on a set of enquiries which are of obvious importance. His aim is to find out what philosophy is and what is the right way of proceeding in that activity."
5. review of Communication, 366; The Theory of Meaning, 257.
6. review of Communication, 366;
7. Ludwig Wittgenstein, 1-3.
8. Phenomenology, 69-74; review of Nature of Thought, 329; Ludwig Wittgenstein, 3; Ph 68-70.
9. Revolution in Philosophy, 8; The Theory of Meaning, 239.
10. Systematically Misleading Expressions, 13; review of Communication, 366; Ordinary Language, 40.
11. Systematically Misleading Expressions, 36: "We can ask what is the real form of the fact recorded when this is concealed or disguised and not duly exhibited by the expression in question. And we can often succeed in stating this fact in a new form of words which does exhibit what the other failed to exhibit. And I am for the present inclined to believe that this is what philosophical analysis is, and that this is the sole and whole function of philosophy… I would rather allot to philosophy a sublimer task than the detection of the sources in linguistic idioms of recurrent misconstruction and absurd theories. But that it is at least this I cannot feel any serious doubt." Cfr 1958, Warnock, 106: for 1931 Warnock says that this was "advanced thinking indeed."
12. review of Language and Reality, 204.
13. Systematically Misleading Expressions, 13: "These discoveries do not in the least imply that the naïve users of such expressions are in any doubt or confusion about what there expressions mean or in any way need the results of the philosophical analysis for them to continue to use intelligently their ordinary modes of expression or to use them so that they are intelligible to others." PA 340-41: "Concrete concepts… generate no philosophical puzzles, since one learns from the routines of daily experience the schope and the limits of their application.
1955, Tomlin, 263-64: "The existence of an intractable 'problem,' and above all the existence of ourselves trying to solve it, is proof of an ultimate mystery. Needless to say, many people have endeavoured to argue themselves out of this admission. They do so by pretending that there is no problem at all, or rather than everybody knows what it means to be alive and to be a person, since to be adlive and to be a person is simply a wak of talking. On this basis, the philosopher's task resolves itself into an inquiry into how some persons, notably other philosophers, should become involved in the kind of verbal 'knots' which give rise to myths about their nature as talkers. This would seem to be the point of view of Ryle in his Concept of Mind. That here is a reversal of the conventional idea of the philosopher's rôle is obvious. Formerly the philosopher and the logician conceived it their task to clear up the confusions of the uninstructed layman (one calls to mind the titles of such popular books as The Art of Thought, Thinking to some Purpose, etc.) Now it appears to be the layman who 'knows what he is talking about,' and the philosopher who is continually involving himself in confusion. This is surely the reductio ad absurdum of G.E.Moore's eulogy of 'common sense.' The sub-title of The Concept of Mind should rightly be Clear Thinking for Philosophers."
It seems that Tomlin has misinterpreted Ryle's views as a result of trying to treat together what are in fact quite different questions. He says that there has been a change in the philosopher's rôle, and we are here trying to understand this change. He says that the layman is not confused, but that the philosopher is - Ryle's point is that neither laymen nor philosophers are confused by concrete ideas, because they are used to them, and that only philosophers are regularly confused by abstract ideas, because only they have to think not only in but about concepts. He says that philosophers deny existence is a mystery, because everyone knows what living is - Ryle merely said we know how to use the word "living," and without denying the mysteriousness of existence has views on the nature and method of philosophy which exclude the philosophical treatment of the question. The validity of Ryle's views can be discussed, but it is well to note that he has explicitly rejected Moore's eulogy of common sense.
14. Ph 29.
15. PA 343.
16. Categories, 78-79
17. Proofs in Philosophy, 155.
18. Systematically Misleading Expressions, 27.
19. 1956, Baker, 16.
20. PA 335.
21. D 4.
22. Taking Sides in Philosophy, 320. 328-30.
23. PA 328: "To see what is an historical explanation, is, among other things, to see how it differs from a chemical, mechanical, biological, anthropological, or psychological theory. The philosopher may, perhaps, begin by wondering about the categories constituting the framework of a single theory or discipline, but he cannot stop there. He must try to coordinate the categories of all theories and disciplines."
24. review of Nature of Thought, 329.
25. PA 334-35; D 31-32. 125: "Our characteristic questions are not questions in the logical statics of insulated and single concepts, but questions in the logical dynamics of apparently interfering systems of concepts." The Theory of Meaning, 263-64: "The word 'analysis' has, indeed, a good laboratory or Scotland Yard ring about it; it contrasts well with such expressions as 'speculation,' 'hypothesis,' 'system-building' and even 'preaching' and 'writing poetry.' On the other hand it is a hopelessly misleading word in some importand respects. It falsely suggest… that any sort of careful elucidation of any sort of complex or subtle ideas will be a piece of philosophizing… Even worse, it suggests that philosophical problems… can and should be tackled piecemeal." Ph 76: "Les questions conceptuelles sond des questions interconceptuelles." Abstractions, 15-16. Cfr 1955, Barnes, 363-64: "'What is often, though not very helpfully, described as "the analysis of concepts," is rather an operation - if you like a synoptic operation - of working out the parities and disparities of reasoning between arguments hinging on the concepts of one conceptual apparatus and arguments hinging on those of another' (D 129). This, though presented as a defence of what has been done and is done in the name of analysis, seems to me to constitute, in fact, a considerable advance on it." 1955, Feys, 537-38: "Het boek van Ryle [Dilemnas] is, zoals men ziet, eigenlijk niet tot de Analytische beweging te rekenen: het legt - o.i. terecht -meet het gewicht op een synoptische, synthetische vergelijking van theorieën over eenzelfde wekelijkeid dan wel op een ontleding van die werekelijkeid in op-zich-zelf duidelijk verstaanbare elementen." 1955, Barnes, 355-56: "I do not think 'dilemna' is a very happy term for the kind of thing that Ryle has in mind. Ryle uses at times another word which seems to be much to be preferred to 'dilemnas,' viz., 'tangle.' It is free from the suggestion of a two-party contest. It is also more appropriate to the varied nature of the solutions. A tangle may be so dense that there is no doing anything with it: or a leading thread may loosen the whole confusion and bring order at once: or there may be innumerable knots to untie and bits and pieces not connected with the main thread."
26. Ordinary Language, 28-29: "Our forefathers… talked… of the concepts or ideas corresponding to expressions. This was in many ways a very convenient idiom, and one which in most situations we do well to retain. It had the drawback, though, that it rencouraged people to start Platonic or Lockean hares about the status and provenance of these concepts or ideas… Later on… there was a vogue for… talking about the meanings of expressions… This new idiom was also subject to anti-Platonic and anti-Lockean cavils."
27. review of Foundations of Phenomenology, 267.
28. Essentiale Fragen, 368; Are there Propositions?, 102.
29. 1964, Gozzellino, 166-67.
30. review of Sein und Zeit, 369; Phenomenology, 75.
31. Are there Propositions?, 111.
32. review of Sein und Zeit, 360-63; Phenomenology, 69. 74. 80.
33. Phenomenology, 80-81.
34. Ibid., 81.
35. reply to Robinson's discussion of Are there Propositions?, 331.
36. Thinking and Language, 71: "In the most familiar use of 'symbol,' words and a fortiori, phrases, sentenes and arguments are not symbols at all. 'XII' and '12' are symbols; so are 'x,' 'y' and '='; so are contour-lines, the Union Jack, a club tie, and the items of the Morse code. Whenwe call them 'symbols,' we think of them as signs doing duty for other expressions. The sign '+' on a map does duty for the word 'church' or 'église,' since these take up too much room…"
37. review of Meaning and Necessity, 69-75.
38. Systematically Misleading Expressions, 11. 26-30.
39. Are there Propositions?, 124-25.
40. CM 307: "If a person is at a particular moment using an abstract term, using it significantly and using it knowing its significance, he can be said to be using an abstract idea, or even thinking an abstract thought, notion or concept. And from these innocuous, if infelicitous expressions, it has been easy to move to making such seemingly more profound and diagnostic statements as that his term 'expresses' the abstract idea that he is there and then having…" Ibid., 308: "Geographical contours are certainly abstractions. The solider finds nothing on the hillside answering to the 300-feet contour line on his map, in the way in which he does find rivers and roads answering to the map-symbols for rivers and roads. But though contour lines are abstract symbols, in a way in which symbols for rivers are not abstract, the soldier may know quite well how to read and use them. Identifying his coppice with a coppice marked on his map, he can tell how high above sea level he is, how hight he must climb to reach the summit and whether he will be ablse to see the bridge over the railway when the fog lifts. He can draw a map with roughly judged contours, he can fix and rendez-vous at points on given contours and he can talk sense about contours. So, startled though he would be by the allegation, he has the abstract idea of Contour. But in saying that he has this idea we are not saying that there exists an impalpable something which he and he alone can find if he turns his attention inwards. We are saying that he can execute, regularly executes, or is now executing, some of the tasks just described, together with an indefinite variety of others."
41. PA 340-42.
42. Ibid., 342-43.
43. Ph 77. 79.
44. PA 337.
45. Abstractions, 5.
46. PA 343; Abstractions, 5-8.
47. PA 340-42.
48. 1950, Hampshire, 238. 255.
49. Ibid., 241-43: "Behind this ideal grammar there is implied this literalist theory of language, which betrays itself in many of the arguments used… This naïve correspondence theory of language… as though the world consisted of just so many distinguishable Activities (or Facts or States or Things) waiting to be counted and named."
1954, Colburn, 133 note 2: "Ryle holds, essentially, a position of direct realism and elementarism (particulars and first-order characters exhaust 'what there is' in the world)." 133: "A statement, properly speaking true or false, is a statement of fact. But there are only atomic facts. All non-atomic statements belong, therefore, to discourse of a different level or type… Some, if not all, of thse higher type statements are to be construed as rules - true or false [in so far as] they authorize atomic statements which are either true or false."
1955, Rossi-Landi, xxii note 1: "Nella stessa opera di Ryle si rintraccia almeno un residuo neo-positivistico. Esso sta nel fare del letteralismo delle espressioni un criterio per giudicare della loro legittimità. Ryle tende a considerare 'assurde' le espressioni metaforiche, non assurde quelle letterali… Il letteralismo di Ryle è già stato criticato da altri oxoniensi."
1958, Warnock, 100-01: "There are here and there… traces of a more extreme thesis… that all statements about current bodily behaviour, or more commonly hypothetical statements about predicted bodily behaviour… It is the ghost of the old programme of 'analysis,' the attempt to reduce to some single approved grade of basic facts such propositions as seem to mention facts of other sorts."
1951, Hofstadter, 264-65: "Why should the hypothetical character of a statement prevent it from stating a fact?… I would suggest that the author is suffering from a severe attack of nominalism."
50. 1955, Colombo, 421: "It is hard to tell whether Ryle follows Aristotle or accepts behaviourism." 1950, Cameron, 232: "Much of The Concept of Mind can at least be understood as a statement in colloquial idiom of what is to be found in Aristotle and St. Thomas, when they speak of the soul as the act and form of the body."
51. 1958, Garelli, 54: "C'est donc à un réalisme des concepts logiques qu'aboutit en définitive la théorie pluraliste des possibilités du Professeur Ryle."
52. review of Essentiale Fragen, 368.
53. Letters and Syllables in Plato, 447.
54. Plato's Parmenides, 317-21; review of Language and Reality, 204.
55. Letters and Syllables in Plato, 435-36.
56. Plato's Parmenides, 318. 320.
57. Ibid.
58. Systematically Misleading Expressions, 25; The Theory of Meaning, 249.
59. PA 332-33.
60. PA 331-32; CM 8.
61. Categories, 65-70; PA 332-34; review of Foundations of Phenomenology, 267; review of Meaning and Necessity, 69-71; Ph 72.
62. Imaginary Objects, 19-21; CM 22-23.
63. Systematically Misleading Expressions, 15-17; Internal Relations, 165; Mr. Collingwood on the Ontological Argument, 142-47.
64. ph 72: "De même, examiner la notion d'existence ne peut pas simplement consister à contempler un objet retiré, comme une pièce de monnaie dans un musée, de sa circulation commerciale originelle. Nous devons examiner ce que nous affirmons lorsque nous affirmons, par exemple, qu'il existe un certain nombre premier spécifié, lorsque nous nions que le serpent de mer our le Père Noël existent, lorsque nous demandons si les mammouths existent encore, quand ils ont existé et pendant combien de temps; et même lorsque nous disons à quelqu'un de construire, détruire ou conserver quelue chose. Et surtout, nous devons examiner où précisément gît l'absurdité de questions telles que 'Existez-vous?'. 'Combien de satellites de Vénus n'existe-t-il pas?' et 'Une chose peut-elle exister vite ou par intermittence?'"
65. Imaginary Objects, 19-21.
66. Systematically Misleading Expressions, 20-21; review of Plato and Parmenides, 539; Plato's Parmenides, 139; PA 339.
67. Systematically Misleading Expressions, 22-27; review of Meaning and Necessity, 69; The Theory of Meaning, 240-45. 249.
68. Imaginary Objects, 36; Are there Propositions?, 119-22: "When Sairey Gamp reapeatedly propounded statements to Betsy Prig embodying the name 'Mrs. Harris,' Betsy Prig naturally, though wrongly, assumed that there was a person of whom 'Mrs. Harris' was the name. And she was angry when she discovered that there wasn't. And when she discovered that there wans'st any such person, she discovered that the name 'Mrs. Harris' was meaningless in the strict sense of not being the name of anything. Yet in another sense Sairey Gamp's sentences embodying the 'name' 'Mrs. Harris' had not been meaningless and Betsy Prig had understood them perfectly. What are the two senses of the word 'meaningless,' in which in one way the sentences were and in the other were not meaningless? The answer, I think, is fairly clear. The noise 'Mrs. Harris' has all the linguistic properties of a name. It is just as if it were a name, or, to put it in extenso, it has all the outward characteristics that it would have had if it had been the name of some one. So Betsy Prig in understanding the sentences which embodied the noise was knowing this fact about the noise, that if it was what it simulated being, a genuine name, then there was a real person called Mrs. Harris; or, what comes to the same thing, if and only if there really was such a person was the noise 'Mrs. Harris' a genuine name. So in this sense it was not meaningless, for she knew quite clearly and precisely what it denoted if it denoted anything…"
69. Systematically Misleading Expressions, 14; Imaginary Objects, 26-31.
70. About, 10-12; Mr. Collingwood on the Ontological Argument, 150.
71. Systematically Misleading Expressions, 31.
72. Phenomenology, 79-80; review of Language and Reality, 204; review of Foundations of Phenomenology, 266-67; review of Meaning and Necessity, 69; The Theory of Meaning, 257.

PHILOSOPHY AS TYPE-DISCRIMINATION

The expressions that occur in meaningful discourse belong to a variety of types or categories,¹ and type-confusions resulting in nonsense often occurs. Philosophy allocates to their proper category expressions which have been wrongly expressed in terms belonging to some other type of discourse. In this sense, all philosophers' propositions are category-propositions. Philosophy can be described as the replacement of category-habits by category-disciplines, says Ryle.² It is thus a certain skill or know-how. He says it is a species of Logic: it is not Formal Logic, but it is Logic. As Formal Logic investigates the conditions for the significant use of "of," "and," "all," "if," etc., so Philosophy examines the conditions for the meaningful employment of "knowledge," "belief," cause," etc.³

Although Russell has shed some light on the matter in the purely logical field, from a philosophical point of view, says Ryle, the nature of types or levels is still very obscure, and the whole theory of categories and types is largely unexplored. But not only is it often important in philosophy to determine the precise meaning of expressions of a given basic type, but it can be maintained that all category propositions are philosophical, and that all philosophical propositions are categroy propositions. If this is so, Ryle continues,we are in the dark about the nature of philosophical problems and methods as long as we are in the dark about types or categories. Not only is Formal Logic useful to the philosopher, but Philosophy itself is, basically, a form of Logic, as will appear from what follows.⁴

But lest it might seem that a logical presentation of Philosophy endangers the status of reality, there is no harm in repeating that, in Ryle's view, words, with which Logic and Philosophy deal, are not symbols merely. Symbols, in fact, in the ordinary sense of the word, are symbols because they stand for words. "+ On a map may stand for "church;" "7" stands for "seven;" "/" may stand for "steep hill" and "***" for "brandy of high quality."⁵ My understanding a statement does not consist in my knowing of a given fact that it is what is symbolized, stated or meant by the given statement, but in knowing of the statement itself that if such and such were the case, then the given statement would be a genuine fact-stating expression. To know what "St. Augustine developed the Latin language" means, is to know that St. Augustine developed the Latin language if "St. Augustine developed the Latin language" states a fact, and that if St. Augustine did not develop the Latin language "St. Augustine developed the Latin language" is not a true proposition, but a false, or quasi-, or even a pseudo-proposition. In a similar way, a quasi-map of Ruritania is a pseudo-map.⁶ Expressions refer to or fit certain facts, but they do not mean these facts. Robinson Crusoe is not the meaning of "Robinson Crusoe".⁷ As I construe him, Ryle is here hinting at a duality in human knowledge. Like animals we sense objects, and as we can point to objects, so, too, we can use words to symbolize our gestures or feelings, and to symbolize the objects - in this sense, words can be names. But as human beings we seek the knowledge that consists in true understanding, and while truth can be expressed in judgments or propositions, it cannot be pointed to, and so it cannot be symbolized, and in this sense expressions cannot be names. And while Ryle, as we have seen, insists that concepts are understood not singly, but in their interrelations, it is not clear whether he has ever extended the use of the expression "name" to mean a possible subject of true predication as defined by a system of relations.

Ryle seems then to incline towards the distinguishing of a twofold function in language. Sometimes language is used as a refined and conventional substitute for pointing, and in this sense words are names. But mature language users more commonly use language as a means of expressing, communicating or stimulating understanding, and in this sense Ryle seems to maintain that most words are not names. Whether or not words can be names without being used as a substitute for pointing, wther or not there can be referential expressions whose terms of reference are not directly mediated by sense, Ryle does not say. However, he does say that "I" is not a proper name, but an index-word,⁸ and that the conceptual geography of "I," "you" and "he" is not yet satisfactorily established.⁹

There are many types of human thinking, Ryle claims. Mathematics cannot be classed as empirical science, and philosophy is not to be reduced either to mathematics or to science. Modern logic has provided us with a fairly large number of categories, but it has not yet provided us with nearly enough. There is an endless variety of categories, countless types of concepts, an unlimited range of types and orders of abstract ideas. To what category should we assign "check-mate," "deuce," "trump-card," "revoke" and "grand slam"? Very often we cannot even thing about the question at all, unless we know the circumstances of the employment of the term: think of the social factors involved in the concept of "price."¹⁰

Ryle would say it is correct to ask the relation between say "father," "son," "mother," "aunt" and "in-laws." It would also be in order to ask the relation between "trump," "grand slam," "singleton" and "revoke." But what would we make of someone who wanted to know the relation between "singleton" and "in-laws"? Relations can be conceived to hold, says Ryle, only between terms of the same type or level.¹¹ Perhaps this possibility of defining, say "son," in terms of its relations to other expressions provides us with a use for the expression "name" not tied up with the symbolic use of expressions, when they are used as gesture-or-attitude-substitutes or as names-of-sensed-objects. Recalling Ryle's insistence, against Plato, that G-d, if He exists, is a particular, not an idea, we could ask whether the expression "G-d" can be a name.

The grammatical structure of language does not, in Ryle's view, faithfully reflect the logical structure of language, and ordinary syntax does not coincide with logical syntax.¹² In ordinary language two expressions may be similar in grammatical structure, but unlike in logical structure. Alternatively two expressions widely differing in grammatical form may be identical in logical syntax. When two expressions differing in grammar have the same meaning, one expression may by its grammatical structure incline one to misunderstand its logical force, while the other expression is less misleading. In theory there could be any number of misleading sorts of grammatical expressions; in practice the number of types of expressions which are usually misleading, unless special precautions be taken, is probably a small one. Common sense is normally enough to preserve us from falling into nonsense.¹³

On the other hand, insists Professor Ryle, it is very rare that we are fully conscious of all the logical powers of the expressions we use.¹⁴ Words are not related to the sentences in which they function as atoms are related to molecules, nor as letters are related to words, but rather somewhat as a tennis-racket is related to the strokes made with it.¹⁵ Any proposition we care to mention follows from some propositions as a conclusion, implies others as its consequences, is compatible with these and incompatible with those - in a word, every expression has what can be called a skein of implication threads.¹⁶ Now it sometimes happens that the implication threads of one expression get entangled with those of another in a confusing way - we use words, phrases, sentences and arguments because they have certain meanings and implications that answer to our purposes. But we are never fully aware of all the implication threads of an expression. It happens from time to time that expressions incautiously chosen reveal in the use we make of them inconvenient implications that seem to thwart the ends we had in view - perhaps even make us appear to be talking nonsense: I place a straight stick in water and see that it is bent. When implication threads in the web of human speech pull across or against each other in this way, we try to get ourselves disentangled by talking not just with words, or in words, but about words, and about their use.¹⁷ The reason why one cannot manage to intuit the essence of "not" or "the" is that they only have meaning in the context of a complete sentence,¹⁸ where they are used to refer directly or indirectly to things or happenings. Not all naming is saying, not all saying is naming.

Must all things and happenings be things or happenings to which one can, in principle, point? Ryle is at any rate certain that there are no subsistent ideas. There are things and happenings, and among these things are to be found language-users. What is an authentic object? Ryle does not know. Language-users agree that whatever authentic objects may be, certain more or less arbitrarily chosen propositions signify them.¹⁹ Concrete words are directly, and abstract words indirectly about things or happenings. Negative expressions can be significant because when the predicate denied is denied as one member of a disjunctive set of predicates, some other one of these is by this denial indirectly affirmed.²⁰

Philosophical inquiries tells us the nature of things, Ryle holds, if by the nature of things we mean coming to understand why the Equator can be crossed but not seen, or why the Cheshire Cat cannot leave its smile on the tree when it takes its departure.²¹ But it is now more usual in philosophy to ask not what sort of thing is the Equator, but what sort of expression is "the Equator."²²

Russell said that two concepts belong to the same category of they will fit significantly as alternatives in the gap in the same sentence-frame. Ryle criticized Russell's view, saying that it was really a negative criterion. The words "Socrates," "Plato," "Aristotle," "Plotinus" will all go truly or falsely but significantly into the sentence-frames: "… is wise," "… a philosopher," "… a well-known writer" and "… is buried in Syracuse." On the other hand, it is nonsense to say: "And is a well-known writer," "The is buried in Syracuse," "The tuning-fork is wise," or "The last words on this page is a philosopher." Two expressions are in Ryle's view of different types if one of them can, and the other cannot be used to fill the gap in a given sentence-frame or sentence-skeleton. Expressions of the same type can be said to form a family.²³

Ryle explains the mistaken theory of meaning in terms of an inadequatedly developed skill in the use of words, i.e., in terms of a failing in know-how. He thinks that any uncharted concept, any ideas as yet not fully explored, any expression whose implication threads we are not fully aware of, can confront us with a type problem, to which a solution must be found under pain of talking nonsense. New ideas very commonly have their attendant problems: how can Rugby really be a type of football if one is allowed to take the ball in one's hands - this was something of a problem to those previously only familiar with the rules of Soccer. New ideas, especially the new ideas of science in crucial moments of its advance, tend to shock the old-fashioned who regard them as heretical or at least dangerous, and to cast a spell over the young who tend to take it for granted that the older ideas must be cast aside to make room for the new. If we are to avoid fear of new ideas and lack of veneration for what is well-established, our unreflective habits of thought must be developed and transformed into self-conscious type-disciplines.²⁴

Ryle finds some type-trespasses interesting because the absurdity to which they lead is not immediately obvious, e.g., the well-known puzzles of the Class of Classes which are not members of themselves, the Liar, and Heterologicality.²⁵ Take the case of Heterologicality. Some people introduce themselves as soon as they meet someone; we can call them self-nominators. Other people do not so introduce themselves; call them non-self-nominators. It is clear that if I say "I am a self-nominator," I am neither giving my name, nor describing my name. I describe my name if I say "my name is a five letter word beginning with C (namely Colin)"; I cannot say "I am a self-nominator (namely Colin)." "English" is an English word, and "orthographic" is orthographic; "monosyllable" is not a monosyllable, and "Portuguese" is not Portuguese. We do not scan the library-shelves to see if there is a novel entitled "Fiction," nor do we ask whether "Man" is tall and wiry or slight and sluggish. In the same way, it is absurd to say that "heterological" is either heteroological or homological. I can say "nonsensical is heterological, i.e., it lacks the property for which it stands (namely that of being devoid of sense." I cannot say "heterological is heterological, i.e. it lacks the property for which it stands (namely that of lacking the property for which it stands [namely that of lacking the property for which it stands {namely …}])." "Heterological" operates at a different conceptual level, Ryle concludes, than the words it is used to qualify, and to neglect this fact is to court disaster in the shape of absurdity.²⁶

Some interpreters of Ryle consider that he tends to treat many philosophical problems as mere puzzles, and to regard philosophical confusion as a mere inflammation of the intellect,²⁷ even if, in contrast with Wittgenstein, he thinks such inflammation the sign of normal growth rather than a symptom of disease. Ryle notes that the presence of nonsense or confusion in language has led philosophers to dream of an ideal language with either no type-differences, or at least with only such as are clearly specified. But only dead birds can be stuffed. Our practice of using not only precise reference and clear statement, but also hints, metaphors and rough approximations is an indispensabe condition of progress, and the danger of falling into at least momentary confusion is the price of every advance in knowledge. We must build the house before we can learn to live in it. Let us by all means look before we leap, but if we refuse to jump except where there are bridges, our exploration of virgin territories will not progress very far.²⁸

Ryle insists that the philosopher does not only analyse. He is not occupied in the visual inspection of the logical powers of expressions. The philosopher argues, and the argument he employs can be called a dialectical argument, although this is perhaps only a synonym for "philosophical argument." The philosopher operates upon expressions and tries to derive paralogisms and antinomies from employing them in certain ways. The genesis of such absurdities reveals that the expression in question cannot be lawfully employed in that way. The philosophical argument is, then, a reductio ad absurdum argument of the mode ponendo tollens: If this expressions has certain logical powers, it will be possible to employ it in such and such a way; but the attempted employment of it in that way leads to paradox and absurdity; hence, it has not those logical powers. In its weak form, used also by Euclid in his geometry, the argument shows that an expressions lacks certain logical powers and hence cannot be employed in such and such a way; in the strong form, which is proper and even proprietary to philosophy, the argument shows that the expression has no logical powers at all, and hence that it has no proper employment.²⁹

It may be objected that the reductio ad absurdum argument, however effective it may be, is entirely destructive, and has no positive value. But the reply is easy. Engineers cause metals and alloys to be pushed and pulled, twisted and strained, hammered and battered till they lose whatever good qualities they had. But the engineers' purpose is not a destructive one. They do, it is true, discover what the metal will not stand up to. In a similar way, the philosopher's object in attempting to employ the reductio ad absurdum method is to find out the positive logical powers of the expressions under examination. It is pleasant to think of chancing upon some more direct and less tedious way of arriving at this result, but the dream is an idle one: for we never fully realize the capacities of a person or thing or expression unless we realize also the accompanying limitations. The limitations of meaning are nonsense, and it is in the course of the employment of the reductio ad absurdum argument that nonsense is brought to light.³⁰

But while the generation of paralogisms and antinomies reveals the presence of absurdity, Ryle feels there is no way of proving that a given expression will never lead to absurdity. How many ways there are in which expressions can mislead us, he does not know; probably there is theoretically an unlimited number of ways in which we could be led astray, of course, but the number of ways in which we are misled is in practice probably fairly small.³¹

Notes:
1. Systematically Misleading Expressions.
2. Categories, 65; CM 8: "Philosophy is the replacement of category-habits by category-disciplines."
3. D 119; Ph 69-72.
4. Systematically Misleading Expressions, 13; Categories, 65; Plato's Parmenides, 140-41; D 119: "There remains a very important way in which the adjective 'logical' is properly used to characterize both the inquiries which belong to Formal Logic and the inquiries which belong to philosophy. The Formal Logician really is working out the logic of 'and,' 'not,' all,' 'some,' etc., and the philosopher really is exploring the logic of the concepts of 'pleasure,' 'seeing,' 'chance,' etc., even though the work of the one is greatly unlike the work of the other in procedure and in objectives." Cfr 1950, Weldon, 267: "The keyword is, of course, 'type fallacy' or 'category mistake,' and the line of thought can be traced back to Russell's solution of logical paradoxes. There are some types of statement which are logically inadmissible even though they are grammatically correct. Originally this was a point about formal logic, but it is now employed to clarify the logical grammar of mental occurrence words," i.e., in The Concept of Mind.
5. Thinking and Language, 71.
6. Are there Propositions?, 121. 126; reply to discussion of Are there Propositions?, 334; Systematically Misleading Expressions, 24.
7. Ibid., 25.
8. CM 188.
9. Ph 84.
10. review of Nature of Thought, 326-27; PA 340-43; Logic and Professor Anderson, 147; D 10. 89-92. 114; The Theory of Meaning, 255.
11. Plato's Parmenides, 140-41.
12. review of Foundations of Phenomenology, 263-64; The Theory of Meaning, 245-48.
13. Systematically Misleading Expressions, 33-36; review of Communication, 366.
14. PA 331-32.
15. The Theory of Meaning, 249.
16. Abstractions, 12-14.
17. Ibid., 15-16.
18. Ph 70.
19. Ph 92.
20. Negation, 86.
21. Categories, 81.
22. review of Communication, 366; Proofs in Philosophy. In contrast with this stress on expressions is the curious position of Robinson (1931, 73-78) who appears to agree with Ryle that there are no propositions, but to maintain that the objects of mathematics are some sort of real universals, that there may be an infinite number of modes of being for expressions to mean, and that false statements mean real non-existent facts. In general Robinson seems to say that all words stand for real entities.
23. Categories, 77-78; PA 331-32. 342.
24. Categories, 78-79; Welcoming speech to the 4th International Congress for Unified Science, 305; review of Communication, 366; PA 335; CM 8; D 127-28.
25. Categories, 75-78; review of Communication, 366.
26. Heterologicality, 45-53.
27. 1954, Quinton, 90-91. Cfr 1956, Caillois, 1069: "La leçon de ce livre, semble-t-il, qu'il suffirait de parler correctement, en bonne logique, pour que le puzzle soit résolut." anon in Month (1954, 127): "He has not avoided a sort of over-simplification which to the 'even slightly initiated reader' appears at times verbose if not a little annoying." 1955, Ambrose, 156: "The mistakes he finds… are not integral to the dilemnas but to a particular way of posing them."
28. PA 340: "The capacity of familiar dictions to acquire new inflections of logical forces is one of the chief factors making original thought possible. A new thought cannot find a new vehicle ready made for it, nor can the discrimination of the logical powers of new ideas precede the birth of the knowledge (by wont) of how to thiink with them. As some spanners are designed to be adjustable, so as to fit bolts of the same shape but different sizes, so, though undesigned, those linguistic instruments of thought are found to be most handy which are the most readily adjustable. The suggestion that men should coin a different diction to correspond with every difference in the logical powers of ideas… is like suggesting that drill should precede the formation of habits or that children should be taught the rules of grammar before learning to talk."
29. Systematically Misleading Expressions, 35-36; Taking Sides in Philosophy, 326; Categories, 75-81; PA 330. 335-37; The Theory of Meaning, 264; Abstractions, 15-16.
30. PA 330-31.
31. Systematically Misleading Expressions, 35-36. Ryle does say: Ph 29 - "Il est bien certain que lorsque j'écrivais l'article qu'on a cité Systematically Misleading Expressions j'étais encore sous l'influence directe de la doctrine du langage idéal." But even at that time one hesitates to say he in any sense committed himself to such a rigid doctrine.

PHILOSOPHY AND LANGUAGE

Ordinary usage is often somehow taken by Professor Ryle as an argument in favour of some philosophical position, or at least of some position that calls for philosophical discussion. The expressions "popular fallacies," "widespread beliefs," "teaching," "persuasion," "agreement," "disagreement" and "understanding" are offered to prove that we normally take it for granted that several minds can think the same thing.¹ The fact that we "tell" the truth, or "say" things truly, and that we ask not whether it is true to "say" such and such indicates that only sentences are true or false.² There are admitted uses for "some" and "other".³ "Discretion" and "caution" in certain uses resemble "conscience," which is not too vague and equivocal a word to have a definite syntax of its own.⁴ The question is pointedly asked as to what we mean by "judicious behaviour," "scrupulous conduct" and "skilful or careful action."⁵ The verb to "exist" is said to be philosophically interesting.⁶ It is denied that the verb "will" has any ingenuous employment, and affirmed that ordinary language provides no specific intelligence verbs.⁷ It is considered a fault in Carnap that he says nothing of the ordinary use of "may," "must," "cannot," "possible" or "necessary."⁸ It is thought significant that we don't speak of "smelling or feeling in our heads,"⁹ Symbols, we are told, are not ordinarily thought of as words.¹⁰ Our ordinary ways of describing our ponderings and musings are graphical and not literal.¹¹ On the other hand, although Copleston seems to regard The Concept of Mind as an apotheosis of ordinary language,¹² Ryle says that certain thorny puzzles cannot be solved by the happy knack of making fine distinctions in the sense of ordinary English words.¹³

In 1952 Herbst wrote: "It is a pity that Professor Ryle and like-minded philosophers have never produced a major article dealing specifically with the question of how it is that in order to be able to answer philosophical questions it is frequently necessary to examine the uses that are made of certain gestures, words, phrases, expressions, sentences or utterances."¹⁴ From what has been said, part of the answer is that knowledge is expressed not in names, but in sentences, and that abstract words, being shorthand references to ranges of sentences, can only be understood in relation to these expressions. But in 1953 Ryle published an article Ordinary Language.

In the first place, Ryle says that it is always a good thing to avoid jargon. Some philosophical jargon is devoid of sense, and discussing science philosophically in scientific jargon would hinder the taking of the cross-bearings of the concepts of science. Use of ordinary language also serves to emphasise one's belief that the ideal language is not a concrete possibility, but a myth.¹⁵ Some philosophers still lament that one expression can stand for many ideas, but new thoughts cannot find ready-made vehicles; they must make the best of the old. The discrimination of the logical powers of ideas necessarily presupposes direct acquaintance with these logical powers in use. Language drills can only be built on to language habits, and the fact that as spanners can be adjustable, so words can be stretched out into new meanings is, in Ryle's opinion, an asset rather than a liability.¹⁶ Even when philosophical clarification is called for to resolve some type-problem, it rarely happens that naïive language users fall into doubt or confusion, or need the help of the philosopher.¹⁷ It is the philosopher who is likely to be misunderstood by his fellows and called a Platonist or Realist if he dares to use a metaphor.¹⁸

Philosophy, says Ryle (refining his early and looser terminology¹⁹), does not discuss the ordinary usage of words,²⁰ since such a discussion could achieve nothing: by definition all usage is accepted usage, and in philosophy it is anyhow enough to know how one is using the word oneself and how it will be understood. Philosophy is not philology or sociology.²¹ In so far as the truth conditions of uttered or written speech are determined by convention, the problem of truth is of very slight philosophical importance. It is not the philosophers' task to determine what must be the pattern of sound-waves or the shape of markings on paper in order that they may be capable of stating facts.²² If necessary propositions such as "whoever is a tennis-player is a human being" could be described adequately as language-rules, there would not be the slightest difference between errant nonsense and merely bad English.²³

Ryle states that many, though not all, philosophical discussions regard the ordinary or stock use of either ordinary or out-of-the-way expressions in specialized exoteric or popular esoteric and especially in ordinary or universal discourse (e.g., "cause," "evidence," "knowledge," "mistake," "ought" and "can"), with a view to the extraction of the logical rules implicitly governing the ways of operating with these expressions.²⁴

The normal or standard (even if not the customary) employment of statements is to express knowledge, Ryle thinks, and words which look like names should only be used as names, though they are often used as fictitious designations.²⁵ Some grammatical forms are from a logical standpoint less misleading than others. But despite the opinions of the younger Wittgenstein, the relation of grammatical to logical form in the structure of a non-misleading statement is not the natural relation of, say, the reflection of Narcissus' face in the pool to the caste of his features themselves. Customary usage is after all perfectly tolerant of a host of misleading expressions, so that the relation of grammatical to logical form would seem to be more conventional than natural, even though it is not merely a relation of convention.²⁶ Wittgenstein, Ryle has said recently, decided that certain expressions in human language were meaningful and with this decision as his base, tried, in the light of language as a whole, to determine their correct analysis. And Ryle himself regards as more or less arbitrary the choice of propositions said to enjoy objective significance.²⁷

Ayer has written: "In the work of philosophers like Wittgenstein and Ryle, no special attention is paid to niceties of language… They are not concerned with discriminating shades of meaning… They are concerned with those concepts, or families of concepts, which, for one reason or another, have given trouble to philosophers, and their aim is to dispel the confusions which have grown around them… This aim is not merely negative: the removal of our philosophical perplexities should leave us with a better understanding of the rôles that these concepts really do fulfil; in certain cases it may even put us in a position to amend them. The method is simply to take a new look at the facts. Thus Ryle tries to make us fix our attention on the actual phenomena of what is supposed to be our mental life… The emphasis is not on verbal habits themselves, but on the situations to which they are adapted."²⁸ (Ryle might not loke the words "look" and "habits", nor agree with Ayer's use of "phenomena.")

Ryle therefore finds it highly misleading to call philosophy linguistic or non-linguistic; it regards use. (Although one can discuss philosophically the utility of an expressions, he says, use is not here used in that sense, just as it is not used to mean "usage.") The words "concept," "idea" and "meaning" were not unacceptable in themselves, but they had unfortunate overtones, and "meaning" suggested that to "mean" related an expression to an entity, "meaning" being a proper name of both an entity and a relation. Use avoids this misunderstanding and has the advantage of stressing that we have to learn to use and can misuse concepts. One who understands a word or phrase knows how to use it, and if it cannot be used it is meaningless. Sentences, on the other hand, cannot be understood in this way, nor can they be misused - they are seen to be sensible or senseless, stupid and nonsensical, but they cannot be meaningless or meaningful.²⁹ Ideas are skills in the use of words, but sentences are applications of one's skill.³⁰ The use of words, then, is that skill or know-how which can also be called having a concept or idea, or knowing a meaning; it is a human ability, not an animal habit. This fact, coupled with its consequence that the cut and dried solutions obtained by applying the law of contradiction are not always straightaway applicable to ordinary language, may somewhat undermine Ryle's contention elsewhere that Philosophy is Logic.

Notes:
1. Are there Propositions?, 99: note the year - 1930.
2. Ibid., 125.
3. Internal Relations, 64.
4. Conscience and Moral Conviction, 156. 161.
5. Ibid., 165.
6. PA 339.
7. Knowing How and Knowing That, 4.
8. review of Meaning and Necessity, 69.
9. CM 38-39.
10. Thinking and Language, 71.
11. Ibid., 73-76.
12. 1955, Copleston, 13-14: "There are a number of analysts who are inclined to think that philosophical problems and theories are due to linguistic confusion. Chief among them is Professor G. Ryle… The extreme nature of Professor Ryle's conception of philosophy is, however, somewhat concealed and in any case rendered palatable to many by his thoroughly common-sense and 'no nonsense' attitude, evidenced by his appeals to 'ordinary language'… An elaborate example of this type of analysis is provided by Professor Ryle's work The Concept of Mind." 1960, Copleston, 36: "Wittgenstein, ut vidimus, locutus est de revocatione verborum ab usu metaphysico ad usum quotidianum… The Concept of Mind illustrat 'revocationem' hoc sensu intellectum."
13. Induction and Hypothesis, 38.
14. 1952, Herbst, 90.
15. Ordinary Language, 36-39.
16. PA 340.
17. Systematically Misleading Expressions, 13.
18. reply to La notion de possibilité dans l'analyse logique de l'esprit de Gilbert Ryle, 126-27.
19. Cfr 1952, Herbst, 96: "Ryle may at one time have come close to claiming that he was doing analysis of language though it is clear that if he thought this, he was mistaken about the nature of his own work."
20. Ibid., 91: "They do not contend that philosophy consists in the study of usages. But they do think that the study of use (note that critics generally confuse use with usage) or language puts us into the position to give reasons for our philosophical opinions."
21. Ordinary Language, 31-35.
22. Are there Propositions?, 126: "'The problem of truth' is of extremely slight philosophical importance. There are important logical problems about the forms of facts, important epistemological problems about the nature of knowing, believing, opining, etc., and, anyhow, an interesting psychological problem as to what makes us believe what we do not know. But a study of the properties of sentences and markings on paper in virtue of which they state or do not state facts and are or are not maps seems a very departmental question."
23. review of Communication, 369. Cfr 1957, Hampshire, 273: "A philosopher may be concerned, not to clarify the conventions of use of any one vocabulary, but rather to take instances to show the conditions of use of any such vocabulary; if so, the proper titles of this work is The Concept of Mind, and not the word 'mind.' Professor Ryle, like Descartes and Hume before him, takes examples from the contemporary English vocabulary to illustrate the requirements which any such vocabulary must satisfy in its application." 1957, Passmore, 449: "Ryle does not engage in close linguistic analyses." This fact that Ryle is concerned not with philology and usage, but with use and philosophy should be remembered when reading such statements as that of Garelli (1958, 48): "Par la méthode 'analytique du langage,' le Professeur Ryle n'étude pas directement l'esprit, mais uniquement la manière dont on en parle." 1952, Hanson, 246. 248: "It is generally supposed that Professor Ryle is talking about minds. This is not so. He is talking only about 'minds'… He often forgets his own good intentions and discusses questions about things instead of questions about the concepts of those things."
24. Ordinary Language, 24-28.
25. Are there Propositions?, 119
26. Systematically Misleading Expressions, 34.
27. Ph 92.
28. 1963, Ayer, 23. 25.
29. Ordinary Language, 28-30. According ot A. R. White (1956, 2-3): Ryle "should have drawn the conclusion that sentences are not used in the way that words are… and not the conclusion which he does explicitly draw that we cannot speak of the use of sentences… Ryle and Evans… suggest that there is not in the case of sentences anything corresponding to a dictionary in the case of words. But dictionaries of quotations, phrase books for foreigners, books on the art of polite or genteel conversation, intructions in lifemanship, all teach the use of sentences…" He adds (p.4 note 2) that "Ryle, in correspondence, has kindly pointed out… that his case would be better supported by arguing that the notion of nonsense cannot be elucidated in terms of the misuse of sentences, but of words." C. E. Caton (1956, 87-92) maintains that Ryle and White fail to distinguish between what-for questions of the form 'what are X's used for?' and what-for questions of the form 'what did Y use that X for?' He thinks that Ryle's point regarded what-for questions of the first type, and that while White's examples come from both groups, they principally relate to what-for questions of the second type, which are not so much about X as about Y's purposes. He concludes: "The issue remaining between Ryle and White now appears to be whether or not the answer to a type-one what-for question about a sentence states part of its use. It is not clear that White has asserted this… But it does seem that Ryle would not assert it, since he denies that there is such a sthing as the use of a sentence, that is, he denies that we can ask whether someone knows how to use a certain sentence."
30. Cfr CM 307-09; Use, Usage and Meaning - Word : Sentence :: Language : Speech :: Road : Journey :: Capital : Trade :: Bat : Stroke :: Gallows : Execution…

PROOFS IN PHILOSOPHY - THE EXISTENCE OF G-D

Certain things are proved in logic and mathematics, i.e., they are shown to be reducible to fundamental postulates by the consistent application of the logical law on contradiction. In ordinary discourse, where words are polyvalent and fluid, this steretyped technique is not as effective: and of course Ryle's reductio ad absurdum argument far from being a purefly formal logical device, is a striking instance of his application of the principle of sufficient reason, of his powers of "rational consideration," of his avoidance of being "silly."¹ If we reserve the word "prove" for formal logical proof, and use the word "establish" for other rational demonstrations, we will, perhaps, avoid unnecessary confusion.

Ryle has told us what he thinks philosophy is. He has outlined a method of philosophy. But are there any positive results? Can philosophers prove or establish anything? According to Ryle, it is an important question about philosophical arguments whether or not we can by their use establish the existence of anything.² Prof. Collingwood, for example, considers that all philosophical propositions are categorical in form, in the sense of dealing with what exists. Aristotle said reality or being was the object of philosophy. Hegel says that the philosopher's concern is with die Sache selbst. On the other hand, Kant and Plato only excluded the hypothetical from philosophy in the sense that they said philosophy could not consist in the deduction of conclusions from hypothetical premisses.³

Many philosophers have, as well as analysing terms, offered proofs or would-be proofs of, for instance, the existence of G-d and the immortality of the soul. Ryle, therefore, does not go so far as to say that philosophers cannot provide us with proofs for the existence of things, just as he does not deny that tennis-players can score goals.⁴ Ryle's use of the word "proof" in this connection seems to imply, which may not be the case, that past philosophers offered their arguments, for, e.g., G-d's existence and the soul's immortality as watertight, logical, impersonal proofs, and not that they attempted to mediate a personal, rational approach to a personal and rational solution of a personal problem. On the other hand, if seriously meant, his concession that philosophers might be able to prove the existence of some things or others, would seem to indicate that he means what I have called "establish" rather than "prove." If this is so, he does not exclude the personal interpretation of these previous arguments. The analogy of the tennis-player seems to suggest, besides, that just as tennis-players who score goals are not at that moment, and in that respect playing tennis, so philosophers who provide us with proofs for the existence of something or other are not doing philosophy. If this means that existence-proofs "establish," while philosophy, being a form of logic, deals only in "proof," it would be hard to find a place for his own reductio ad absurdum arguments in philosophy. If he merely means that existence-propositions cannot be established in philosophy, it is hard to see how they could be established anywhere else. The precise interpretation of his views is, therefore, hard to determine. He sometimes speaks as though Philosophy was very close to Logic, but in his practice is is the lack of identity that is most in evidence.⁵

Philosophy, in Ryles's view, is without any presuppositions at all and is never a Euclidean or non-Euclidean geometrical deduction. There can be alternative geometries, but there are not alternative philosophies. Philosophy is not deduction. It has no axioms or postulates. Philosophical principles, he says, are never self-evident.

Further, philosophy is not induction.⁶ The principles and conclusions of inductions can be denied without absurdity, and are never more than probable. But philosophy cannot be satisfied with probability in this sense. Even a probable philosophical argument has to be probably certain, i.e., plausible, it cannot be just probably probable. Fictions and guesses are just as useful examples in philosophy as are hard facts and well-established hypotheses. On the other hand, even concrete facts are not philosophical evidence. Philosophy is not psychology, and does not rest on the evidence of experiment and observation.⁷

Now it is clear enough that existence propositions cannot be "proved," but that they cannot be "established" is a further point. Ryle has pointed out that it would be foolish to deny the existence of type-writers - though not proved, the fact of their existence is well established.⁸ But here Ryle seems to be at variance with his own approval of Moore's realization that existence propositions can always be denied without absurdity.⁹ Perhaps in the latter case he speaks of "absurdity" in some narrow sense, and not in the wider sense covered by his reductio ad absurdum arguments. He says elsewhere that there is never a valid inference from the occurrence of a name-like noise to the existence of some person or thing bearing that name - we can only argue that the noise in question is a name, if there is in existence a thing or person such as it professes to designate.¹⁰

Since Ryle holds that there are no such things as ideas, Ontology - the science of ideas - he regards as a blunder to be avoided. And if Ontology is out, he takes it that Metaphysics is out. But since Philosophy has its place as the study of meaning, the absence of Metaphysics need not trouble us. There is no force at all, he thinks, in the argument that philosophy is left without a proper subject-matter, unless it is allowed access to some special entity. The task of philosophy is the second order task of conceptual revision.¹¹ It aims at truth, just as, no doubt, it often falls into falsehood. But since its statements are made at a different level than are concrete statements, they are true or false in a different way.¹²

Notes
1. Taking Sides in Philosophy, 323: "rational consideration"; review of Nature of Thought, 327: "silly"; cfr Thinking and Language, 81.
2. reply to Mr. Ryle and the Ontological Argument, 53.
3. Mr. Collingwood on the Ontological Argument, 138-40.
4. Proofs in Philosophy, 150-57; The Nature of Metaphysics, 164.
5. Cfr anon. in Times Literary Supplement, 7/4/1950, XI: "Where Professor Ryle says that something has been wrongly taken to belong to a certain 'logical' category or to be of a certain logical type, it is not easy to see why 'logical' might not be omitted without loss… For the author 'logic' still has a mystique, which leads him, for example, regularly to express a preference in clinching his arguments, for some rather unconvincing appeal to an 'infinite regress,' rather than for his own convincing elucidations of the correct meanings and usages of words, about which he is inclined, in his preface, to be unnecessarily apologetic. The fact is that Professor Ryle does not confine himself to any single technique or method of argument."
6. For a discussion of Induction, see below.
7. Taking Sides in Philosophy, 324-27; PA 329-30.
8. Vide supra.
9. review of Communication, 368.
10. Are there Propositions?, 120.
11. Mr. Collingwood on the Ontological Argument, 146; The Nature of Metaphysics, 144-50; cfr 1952, Hanson, 246-47: "It is presumed that he is examining emotions, dispositions, sensations, and imaginations… But, in fact, he has said nothing on these matters. He is concerned solely with 'emotions,' 'dispositions,' 'sensations' and 'imaginations.' The Concept of Mind is a second-order commentary on first-order talk about minds. As such, it makes no assertion whatever as to the existence of or non-existence of minds… Ryle merely says that, despite the pressure theorists have put on our ordinary language, ordinary language fails to be Cartesian. This is the point of the book, and it is a second-order point."
1951, Copleston, 328: "What he wishes to show is not that there is no mental life, but that, in the Cartesian myth, the facts of mental life are allocated to one range of logical types or categories when they actually belong to another." Cfr 1959, Gould, 299.
12. Ph 29.

THE EXISTENCE OF G-D

Take, for example, the problem of the existence of G-d. Ryle says that when Bradley was a young man theological problems occupied a central place in philosophical discussions, and the opinions of Renan, Newman and Colenso were eagerly debated. But for the last fifty years philosophy and theology have been hardly on speaking terms. The problems of philosophy come from the thought of such men as Cantor, Clark Maxwell, Mendel, Karl Marx, Frazer and Freud, and rarely from theology. This state of affairs, which Ryle considered to hold in 1956 and 1957,¹ would, he said, please Hume, though it would not be to the liking of St. Thomas Aquinas. He also admitted that many ordinary people alive today miss theological metaphysics. They expect philosophers to argue in favour of conclusions which are theologically interesting - interesting, perhaps, because shocking, as, e.g., Materialism, Deism or Pantheism.²

If philosophers easily forget theological problems, Ryle suggests that this may because theologians do not give them many forceful reminders of them. The philosopher cannot be expected to set about unravelling conceptual knots he is unaware of. But to say that philosophers do not give much attention to philosophical theology (religion is, of course, another matter), is not to say that they give no attention at all.³

Treating of the nature of conscience, Ryle himself remarks that if we regard G-d as omniscient, we do not therefore suppose that His conscience reproaches us for our wrong-doing. And the notion of conscience he attributes to the opinion, prevalent at the time of the Reformation if not earlier, that man could, by self-inspection discover the requirements of G-d.⁴ In The Concept of Mind he says that the Protestants thought they could discover the wishes of G-d in their regard by the aid of the G-d-given light of conscience.⁵ In Dilemnas he mentions that there is a mixed theological argument for predestination that takes account of G-d's foreknowledge.⁶ In all these places it would appear that the word "G-d" is, in some sense, used significantly. Does G-d exist?

When theists and atheists argue for and against the existence of G-d, though their differences may be many, they do not, Ryle thinks, usually differ in their notions of existence and non-existence. But these notions, as we have seen, present a philosophical problem. How can non-existence be ascribed to anything?⁷ Let us examine the expression "G-d exists." It goes without saying that whatever we conclude about this expression will be applicable to the parallel expressions, "G-d is an entity," "G-d has being," "G-d is existent" and "G-d has existence."⁸

Ryle examines the Anselmian argument: G-d is perfect; being perfect involves existing; g-d exists.⁹ What is the force, he asks, of this word "involves"? Obviously, there is a sense in which any quality or attribute at all involves existence, viz., if such and such is green, or circular, or old-fashioned, etc., such and such exists. But this hypothetical involving does not prove anything. "Involves" could also be used as equivalent to "entails" - in this sense the genus is always entailed in its species; being triangular involves having a shape, seeing an æroplane involves perception, and so on. But existence is not a genus, and so it cannot be entailed in this way. "Involves" sometimes means implies in accordance with natural law, as perhaps freely suspending an inert body at a point two miles above the Earth's surface involves its falling towards the Earth at a specified velocity with a specified acceleration. Only by induction can we discover if one thing involves another in this sense.¹⁰

If the Ontological Argument is to be a valid a priori argument, "involves" must have the sense of includes as a part or constituent. In this sense, humanity involves rationality, living in England involves living on an island, and so on. But only if existence is a predicate, Ryle reminds us, can existence be involved as a part of the predicate "being perfect."¹¹ How can "someone is Divine" follow necessarily from "anyone who is Divine is also perfect"?¹² As Kant has shown, existence is not a quality.¹³ Having attributes is not iself an extra attribute.¹⁴ No existence proposition is logically necessary. No existence proposition can be demonstrated by a priori reasoning. No existence proposition is of such logical form that there is a contradiction in denying it.¹⁵ If existence is not a predicate, it follows that in the expression "G-d exists," "G-d" is not the logical subject. In fact, "G-d" is really the predicate. Put in logical form, "G-d exists" becomes: "Something, and one thing only, is omniscient, omnipotent and infinitely good (or whatever else are the characteris summed up on the compound character of being a god and of being the only G-d)."¹⁶

Before going on to ask whether it can be proved philosophically that "something, and one thing only, is omniscient, omnipotent and infinitely good," one may note that while 'Ryule holds ideas to be skills in the use of words, in his examination of the Anselmian argument he prefers to concentrate on the formal logical characteristics of the verbal expressions, rather than to ask what sort of incipient skill may be revealed by their use, and what the possession of this skill or the attempt to acquire it involves, involves, that is, not logically but reasonably.

But Ryle does take note of Collingwood's argument that when thought follows its natural bent most completely and tries to work out the idea of an object that will fully satisfy the demands of reason it forms the idea of a perfect being. This idea seems to be a mere ens rationis, but it is never without objective reference.¹⁷

Ryle wonders why an idea should be supposed to satisfy the demands of reason, how the intellect could be dissatisfied with an idea, and why it should be thought that reason is following its own natural bent most completely when it starts theorising, and not, for instance, when a man goes off exploring in quest of new worlds.¹⁸ A reply to Ryle's question seems to be attempted by Harris who says that even in the case of sensations we are having at this present time, no mere sense-perception nor collection of sensations nor judgment of perception nor collection of such judgments can ever prove the existence of anything at all, over and above our present momentary states of consciousness. But these perceptions do warrant our inferring to matters of fact. The demand of our intellect for a systematic characterization of our experience does not prove the existence of anything, but it confronts us with the alternative, "this fact or nothing" - and we must either choose this fact, or commit intellectual suicide. To choose this fact, Harris concludes, is to admit the systematic character of our experience demanded by reason, and this is to admit G-d.¹⁹

Mr. Harris' position seems to be that G-d's existence cannot be proved a posteriori,²⁰ that unless G-d's existence is known nothing can be known,²¹ and hence that, since we want to know things, G-d exists.²² Here (p. 477) is his formulation of the proof of G-d's existence:

""If the world of everyday experience is to be intelligible ultimately (i.e., philosophically) it must be regarded as a part, or an aspect, or an appearance (according to the view taken) of an Absolute Whole of reality transcending the experience of finite things. This Absolute is to be identified with what the authors of the Ontological Argument call the most perfect being."

"Arguments for the existence of fountain-pens or remote planets, or for the occurrence of past events have very complex premisses… And of course such arguments can never constitute rigorous proofs… However, we should be foolish not to accept the conclusions of hosts of such arguments. And if the argument for the Absolute is really of the same logical pattern, and if the premisses have the required empirical content plus systematic interlocking, we shall be foolish not to accept the conclusion that G-d or the Absolute exists."

Mansel, a philosophical theologian with a good grounding in Kantian philosophy, held, according to Ryle, that psychology understood as the science of mental phenomena is the real basis of theological speculation.²⁵ If Mansel's position is accepted, it would follow, which is in fact Ryle's view, that G-d's existence cannot be proved in philosophy, for there are no such things as ideas in the sense of mental objects or Third Realm entities. G-d, if He exists at all, is a reality, not an idea, but the factual parts of theological doctrines must stand - if they stand anywhere at all - on grounds which are not philosophical grounds. Philosophy, Ryle claims, does not establish facts, but is a second-level inquiry that, for certain purposes, considers the relations of propositions among themselves. Since it is never logically absurd to deny any existence-propositions, ontology and hence metaphysics is out, and the existence of G-d cannot be proved in philosophy. The theologians may grumble at this, and demand that philosophy provide them with the non-observational premisses that they need to carry on with their work, and which they say that the positive sciences cannot give them. To grumble in this way is to act like the man in the car who because the railway-station couldn't supply him with petrol, said that the sweet-shop must satisfy his needs, because his journey was an important one.²⁶

Ryle's view of the nature of philosophy, then, determines his exclusion of philosophical proofs for the existence of G-d. He does not appear to deny any Theological doctrines. The Physicist, Theologian, Historian and Poet give us, he says, complementary and not opposed views or descriptions of one and the same reality.²⁷ "Ryle's doctrine of 'spheres of influence' has recently attracted a good many admirers, particularly amongs those who desire to be uncritically religious, without ceasing to be critically philosophical."²⁸

On the other hand, despite his concession that it would be foolish not to accept the arguments for the existence of fountain-pens or planets,²⁹ he does not examine, although he does mention, the argument for G-d's existence which can be expressed as follows: if the real is intelligible, G-d exists.³⁰ In other words, while he says that ideas are skills, it is their use that he seems to examine.

Ryle does not doubt but that there are big problems in philosophy, but he feels that it is useless to essay the resolution of large questions until one has managed to cope with lesser difficulties. French, German and Italian philosophers, he suspects, commonly are over eager to find out about Existence, Possibility and Personality in general. Let them tell us first how to use correctly the pronouns "I," "you" and "he."³¹ In England, he says, philosophy has just outgrown its old shell, and has not yet grown accustomed to its new habitat. The time is not yet ripe for attempts at synthesis. Meanwhile it is best to exercise oneself in philosophical tactics - grand strategy must wait its turn. The investigation of skills, we may perhaps paraphrase him, is important, but presupposes a sufficient grasp of use.

In any case Ryle for one does not intend to display anxieties about problems which do not really affect him.³² Metaphysical anguish is not unknown, but Ryle has said that James' most noteworthy contribution to philosophy was to restore to it what it had lost since Hume - a pinch of salt,³³ i.e., a sense of the ridiculous.

Notes
1. Note however Braithwaite 1955; Flew & MacIntryre, 1955; Mitchell, 1957; MacIntrye, 1959; Malcolm, 1960; Werner, 1965; Wisdom, 1953; Charlesworth, 1961; Crystal, 1965; Hepburn, 1958; Le Blond, 1965; 1957, Passmore; 1963, Zabeek; 1954, Anscombe; 1966, Charlesworth; etc.
2. Revolution in Philosophy, 1-4; The Nature of Metaphysics, 144-47. 155-57.
3. Ibid., 159-60.
4. Conscience and Moral Conviction, 156-57.
5. CM 159.
6. D 16.
7. Abstractions, 9-11.
8. Systematically Misleading Expressions, 20.
9. Ibid., 15.
10. Mr. Collingwood on the Ontological Argument, 144-47.
11. Ibid., 147.
12. Ibid., 142.
13. Systematically Misleading Expressions, 15.
14. Imaginary Objects, 19-21.
15. reply to Mr. Ryle and the Ontological Argument, 55.
16. Systematically Misleading Expressions, 15.
17. Mr. Collingwood on the Ontological Argument, 141.
18. Ibid.
19. 1936, Harris, 474-80. It is not clear whether or not Harris sufficiently distinguishes understanding from perception. He writes (p.475): "What is presented in sense-perception may, I suppose, be regarded as a 'matter of fact' and propositions stating perceived facts will be 'empirical' premisses."
20. Ibid., 479-80: "The sort of demonstration that can prove the existence of finite things, namely, reasoning from 'particular matters of fact' cannot be applied to G-d, for G-d is not a particular nor is Its existence a 'matter of fact' (in the sense that the existence of this computer is one). G-d possesses reality of another order. But this again is just the strength of the Ontological Argument - that it is not an attempt to prove from 'particular matters of fact' that G-d has existence like finite things."
21. Ibid., 476: "To prove the existence of a thing we must show on sufficient evidence that the things is a part of the system of things in space and time. The evidence is sufficient when to deny the conclusion to which it leads would disorganize the system. The necessity of the inference is due to the system, and lies ultimately in the impossibility of rejecting the system in its entirety."
22. Ibid., 477: "We must choose 'this fact' or commit intellectual suicide."
23. reply to Mr. Ryle and the Ontological Argument, 53-57.
24. Plato's Parmenides, 140-41.
25. The Theory of Meaning, 258.
26. The Nature of Metaphysics, 148-50.
27. D 80-81.
28. 1957, Passmore, 449.
29. see above.
30. reply to Mr. Ryle and the Ontological Argument, 55: "Mr. Harris… does not mean, I think, by 'unintelligible' 'not yet subsumed under a causal law'."
31. reply to La notion de possibilité dans l'analyse logique de l'esprit de Gilbert Ryle, 127; Ph 368.
32. The Nature of Metaphysics, 155-57.
33. Revolution in Philosophy, 9. In the Introduction to his Treatise on Human Nature David Hume wrote: "Nothing is more certain than that despair has almost the same effect upon us with enjoyment, and that we are no sooner acquainted with the impossibility of satisfying any desire, than the desire itself vanishes. When we see that we have arrived at the utmost extent of human reason, we sit down contented; though we be perfectly satisfied in the main of our ignorance, and perceive that we can give no reason for our most general and refined principles, beside our experience of their reality; which is the reason of the mere vulgar, and what it required no study at first to have discovered for the most particular and most extraordinary phenomenon. And as this impossibility of making any further progress is enough to satisify the reader, so the writer may derive a more delicate satisfaction from the free confession of his ignorance, and from his prudence in avoiding that error, into which so many have fallen, of imposing their conjectures and hypotheses on the world for the most certain principles. When this mutual contentment and satisfaction can be obtained betwixt master and scholar, I know not what more we can require of our philosophy."

COLLABORATION IN PHILOSOPHY

When Ryle says that the reductio ad absurdum method is proper to philosophy, he does not mean to exclude the possibility of sme other sorts of arguments also belonging to philosophy.¹ There is no harm in saying that the method of philosophy is necessarily analytic, provided it be granted that in this sense, any argument at all that works is "analytical."² There are no techniques in philosophy, no hard and fast rules of procedure.³ Sometimes ideas are worked out which solve a whole galaxy of problems, and their elaboration far from being the stereotyped product of technique is the privileged offspring of genius.⁴ The philosopher necessarily leaves home for good, avoids the highways, and makes off into the unknown never to return by the same route, but there to carry out his pioneering task of preparing the way for the advance of science.⁵ Hence, a philosopher worth his salt is never in full agreement with any other philosopher.⁶ There are no disciples in philosophy - to become a philosopher is to cease to be a disciple of anyone.⁷

Every philosopher will, of course, Ryle admits, have his preferences; he will be the victim of certain biases and tendencies. But these are to be fought against, not fostered. Least of all should a philosopher pin his flag to the party mast. There is no room for -isms in philosophy. Ryle, of course, is not recommending eclecticism. That is the worst of the -isms. The point he is making is that the party issues are not the real issues of philosophy. If a question has been disputed for long enough for opinions as to its solution to have had time to become associated with certain philosophical allegiances, this is a sure sign that the question is still doubtful - and so it is unphilosophical to commit oneself to one solution rather than another very easily. Moreover, the questions that divide rival schools of thought are resultant, not inaugurating problems; how one decides them will, no doubt, determine how one will answer a whole host of other questions, but one cannot face them at all until one has gone a good way along the philosophical road.⁸

Certainly the feeling of solidarity that comes from being a member of a recognized school, and the sense of real value in one's work that comes from having set beliefs, even irrational beliefs, does stimulate one in times of fatigue and difficulty by the enthusiasm and zeal that it gives rise to. Combativeness and team-spirit are undeniable assets. Pedagogically the idea that philosophers belong some to the right school and the rest, our opponents, to the wrong one has its advantages. Moreover for, say a Realist, the term "Idealist" is a handy form of abuse. More seriously, there is philosophical value in having at our disposal a variety of philosophical terminologies elaborated by various philosophical schools - it provides us with tools for our task of linguistic clarification. But there is no room for -isms in philosophy.⁹

Philosophers can, Ryle admits, be advantageously classed as Logicians, Moralists, Metaphysicians (perhaps), and so on, according to the department in which they chiefly excelled - though no philosopher worthy of the name ever confines himself entirely to one branch of the subject. It is also a historical fact that philosophers fall into two broad groupings in accordance with their character or temperament, so that while some are poets and prophets, others are grammarians and engineers. But in the face of this fact, one can either say that the people in one group are real philosophers, and the members of the other group are no philosophers at all, or one can say that each group reveals a philosophical excellence complementary to that revealed by the other, and that human beings can seldom enjoy both these good qualities. But neither position justifies the existence of philosophical schools. The first implies that the division is into philosophers and non-philosophers and not into rival schools. The second admits excellence in both camps, and so should be eager for mutual dialogue and the pooling of resources. In any case, the very great philosophers such as Plato and Kant seem to have had a measure of the virtues characteristic of either group.

If by a follower of, say Aristotle is meant someone who unquestioningly accepts all that Aristotle said as Gospel truth, then Ryle thinks that to be a follower is not to be a philosopher. If by a follower of Aristotle you mean someone who is ready to believe all that he finds out about the opinions of Aristotle, and to disagree with all that he finds out about the opinions of anyone else, then to be a follower is not to be a philosopher. if by a follower of Aristotle, or of any other philosopher you care to name, is meant someone who after rational consideration has seen that all that Aristotle said is precisely true, and that nothing any other philosopher has said has ever been true, then only a fool could even claim to be a follower or any philosopher.¹⁰ Sometimes it is said that to be a follower of, say Aristotle, is something rather more than a mood or feeling of sympathy, interest and respect, and rather less than to take one's oath to the unimpeachable truth of a string of propositions representative of his thought. To follow Aristotle is to accept his principles as valid. He may be wrong in questions of detail, but his principles are sound; other philosophers may have got many, and even very many lesser matters right, but their principles are wrong, and it would be foolish to follow them. All thinkers who are both intelligent and honest will follow Aristotle, and those who fail to follow him are thereby revealed as either simpletons or rogues. But once again, it is clear that there is no room for -isms in philosophy. If the principles of Aristotle are sound, and known to be sound, this is to be shown by argument, and then all good philosophers will accept them, and being good philosophers all Aristotelians will be the first to welcome the efforts of other philosophers to put them to the test. We will have dialogue and collaboration, not hostility, silence and suspicion. Sometimes it is thought that the various schools of philosophy are distinguished by differences in method, and it may be that there are a variety of philosophical methods. Ryle has never claimed that the reductio ad absurdum method is the only one. But if there are several methods, all philosophers will gain by employing them all as occasion arises. And there will be no -isms in philosophy.¹¹

Notes:
1. PA 330.
2. Ph 335.
3. Thinking, 194.
4. PA 344.
5. review of Phases of Thought in England, 182.
6. Ph 98.
7. Welcoming Speech to the 4th International Congress of Unified Science, 303-04.
8. Taking Sides in Philosophy, 317-20; review of Other Minds, 953.
9. Taking Sides in Philosophy, 330-31.
10. Ibid., 320-23.
11. Ibid., 324-32.

 

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