PART TWO - CRITICISM AND EVALUATION
Chapter Five A General Appraisal of Ryle's Philosophy
Bibliography
Introduction
PART ONE - EXPOSITION AND INTERPRETATION
The Nature and Method of Philosophy
Ryle's Philosophy of Man
Characterizing Ryle's Philosophy
PART TWO - CRITICISM AND EVALUATION
A General Appraisal of Ryle's Philosophy
Some Points in Ryle's Philosophy of Mind
PART TWO - CRITICISM AND EVALUATION
Chapter Five A General Appraisal of Ryle's Philosophy
RYLE'S USE OF HISTORY
While admitting that every philosopher has in fact his biases and preferences, Ryle holds that these should not be accepted as normative. They should be resisted whenever they compromise the sovereignty of reason. Readiness to accept all that is reasonable and to accept all that is unreasonble implies a willingness to learn from other philosopher,nd a refusal to make philosophical theses party issues. For Ryle's programme of collaboration in philosophy one can only have words of praise.
Do Ryle's other writings provide evidence of a steady effort to implement the programme of Taking Sides in Philosophy (1937)?
In general, yes. His books reviews are never mere reports of the contents of the volume being examined, but are characteristically attempts to allocate the work to its place in the philosophical landscape, and then to determine its relevance to contemporary issues, and this in a sympathetic way. His foreword to the Proceedings of the Seventh International Congress of Philosophy (1931) already revealed his appreciation of the problems of inter-communication involved in the maintaining of a fruitful dialogue. His short article on Graduate Work in Philosophy at Oxford (1952) and his review of L'enseignement de la philosophie (1954) are indications of his efforts to promote collaboration in philosophy.His choice of ordinary language as his own medium of communication makes his thought more accessible to a wide audience. The fact that he has published only three books and that most of his work is to be found in short articles is the result of his participation in contemporary English and international high-level philosophical discussion. The analysts, in fact, prefer verbal interchanges and the discussion in common of short articles to the publication at long intervals of the fruits of solitary meditation. This is, I think, a welcome sign, a parallel to the spirit of the medieval quæstio disputata, a rejection of that exaggerated individualism which, in matters of religion and philosophy (and not in these things only) has been at least the partial cause of serious blunders over a long period.
But there exists group bias as well as individual bias. The presence of this within the Analytical movement is shown, for instance, by the selection of material offered to the public in The Concise Encyclopedia of Western Philosophy and Philosophers (editor: J. O. Urmson, London, Hutchinson, 1960, pp. 431). This very useful book explains the meaning of "analytic," "a priori" and "meaning", but omits the treatment of terms thought central by many Western philosophers, e.g., "cause," "essence" and "act-potency." The article on "Metaphysics" jumps from Aristotle to Descartes, and doesn't even mention a single medieval thinker. The heavy Anglo-American slanting of the work is shown by the omission altogether of such men as Blondel, Lavelle and Buber. But though the Analysts in general pay skant attention to the work of the Phenomenologists, for instance, Ryle is noteworthy for his studies of Phenomenology, and for his efforts to move outside the confines of Oxbridge in an open-minded way. Though not a historian, he does learn from history and form his contemporaries.
Ryle's exposé of the doctrine of ideas as mental objects is a positive contribution to our understanding of the work of Locke, Hume, Hobbes, Stuart Mill, Bolzano, Frege, Russell, Brentano, Meinong, Husserl and Ingarden. He published a useful short study of Hume in 1956 and a valuable one regarding Plato in 1960 has been followed by his most recent book, Plato's Progress. His account of the historical emergence of the Analytic approach to philosophy is useful and enlightening, and the little he says about Logical Positivism is not without value. His study of Professor Anderson's position is very useful. Professor Anderson was for some time the main figure in Australian philosophy, and Ryle's paper Logic and Professor Anderson, published in 1950, is one of too few studies of his work.
At the same time Ryle is not, nor does he claim to be, a historian of philosophy. He is a philosopher directly interested in philosophical problems themselves, and only indirectly in their history. That a Professor of speculative philosophy should pay the attention Ryle does to matters of history is worthy of praise. But more would be required of a historian.
Pap has written (1955, Archivio di Filosofia, 77): "Carnap, who speaks of propositions as being designated by sentences, and properties as being designated by predicates, just as she speaks of things being designated by subjects has been accused - quite unjustly, I think [by Ryle] - of confusing meaning with naming." This is not the place to discuss the merits and demerits of Ryle's and Pap's respective Platonist and non-Platonist interpretation of Carnap. But the need for further discussion does bring home how difficult a thing it is to interpret and author aright. And we have already seen that Ryle himself has been interpreted in more ways than one. Garelli thinks he is to some extent guilty of hypostatising propositions,1 and Hampshire says that in The Concept of Mind Ryle's "terminology of 'standing for,' 'designating' and 'naming' leads him to write as if there were a real answer, independent of the conventions of a particular language, to such questions as 'Does the verb "mind" or "try" designate a single, distinct activity or a complex of activities?' - as though the world consisted of just so many distinguishable activities (or facts or states or thing) wiating to be counted and named."2 Phenomenologists are probably mistaken in interpreting Analysts as some sort of logical Platonists, and one may doubt whether their own talk of "eidetic intuitions" is intended in a Platonist sense. We may indeed hope not to be slaves of metaphor, but we cannot dispense with its services - and all metaphor calls for misinterpretation.
Historians will do well to take into account Ryle's interpretation of the authors of whom he treats, but much closer study will be called for before passing judgment on anyone of them. At the same time, Ryle's work in this field does give additional strength to his theoretical studies. One can only regret that his reference to Occam is so fleeting, and that the doctrine of Scotus is nowhere discussed. It is rather surprising, perhaps, that Ryle has never said much about Berkeley.
I find no fault with the fact that Ryle's articles, directed to a specialist and, therefore, presumably informed audience do not give much space to historical considerations. I understand that Dilemnas being a reprint of a series of lectures may justifiably contain only a single reference. But The Concept of Mind was a book for the general cultured public, and hence it should have been more thorough in its statement of the historical genesis of the problems discussed, and it would have been well to treat of alternative views. One may apply to The Concept of Mind what Quinton said in connection with Dilemnas: "Professor Ryle's technique is rather more suggestive than convincing. His rejection of the disputes of the schools and of the paraphernalia of erudition seems to exclude more valuable things as well - in particular rigorous methods of argument and precisely defined expressions of problems."3
Ryle does not tell us clearly what is to be understood by "mind," but only what is not to be understood by it.4 "Too often in the central polemic of his book Ryle seems to be indicting a debased and vulgarised Cartesianism,"5 and not the doctrine that Descartes actually held.6 As far as anyone reading only The Concept of Mind could tell, "Ryle pays almost as little attention to the light shed and the problems raised by the activity of critical history as he does to those offered by the utterance of poet and mystic,"7 and seems simply to assert dogmatically "that those who subscribe to a dualistic account of man really wanted a criterion for distinguishing between intelligent and non-intelligent behaviour, etc., but got mixed up and instead looked for a cause to serve as such a criterion."8 Hampshire goes so far as to say that "the first cardinal mistake pervading the book is just this assumption that the origin of the conception of the mind as a ghost within a machine is of purely historical and of no philosophical interest."9
Ryle's programme for collaboration in philosophy is admirable, and he has done much towards its realization, but a still greater attention to historical questions and to views other than his own - and this not only in preparing his work, but also in its actual exposition - would render his philosophy more satisfying than it is as it stands.
In Homer's time the heart, liver and diaphragm were regarded as the seat of feeling and emotion. Aristotle said the heart was the seat of soul and mind. The Bible also places mental and emotional functions in the heart.
The Egyptians attached no particular importance to the brain and scooped it out in the embalming process. Hippocratus did say the brain was the seat of emotion, sensation and thought, but Aristotle considered it a part of the body's cooling-system. Moreover, though interested in the nature of intellect, he was not much aware of any dualist body-mind problem. Plato in general was likewise little concerned with the brain, and held that the body misleads or confuses the soul (Phædo, 75e). However, he regards the head as leader of the body, and says the brain is the recipient of the 'divine seed.' The book of Genesis tells us that life was breathed into the nostrils of man. It was consequently thought that the phlegm that comes from the nostrils originated in the ventricles of the brain, where it was formed by the circulation of the pneuma. In the early Christian era Galen described these ventricles, and Nemesius Bishop of Emesia placed in them all mental powers.
Van Helmont was the pioneer of the scientific study of the brain, which he considered the secondary agent in the coordination of the nervous system, the primary agent being the stomach. There was at this time little clash between science and philosophy, science being interested in the structure of the brain rather than in its possible function, and philosophy inquiring directly into knowledge itself rather than into its possible bodily instruments.
René Descartes had the distinction of uniting in himself the authorship of a theory of the thinking soul and of a study of the physiology of the reflex-arc, e.g., in blinking. Thus confronted with the problem of relating body and soul, he located the point of union in the pineal gland. More significantly, by studying both fields Descartes came to realise that a mind-language can include a body-language, but that a body-language lacks essential terms for the translation of the whole of a mind-language.10
A reader of The Concept of Mind could receive the impressions that "the author does not know of any other conception of the mind but that of Descartes on the one hand, and that of Hobbes-Gassendi on the other," and think that "he overlooks the fact that the much disliked Cartesian ghost has some respectable ancestors, or that the ghost's absence in Hobbes is not a new concept."11
In fact, according to the system of psychology and ethics prevalent in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, which was that inherited from Aristotle and Galen, as adapted by SS. Augustine and Thomas Aquinas, and taught in the schools and universities:
Alongside and underneath this view, there flourished various folk-beliefs and literary traditions, and "in religion 'applied' psychology complicated the Aristotelian system with two other elements: first, the Christian moral tradition according to which the Fall of Man had tainted all the instruments of the soul, so that senses, passions, intellect, will, were involved in perpetual conflict, the Seven Deadly Sins were set over against the Cardinal Virtues, and the direct intervention of Satan introduced the concepts of Temptation, Conscience, fear of Damnation, Repentance, and Grace; second, and arising from this, the psychology of piety, which produced systems of mental and spiritual exercises suited to the various stages of the mystic way." Thus, "in the early seventeenth century the practice of piety and the revival of mysticism fostered a systematization of religious experience, the division of the work of grace into stages, each with its own emotional and intellectual activities. There was much hair-splitting and confusion of terminology… Both Catholic and Puritan while accusing each bother bitterly of neglecting the inner life, were pursuing the art of self-knowledge by methods equally intense and effective… The practice of self-analysis fostered the tendency, already noted, to treat thought as a special power separable from and superior to the other faculties… Traherne who pushed introspection to the edge of solipsism celebrated thought as the only reality. 'Thoughts are things'; 'To walk abroad is not with Eyes, but Thoughts, the Fields to see and prize'… Allied to this was a centrifugal delight in the manifold activity of consciousness. One is reminded of Hamlet's fancy that he might 'be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space'… It was an easy step to regard Fancy as the active power of the soul 'Who in a Minute can the Earth surround And sinke inter her centre, then ascend' (John Davies of Hereford)… The prevalence of the ability to hold separate the various functions of the mind in the consciousness of the percipient and to explore their manifold activities helps to explain the climate in which Descartes' Discours de la méthode and Locke's Essay concerning Human Understanding became popular…"12
The same author tells us that the microscosmic view of the world "was shattered in the latter half of the seventeenth century by new movements in philosophy. Gassendi's study of Epicurus heralded a new physics based on the assumption that 'the atoms, endowed with weight, size and order, are the primary elements of things'… A second factor was the growth of inductive science, the insistence on natural causes and effects associated with Bacon and the Royal Society, which brought all things to the test of observation and experiment… In his treatment of the Passions of the Soul Descartes rejected the Aristotelian classification of the passions as either concupiscible or irascible, and while preserving the basic distinction beween the soul and the body, he treated the passions, along with the volitions, as direct functions of the soul, to be distinguished from feelings, 'such as odours, sounds, colours, referred to external objects, others, such as hunger, thirst, pain, referring to our body.' Descartes deduced all the passions from six primary one: wonder, love, hatred, joy, sadness and desire. Their seat is not in the heart, as many have thought; they are caused by some movement of the animal spirits, and they are affected in and work in the body by the 'inclinations' of the pineal gland. The passions cannot be directly controlled by the will, but only 'indirectly through representation of the things which are conjoined with the passions we wish to have, and contrary to those we wish to suppress.' But the powers of men to use their wills in this way differ widely. A strong character is a man whose will is fortified by 'firm and determinate judgments bearing on good and evil.' Broadly speaking the new philosophers accepted the traditional view that the mind of man was an arena in which reason or judgment and the passions fought for supremacy… The multiplicity of pleasures possible to body and mind excite the passions in different ways and degrees; but each man has his Ruling Passion… The passions became as real to the eighteenth century as were the classical deities and the Seven Deadly Sins to the Renaissance." "The relations of body and mind were much debated in this period… Descartes [affirming that] 'the body of a living man differs from that of a dead man just as any machine that moves of itself (e.g., a watch or other automaton which is wound up) differs from itself when it is broken and the principle of its movement ceases to act'… Dr. William Coward in his Second Thoughts Concerning the Human Soul ridiculed Descartes' theory that the soul was immoral. Coward was summoned before a committee of the House of Commons and his book condemned to be burned by the common hangman (1704). But he published a second edition… Matthew Prior is a sceptical Pyrrhonist who refuses to accept either the degradation of the body into a machine or the separation from it of the rational soul, but implies a preference for the Aristotelian doctrine that soul and body are one and inseparable, while insisting on the relativity of opinion, the dependence of the mind on the body's humours, and the functional nature of the body."13
Bullough's brief statement of medieval and Cartesian anthropology makes it clear that Descartes was not the creator of a doctrine of body-mind dualism, but merely modified a previous theory with a view to defending what he considered important truths against the depredations of a new and over confident empirical science. Kneale criticizes Ryle for not adverting explicitly to this fact, and writes: "If the facts were as he says, the philosophical howler which he attributes to Descartes would be even more extraordinary than he thinks it is. For how could even the most perverse metaphysician come to speak of minds as Descartes does, if before his time men had used the word 'mind' and the partially equivalent words in other languages only to talk of 'abilities, liabilities and inclinations to do and to undergo certain sorts of things, and of the doing and undergoing of these things in the ordinary world' (p. 199)?"14
But is is clear that Kneale's statement is at least a slight exaggeration. For Ryle does refer to Plato's tripartite theory of the soul, to the influence of geometry as a paradigm of reasoning, and to Cartesian theory's being an improvement on the para-political theory it replaced. However Ryle's account of the origin of the Cartesian myth is rather inadequate. "Ryle fails to realize that the view he attacks as the Cartesian myth is in many respects a fundamental myth in man's conception of himself; cfr the history of the word psyche. In some ways, Ryle is, paradoxically, battling against an ordinary or common-sense view of man."15
This point, which could also be illustrated by examining, for instance, the history of English literature,16 is brought out well by Hampshire, who writes: "So far from being imposed on the plain man by philosophical theorists… the myth of the mind as a ghost within the body is one of the most primitive and natural of all the innumerable myths which are deeply imbedded in the vocabulary and structure of our languages. In many (perhaps most) European languages the words for mind, soul, or spirit are the same as, or have the same roots as, the words for ghost… Apart altogether from the actual myth of detachable minds surviving as ghosts, which extends continuously from early epic into Christian literature, there is the traceable history of such words as psyché, pneuma, anima, and many others.17… developing in part independently of the attempts of Plato and of Christian theorists to systematize it as self-conscious doctrine.18… Professor Ryle is here protesting not (as he believes) against a philosophical theory of mind, but against a universal feature of ordinary language itself… It seemed as natural to the Greeks and Romans as it still does to us19 to describe the experience of mental conflict in terms of pushes and pulls, to describe themselves as moved to action, and to speak of images as mental pictures."20
The Ryle who wrote The Concept of Mind was not unacquainted with these matters, but being used to writing for a well informed and specialized audience, he did not think it necessary even in a book meant for more general consumption to provide - I do not say a detailed history of the background to the problems he was discussing, that would have been too much to expect from a single volume - but at least a rather more adequate treatment than the skanty one he offered. He could also have mentioned views more recent than those of Descartes.
Bullough tells us that for David Hartley, "the passions were 'no more than aggregates of simple ideas united by association.' To analyse the affections, 'by reversing the steps of the associations which concur to form them,' was essential to learning 'how to cherish and improve good ones,' to transform sensuous into spiritual pleasures, and to form 'motives to beneficent actions.' Memory was vitally important, its rudiments being 'laid in the perpetual recurrency of the same impressions, and clusters of impressions.'"21
The same author tells us also that the conflict between mechanistic and organic theories of the mind was dominant in psychology from 1750 to 1900.22 "John Stuart Mill so far modified his father's theories in the light of his own experience of Wordsworth's poetry as to admit that though the most complex thoughs and feelings are generated by association, yet 'the effect of concurring causes is not always precisely the sum of the effects of those causes when separate, not even always an effect of the same kind with them.'"23 "John Tyndall's presidential Address delivered before the British Association assembled at Belfast in 1874 surveyed the history of ideas about the relation of body and soul, showing how in the modern world the part played by soul has become more and more nebulous since Gassendi detached the soul from the body, [and] concluded: 'Man the object is separated by an impassable gulf from man the subject.' So long as there remained mystery and wonder about ourselves and the universe, there would be a place for religion: 'Each succeeding age must be held free to fashion the Mystery in accordance with its own needs.24… I would affirm this to be a field for the noblest exercise of what, in constrast with the knowing faculties, may be called the creative faculties of man!"25 John Henry Newman while admitting that "all that we know, strictly speaking, is the existence of the impressions our senses make on us" - in thinking which he was mistaken, escaped from scepticism by having recourse to the Illative sense.26 On the other hand, according to Berman (The Glands Regulating Personality, New York, 1928): "The chemistry of the cell is the chemistry of the soul… The grey walls of the brain, the glands of internal secretion, the pituitaries, the pineal, the thymus, the thyroid and parathyroids, the liver and the pancreas, the adrenals and the sex-glands, constitute the core of our personality, because they are the mediators between the individual and the environment."27 Berman's view seems to fit in with that of D. H. Lawrence who has interpreted the behaviour of animals in accordance with his own ideal of individual privacy with inter-communion below the level of intellect and words, and has proposed it as a model for human conduct. The mystical union of sex is presented by him as a descent into the primordial creativeness of an animality overshadowed by a frustrating civilization.28 Awareness of subconscious human depths is revealed in the notebooks of Coleridge, but was exploited particularly by Freud, Adler and Jung.29
The purpose of thse generous loans from Bullough's study has been partly that of introducing another disputed point about Ryle's views to which historical considerations are particularly relevant. In support of his claim that all life involves purposiveness, Ryle asserts that nowadays biologists, zoologists and psychologists may still pay lip-service to mechanism, but really accept vitalistic principles as their lodestar. This statement has been challenged.
Thus Smart30 and Hogben claim that as it advances, biology becomes more and not less mechanistic. And while granting that explicit avowals of mechanism are now rare among biologists, Tomlin agrees with Russell that the mechanistic habit of thought still constitutes the prevalent mentality among biologists.31 Smart rightly points out that from "not all explanations are mechanical" it does not by any means follow that "not everything that happens has a mechanical explanation." Pirenne says that to say human behaviour is not mechanically determined is to arbitrarily preach a new physics, not applicable to human bodies.32
The difficulty of deciding whether Ryle or his opponents are right is apparently augmented by the fact that Tomlin interprets Vitalism, which Ryle contrasts with Mechanism, as being itself a disguised version of it. But perhaps this really clarifies the issue, by transposing it from chiefly historical to primarily theoretical areas of discussion. And in the process it at least partially justifies Ryle's failure to give much space to history in The Concept of Mind.
Just as to the casual reader The Concept of Mind may give an impression of Ryle as a Behaviourist or alternatively a Platonist, an impression that does not fit the facts, so it is with Biology. Recent developments do bring physico-chemical, and so mechanistic considerations more into the foreground than heretofore, and it is arguable that a majority of biologists conceive biology in mechanistic terms. But whatever the feelings of individual investigators may be, this mechanism appears remarkably unlike the Mechanism of Hobbes and Gassendi, to which Ryle refers when he says that Mechanism is on the decline. Mechanism in this sense declines as far as Positivism, Sensism, Associationism, Pragmatism and the like decline. It declines in proportion as one comes to realize that knowledge is not sense-acquaintance, that Matter does not exist (in the sense already discussed). Now, until we learn better, we always do and will continue to think that knowledge is something like sense-acquaintance, but recent developments in empirical science generally have made the learning of this lesson possibly more expeditious. To this extent, Mechanism is on the decline;33 to this extent, also, it will never entirely disappear. The problem seems one more of personal growth than of history, and to that extent Ryle's skant attention to history can be explained.
That something like this is what Ryle has in mind would seem to be indicated by the fact that in Dilemnas he gives considerable attention to the very point made by Smart and Pirenne, viz., that even granting that some muscular movement has its proper mechanical explanation, it does not follow that it does not have some other explanation as well, nor does the fact that some event has several explanations mean that no single explanation provides a comple in the sense of an adequate account of what is involved.34
Notes:
1. 1958, Garelli, 51-52: "L'auteur écrit que 'si nous voulions développer tout ce qui est impliqué dans la description d'un animal grégaire, nous devrions produire… une série infinie de propositions hypothétiques différentes' (p.44)… Nous pouvons nous demander dans quelle mesure, ce n'est pas dans ce sujet 'producteur de propositions hypothétiques,' le 'nous,' que réside la source des possibilités."
2. 1950, Hampshire, 242-43.
3. 1954, Quinton, 90. Cfr 1954, Mercier, 324.
4. 1953,Rossi-Landi, 463.
5. 1951, MacKinnon, 252.
6. Cfr 1952, Chastaing, 348 note 2.
7. 1951, MacKinnon, 253.
8. 1951, Hofstadter, 263.
9. 1950, Hampshire, 239.
10. 1963, Pratt, 13-17
11. 1951, anon., Thomist, 427.
12. 1962, G. Bullough, Mirror of Minds, London, Athlone Press, pp. 2-4. 10-11. 41-47.
13. Ibid., 90-91. 95. 111. 115. 120. For Prior, cfr ibid., 93-95: "Matthew Prior's Alma - or The Progress of the Mind (1718) presented first the Aristotelian theory (Canto I, 13-21):
Against this view, held by 'the men of Oxford', Prior sets that of 'the Cambridge wits' influenced by Descartes (I, 30-34)'Alma in verse, in prose the mind,
By Aristotle's pen defined,
Throughout the body squat or tall,
Is bona fide all in all.
And yet, slap-dash, is all again
In every sinew, nerve and vein;
Runs here and there, like Hamlet's ghost;
While everywhere he rules the roast.'
The contemporary scientific doctrine that the nerves are messengers between the outer points of sensation and the brain is parodied, and Coward's objection to regarding the pineal gland or conarion as seat of an immaterial entity is given (I, 94-102):'Alma, they strenuously maintain,
Sits cock-horse on her throne the brain;
And from that seat of thought dispenses
Her sovereign pleasure to the senses.'
On the other hand, the Epicurean notion of Lucretius that the bodily organs were formed by chance - that 'needless Nature did produce The members first and then the use' - is mocked at and rejected. Prior proposes a theory of his own (I, 252ss) from Montaigne, who suggested that 'natural heat' dwelt in a different part of the body at each different stage of life..'The Mind, say they, while you sustain
To hold her station in the brain;
You grant, at least, she is extended;
Ergo, the whole Dispute is ended…
The mind as visibly is seen
Extended through the whole Machine.'
And so on until:'My simple system shall suppose
That Alma enters at the toes;
That then she mounts by just degrees
Up to the ankles, legs and knees…'
(II, 773-76):'From thence compelled by craft and age
She makes the head her lastest stage.'
14. W. C. Kneale in 1960, Schilpp, 447. Cfr 1951, Copleston, 331; anon in 1951, Thomist, 427-28; 1950, Wisdom, 196; 1952, Chastaing, 353 note 2: ""Historiquement, le mythe de l'âme et du corps est lié au mystère de l'Incarnation. Descartes lui-même ne rompt pas ce lien: il parle du composé humain comme saint Maxime de l'un ion hypostatique.' 1957, Hampshire, 272: "The concept of mind has a long and various history, extending through many languages; it is a history which it would be difficult to write, even if one were confined to Greek, Latin, French, German and English."'Where Fancy or Desire
Collects the beams of vital fire;
Into that limb fair Alma slides,
And there, pro tempore, resides.'"
RYLE ON THINKING AND VERIFICATION
Whether or not Ryle is correct in ascribing the theory that ideas are existents to th philosophers he mentions, he is quite right to reject the view. He also seems correct in maintaining that the Descriptive Fallacy is a main source of this erroneous doctrine, and that acceptance of it, at least for a time, is not so much an index of mental derangement, but a phase in normal development. Ryle's argument that not all words are names gains in efficacy from the directness and clarity of its expression, and from the variety of the homely illustrations he uses to make his point. Apart from their undoubted intrinsic value, his studies of Plato furnish him with his very useful analogy of the arrangement of words in sentences and letters in words. This analogy he exploits to advantage. He also makes adequate use of Mill's, Frege's and Russell's contributions towards the eventual total rejection of linguistic atomism.
He avoids exaggeration by admitting that there is a sense in which we can speak usefully of ideas or concepts, and I see no objection to his view that they are skills in the use of words. On the other hand,it does seem to me that all skills are conscious skills. Rightly enough, Ryle points out that knowing that, e.g., 7 + 5 = 12 is not looking at or being conscious of an object. In this sense he is right in saying that knowing and not consciousness is central. But while consciousness understood as some sort of looking at oneself and one's activities is a myth, consciousness properly understood as some sort of subjective and immediate self-awareness is a fact. This consciousness can be, e.g., sensitive, rational or moral, and we seem to be rationally conscious of such skills as we have in the use of words. Ryle does not deny this. Recently he insists on the centrality of thinking or reasonableness in well-conducted human living.1 But when discussing the theory of ideas, he does not explicitly refer to these matters.
Charlesworth writes: "Ryle is not very explicit, however, as to how… these 'logical-rules' are 'extracted.' He does, it is true, suggest that we find out the ordinary use of a tool by manipulating it for ourselves. But, one might object, is it true that words or expressions have uses in the same way as tools do? The use of a tool is to some extent dictated by the structure of the tool itself, but words or expressions in themselves have no use in this way; it is we who give them a use. It is here that the analogy of words with tools… breaks down and becomes radically misleading."2
It is, of course, precisely because the analogy of tools does break down that Ryle's position continues to be tenable - unless it did break down, we would be faced with either some sort of logical Platonism, or with linguistic Behaviourism. But Charlesworth's strictures serve to emphasise the need there is of some explicit statement of the criterion of reasonableness entering into our skilful use of words. Without this explicit statement Ryle's position is seriously compromised,3 and one can gain the impression that he is being superficial,4 or mistakenly take him to be a Behaviourist because he fails to say here, what he says elsewhere, that human life, like all life, is purposive and conscious.5 It is also regrettable that Ryle, while showing the natural origin of the erroneous opinion that knowing is like looking and affirming like naming, fails to say anything about why we should want to know what knowing is, or what affirming is, and about why we should want to make statements which turn out to be, from a logical standpoint, nonsensical. This question is surely a philosophical, and not only a psychological one.6
Ryle considers that thinking, which is proper to man as a rationally purposive being, is not to be identified with image-trains, or behaviour complexes on the one hand, nor with inner press-button syllogizing on the other, but is a style manifested in characteristically human activity, be it clever or silly, and serving to discriminate such activity from that of animals, infants, or idiots, in the eyes of people capable of appreciating the difference. "Thoughts" are not things.
The most specious defence of the reality of "thoughts" seems to be that of Campbell,7 who distinguishes in our thinking the physical occurrence, or "thinking," and the objective content or "thought." He then points out that when asked to describe our thoughts, we always do so in terms of the objective content. And he thinks that this leads us, mistakenly, to construe the "thinking" as a ghostly double of the "thought." But this seems a red herring. The fact remains that the supposal that there are "thoughts" (in the sense of "thinkings" in Campbell's sense) is gratuitous. Campbell's view derives its plausibility from weaknesses in Ryle's account of dispositions.
In The Concept of Mind, "Ryle persistently seeks to establish, first that facts about the body and bodily behaviour are nearly always relevant, and very often crucially relevant, to the truth or falsehood of assertions about the mind; and second, that these assertions, even when in the present tense, are very often made true or false not by anything private that is presently occurring or is now the case, but by what publicly has been or will be, might have been or may be occurring, or the case."8
Hampshire tells us that Ryle is aiming at correcting what other philosophers have said about the methods of verification of statements involving mental concepts. He is "not really arguing that statements involving mental concepts are hypothetical statements about overt behaviour but that to give reasons for accepting or rejecting such statements must always involve making some hypothetical statements about overt behaviour."9
Ryle, however, "self-destructively says (p.239), there are any number of ways in which we may legitimately confirm or refute the statements conveyed on different occasions of the use of these sentences."10 He also admits in The Concept of Mind that "there were notoriously some thoughts which Johnson kept carefully to himself."11 And he says that "much of our ordinary thinking is conducted in internal monologue or silent soliloquy, usually accompanied by an internal cinematograph-show of visual imagery."12 Ewing has put the point well: "If he admits processes such as doing sums in one's head, has he not reintroduced the dualism which he abhors?"13 Ayer cites another example suggested by Ryle himself to the detriment of the doctrine in The Concept of Mind about the verification of dispositional statements: "Suppose that a child tells you that he is drawing a ship, you may feel that the drawing does not at all resemble a ship, a psychologist may discover that it is 'really' a symbol for something else, but in a straightforward sense the child knows what he is trying to draw; and if he himself says that he means it to be a ship, then no one else can be in a position to override him."14
We may, then, agree with Wisdom that in The Concept of Mind "Ryle never adequately recognizes the difference between the method of verification of statements about thoughts and feelings and the method of verification of statements about the movement of wheels, levers, limbs, electricity and the wind that bloweth where it listeth… The peculiarity of the soul is not that it is visible to none but that [presumably metaphysically] it is visible only to one… Though the sources of solipsism are also sources of doubt about the minds of others, there is also a source of this doubt other than those sources of it which also lead to solipsism. And this source lies in the facts covered by the words 'The soul is visible only to one'… A person has a way of knowing how he feels which no one else has, has a right to say what he does about how he feels which no one else has ever had or ever will have."15
It seems advisable to keep the questions of Ryle's view on the verification of dispositional statements separate from those regarding their meaning. His account of their verification is inadequate, because it neglects the fact that some dispositional statements can only be verified, in a given instance, by a single person, and that such verification is not public but private. Ryle's account of self-knowledge cannot be accepted.16 To put the matter in scholastic terms: the material element in sense and imagination is public, the formal one is indirectly public, i.e., the observer cannot observe it, but can affirm its presence; the material element in ideational and judgmental knowledge is public directly and indirectly, but the formal element is neither public nor private, except in so far as consciousness or self-awareness is regarded as private.17
The general structure of The Concept of Mind and much of what is said by Ryle in this book and elsewhere is governed by the ideal of verification as some sort of logical procedure. Thus he writes as though Cartesianism was a logical category-mistake, as though Descartes' main fault was to fall into type-confusion.18 He speaks of dispositions in terms taken from logic, viz., hypothetical and categorical, and then finds that they don't fit just as they are.19 Now, of course, what is logically verifiable, is publicly verifiable and expressible in a third-person language. And this underlies much of what Ryle says.
But there also exists a reasonable sort of personal, first-person verification. "The sense in which an expression's meaning is 'public' is compatible with an equally valid sense in which an expression's meaning is 'private.' There is the speaker's meaning, the hearer's meaning, the 'conventional' meaning."20 "Talk of minds is not equivalent to talk about behaviour and tendencies to behaviour of various sorts. It is true that men may think through action, and in particular through speech (as we admit when we use the phrase 'thinking aloud'); but this is possible only because they can perceive their own actions. In short, all talk of minds presupposes the occurrence of experiences."21 "Private feelings of one sort or another are there throughout waking life, and if nobody had these feelings and experiences, feelings and experiences which no other man but oneself can observe by normal perception of behaviour, there would be no value in existence."22
Ryle says that Cartesian constant conscious awareness of our waking states is a myth, and has recourse to the well known reductio ad absurdum of the infinite regress of consciousness of consciousness. But "consciousness does not appear. It is not an object. The only undeceptive mode of conceiving it is the subjective mode."23
Ryle similarly denies introspection and says it is merely remembrance controlled by special interest. But "self-knowledge by retrospection… does not touch the problem of the privacy of consciousness."24 To quote Father Robinson, "introspection is concerned with the acts, attitudes or states of the Self, not with the Self itself. It is useless to seek for the Self by introspection. The fallacy is an old one… The infinite regress of introspection is irrelevant to the problem of the Self. The Self is, if we may so express ourseles, not something in the bundle, nor the bundle as a whole, but the bundling. Ryle has seen very well that the Self is not an object… The Self apprehends itself directly as subject, and this is true consciousness."25
Moreover, although introspection is not some sort of looking into oneself, and although it is not infallible, and although it is not the source of our self-awareness, introspection does take place. "It just seems a fact that we can divide attention sufficiently for introspection to occur… Retrospection seems to presuppose past introspective awareness… It is the special ontological status claimed for the experiences introspected which is Ryle's real and most plausible target; but that is to deny an interpretation of introspection, not the activity itself."26
A suggestion as to how Ryle might have thought his account of the verification of dispositional statements plausible is provided by Miller: "When a man approaches in the street we can imagine that he is only a body there behaving in the natural way… It is precisely thus that we do conceive him on all ordinary occasions and for all ordinary purposes… This habit has the profoundest effect in rendering natural and easy the want of fellow feeling, our callousness to the misery of others. Professor Ryle's book simply erects this ordinary oblivion into a philosophy."27
This suggestion is plausible, but does not appear to provide a satisfactory explanation. It is true that Ryle does not take lovers as his examples, but this can easily be explained by other factors than a failure to advert to the problems of jealousy and trust; it could, for instance, be a question of natural reserve. Nor is it at all clear that the chess-players he mentions play their game with indifference. Again, it is hardly likely that Ryle is unaware of his own admissions about Johnson's keeping certain things to himself, and so on. Ryle does not deny the existence of private experience, but he does not consider that it constitutes a method of verification.
I cannot agree with Gundry who supposes that Ryle is dismissing lightly "the long-entertained notion that there can be some kind of mystical relationship between minds without reference to external bodily activities,"28 but I do think that Ryle would consider such relationships insufficient basis for the verification of propositions about the mind. Similarly, I suppose that Ryle can grant easily enough that "the assumption that another person experiences an internal phenomenon has a meaning for me."29
We can approach the reason why Ryle does not consider experience an adequate method of verification from Ewing's statement that "Ryle argues 'if dualism were true, nobody would ever know anything about anybody else's mind,' a striking reductio ad absurdum… There are equally difficulties about claiming knowledge of their bodies. Yet Professor Ryle talks here as though these difficulties had never been heard of… We cannot without a vicious circle interpret both propositions about mental states behaviouristically and propositions about physical objects experientially… Ryle attacks the argument for other minds from analogy with our body (pp. 53-54) but he ignores the much stronger arguments from fulfilled predictions and the manifestations in our experience of purposes other than our own."30 This statement seems to suppose that Ryle interprets propositions about mental states behaviouristically, that he interprets propositions about physical states experientially, and that he theorizes as though there were no difficulties involved in knowing bodies. These three suppositions are false.
The distinction between knowing and sense-acquaintance occupies, as we have seen, an explicit and cardinal place in Ryle's philosophy. He maintains that knowledge, being complex, cannot possibly be sense-acquaintance. I suggest that although he does not appear to discuss the matter, for the same reason he would maintain that knowledge cannot be any sort of personal experience, considered as such. Knowledge, he says, is essentially self-transcendent.
Now, I cannot accept what seems to be Ryle's view that, since knowledge is both complex and self-transcendent, it cannot be any sort of personal experience, considered as such, and consequently I cannot construe the meaning of "verification" as narrowly as he appears to do. His respect for logic leads him to fail to realize that human reasonableness grounds first-person as well as third-person truth, and that the former is needed to preserve the latter from at least partial arbitrariness. He is right to want to avoid Hume's sceptical flux, Associationism, psychologism, subjectivism, and the rest. But not all appeal to the subject is subjectivism.
It is, I believe, only by interpreting Ryle's dispositions (it is to be hoped correctly) as dispositions of the subject that one can avoid the Behaviouristic or Platonist interpretation of them. My belief that by the asserting force of verbs Ryle means the asserting force of verbs, not in themselves, but as instruments in human reasonable communications, seems to find a possibility of revision or development in his views about existence-propositions in general, and with regard to the specific question of the existence of G-d. My conviction that Ryle's appeal is to the reasonableness of the affirming subject, and not just to a public deposit called common sense, or to ordinary language, or widespread beliefs, grounds my approval of his progressive move away from a merely formal logic. Ryle's emphasis on ideas as personal skills in the use of words, his account of thinking as a developing human ability, his view of philosophy as type-discipline, and, in short, all his main philosophical positions, seems to be reasonable positions reasonably maintained, and not just highly developed instances of playing it cool, sleight of hand, or linguistic tea-tasting, as may possibly have been in some degree the case with regard to Wittgenstein's work.
Consequently, in holding, against Ryle, that personal experience as such can be knowledge, and is a method of verification, I feel that I am at one with the general trend of his philosophy, and that my quarrel is with the superficial, though widespread, aftermath of an early and excessive enthusiasm for logic.
No less than Ryle, I agree that sense acquaintance is not knowledge. Consequently, I agree that the awareness each one has of his sense acquaintanceship is not knowledge. I also agree that mere postulation, mere formulation of hypotheses is not knowledge. Consequently I also admit that the self-awareness each one has when he is postulating or forming hypotheses is not knowledge. But Ryle admits that there is also knowledge. One can know, for instance, that 7 + 5 = 12. And I submit that the self-awareness or experience of oneself as knowing that 7 + 5 = 12 is knowledge. And I hold that just as my subsequent analysis of 7 + 5 = 12 reveals to me that both my acquaintance with 7 this and my acquaintance with 5 that, though not items of knowledge, are nevertheless elements in my knowledge that 7 + 5 = 12, so it is with self-awareness. Reflection upon myself as experiencing, or being conscious of, or being aware of myself as a knower, reveals, as elements in such awareness, the self-awareness that accompanies sense-acquaintance and the formation of hypotheses, and it reveals such elements not, it is true, as items of knowledge, but as elements in my knowledge of myself as knower. Ryle says that knowledge is essentially self-transcendent. It seems to follow that when I know myself as knower, I know myself as a subject which is also object. A view of objectivity which denies the objectivity of the subject seems to be not an objectively reasonable view, but a subjective one, be it nominalist or platonist in its implications. Ryle speaks of the need to steer a middle course between Nominalism and Platonism. But really Platonism itself is the half-way house, and Realism transcends Platonism, just as it transcends Nominalism. For Platonism in this sense is merely a transposition of Nominalism: the latter an optical, the former a para-optical theory of knowledge.
Notes:
1. 1964, Tranay, 166-67: "A Rational Animal… clarifies and makes sense of this old definition of man in a way which I, for one, felt to be genuinely helpful… He manages, I feel, to make us see clearly something that was not at all clear before - giving new understanding rather than new knowledge."
2. 1959, Charlesworth, 181.
3. 1956, Specht, 319: "Die Abtrennung der Sprachanalyse Ryles von jedem ontologischen Fundament bleibt also fragwürdig, solange nicht geklärt ist, woher die Sprache ihre kategoriale Logik empfängt."
4. 1956, Merlan, 70: "The reviewer for one… felt like witnessing a fencing match in which one adversary, skilful and urbane, to be sure, every time he should say touché, insists that he was so only because the other fellow failed to observe the rules of the game."
5. 1953, Campbell, 117-34: "'Intelligent purpose' without 'consciousness of an end' seems to be about as near a self-contradiction as makes no difference… But if what is ordinarily meant by 'intelligent purpose' is not reducible to bodily behaviour, there is, after all, no room in Ryle's scheme for what is ordinarily meant by intelligent purpose." 1953, Mitchell, 358: "I agree with Ryle that we do not learn about our conscious states and activities by means of a faculty of inner sense but… the fact that conscious states are not witnessable is not an adequate reason for describing them as mythical."
6. Cfr 1956, Caillois, 1063-64: "Il est évident depuis toujours que la philosophie consiste à savoir ce qu'on veut dire… Mais elle consiste aussi et avant tout à savoir ce que parler veut dire… M. Ryle dit ce qu'il ne peut admettre dans l'emploi du mot destin, du mot perception, du mot science. Il ne s'en laisse pas accroître. Nous ne pouvons qu'approuver ce scepticisme humien. Mais tout ce qu'il laisse comme insensé nous paraît encore poser des questions: que les hommes parlent d'une façon 'insensée' a un sens, parler, surtout, pour dire que 'Dieu existe' n'est pas sans signification. Il serait absurde de renvoyer à la psychoanalyse ou à la sociologie ce 'non-sens' sans s'interroger sur son contenu. Si ce contenu refuse les limites du langage scientifique, c'est qu'il n'a rien à y faire, c'est qu'il exige une autre attitude, une 'théorie,' sans laquelle le monde apparaît à certains - les philosophes - une conséquence sans principles, une apparition sans fondement."
7. 1953, Campbell, 117-34: "Although Ryle cannot by any means, in my opinion, show that even the didactic exposition of established theory is describable in terms of publicly observable behaviour alone, it is distinctly easier to make a case of sorts here than it is with regard to the more conspicuous manifestation of intellectual activity in the actual constructing of theories… Judgments which occur en route are [in his view] just 'interim reports of sub-theories,' and so, despite appearances, really belong to the expository style after all! This is clever; but it will surely convince nobody… There is, then, I submit, no mystery about where the traditional epistemologists have found their 'intellectual acts.' [Campbell complains, on p. 120, that he is "unable to trace the epistemologists who, according to Ryle - CM 189 - confused the order of discovery with the order of exposition."] They have found them in both phases of theorising, the explanatory and the expository… 'How many cognitive acts did he perform before breakfast?' (pp. 29-93). This passage is an entertaining sample of its author's wit, but its function is perhaps better regarded as one of light relief than of serious philosophic argument… Suppose that our thought is for us something different from the words. This thought will have two aspects: the physical occurrence which is the 'thinking,' and the objective content which is 'what we think.' Now it is the latter in terms of which the specific character of a thought is determined. I suggest, therefore, that the fact that our proffered description of a thought 'seems to be a ghostly double' of the words of the sentence tells us nothing one way or the other about the identity of the thought with the sentence. The 'thought' was the apprehension of a certain relationship; the saying (or imaging) of words, in whatever pattern, includes nothing that can be even remotely identified with this… [Ryle] admits that a man 'might have uttered a sentence to the same effect in a different language' (p.296) [but he says] 'knocking in a nail is not doing two things, one with a hammer and another without a hammer, for all that the carpenter could have knocked in his nail with another hammer instead of with this one' - hardly an appropriate form of reply for a criticism so determinate in character, so frequently advanced by reputable philosophers, and, at least in appearance, so utterly deadly to the theory criticized… We are amply justified in dismissing as a failure Ryle's attempt to interpret heed concepts in terms of his 'one world' theory."
8. 1958, Warnock, 99-100.
9. 1950, Hampshire, 243-47. He also says, "because overt behaviour often constitutes evidence for statements about mental activities, such statements come to be identified with hypothetical statements about behaviour. This is the confusion which either comes from, or leads to identifying the meaning of a statement with the method of its verification." But Ryle is not a Behaviourist, and he has criticized the Verification Principle.
10. Ibid.
11. CM 58.
12. CM 27.
13. 1953, Ewing, 51.
14. 1963, Ayer, 69-70.
15. 1950, Wisdom, 189. Cfr 1951, Pears 94; 1950, Hampshire, 248: "Professor Ryle proves too much… We peer at people and wonder what is going on 'inside' them occultly, just because there is always a possibility of disclosure and therefore always a possibility of non-disclosure or lies. It is this puzzlement, peculiar to the description of the states and activities of minds, which is paradoxically omitted in Ryle's polemic." 1950, Sibley, 269: "While it is absurd to wonder whether someone who acts and talks intelligently is really stupid, it is not absurd to wonder whether someone who acts and talks stupidly is really intelligent." 1952, Garnett, 357: "Ryle has not even given part of the answer to the question as to what constitutes the difference between a heedful or intentional and an unheedful or unintentional action. If I stretch my legs under the table and kick my neighbour's foot I know immediately whether the action was intentional, but he can only guess at the question… This privacy of my intention, or minding does not make it a ghost, or part of a ghost, in a machine. {But it does] require the rejection of the interpretation of 'mind' and 'mental' as terms having only a categorical distinction from terms referring to physical objects."
16. Cfr 1951, Copleston, 331; 1960, Robinson, 6.29; 1953, Campbell, 138; 1950, Sibley, 275; 1952, Garnett, 353-56: According to Ryle "minding is a 'frame of mind' which can only be described by dispositional statements describing the tendencies to perform certain actions in certain ways… There is no mental activity of heding which can be directly noticed only by the person performing it, and only indirectly inferred by other persons… This seems to me an entirely inadequate account of what is involved… Professor Ryle says that 'if a person has been doing or undergoing something, and has been paying heed to what he was doing or undergoing, he can then tell what he has been doing and undergoing (provided that he has learned the art of telling); and he can tell it without rummaging for evidence' (p. 137)… But it is obvious that no one could know that paying heed has this effect unless he had observed in his own experience that paying heed has this effect. Nothing expressed by a dispositional statement can be thus noticed. [What is noticed] is the distinctively mental activity of minding, heeding, noticing, attending or trying. There is no infinite regress involved in the concept of noticing our own noticing. Only at moments of extreme concentration, if ever, is attention completely undivided."
17. Cfr 1960, Robinson, 46.
18. Cfr 1951, MacKinnon, 250-52; 1951, Hofstadter, 259.
19. Cfr the interesting remarks of Hampshire (1954, 10): "The distinction between expressions referring to occurrences and expressions referring to dispositions is a distinction of a different kind from that between categorical and hypothetical statements. Philosophers may distinguish descriptions of material objects from descriptions of subjective impressions, the discussion of abstractions from the discussion of concrete entities, and similarly one may distinguish narrative statements from character description; but the distinction categorical-hypothetical occurs within these varieties of discourse." 1954, Roxbee Cox, 161, notes that Ryle's dispositions are not merely the properties call dispositional, but all properties indifferently, be they dispositional or observable.
20. 1953, Campbell, 125.
21. W.C. Kneale in 1960, Schilpp, 448.
22. 1953, Ewing, 78.
23. 1951, Miller, 273.
24. 1951, King, 296.
25. 1960, Robinson, 36-37. Cfr ibid., 38: "Put briefly, the mind is not a ghost in a machine, but rather the active working of the machine: our acts are not hidden or private, but we have a certain privileged access to them just because we are their subjects, because we act them. Objectively, however, we know no more about our acts (except for accidental reasons) than any other observer might know, and our privileged position gives us no increase in objective knowledge." 1952, Garnett, 355: "The more successful the effort at concentration, the less complexity there is in the total process… until the introspector may triumphantly report, as did William James, nothing more nor less than breathing. It is not by attempts at special introspection, therefore, that we discover our own attentive activity. It is something, however, that we are quite clearly aware of in our ordinary moments of conscious activity."
26. 1959, Hirst, 131. Cfr 1951, Collins, 293: "He has overstated the case against introspection and the privacy of consciousness, since his evidence proves only that introspection… is neither an exclusive nor an infallible means of knowing oneself." 1953, Ewing, 49: "Introspection may be fallible and yet real." Hirst, loc.cit.: "We may conclude then that Ryle has not overthrown a modest belief in introspection." With regard to Hirst's "retrospection seems to presuppose past introspective awareness," one might say that such awareness may be in a different past than that of the experience being retrospected. Provided one is consciously aware of his own experience, he can later on, in certain circumstances, increase his objective knowledge of it by introspection. If retrospection be reserved to looking back on already objectivized experience, it will suppose the past occurrence of both experience in a conscious way, and introspection of it, not, however, their necessary simultaneity. The past of introspection may, indeed, be a very recent past.
27. 1951, Miller, 277. Cfr 1952, Chastaing, 354-55: "Les exemples du Concept of Mind semblent révélateurs: professeurs, joueurs d'échecs, dentistes, clowns, automobilistes, commerçants, militaires… Ni amoureux, ni amis. Les multiples psychologies que M. Ryle expose et analyse admirablement portent toutes la même marque de l'indifférence. Un concurrent rendra hommage à son goût des exemples, en lui proposant les articles de la Jalousie et de la Confiance. 'Qu'est-ce que tu fais?… À quoi pense-tu? Tu ne réponds pas!' … Connaître des âmes et des paroles ne signifie pas connaître une âme. Saint Augustin [a écrit]: on ne voit pas les pensées des hommes, on se fie aux pensées de ceux qu'on appelle des amis (De fide rerum quæ non videntur, 1, 2-3; Tractatus, 77 in Joannem, 3-4)." 1953, Murdoch, 35: "The world of The Concept of Mind is the world in which people play cricket, cook cakes, make simple decisions, remember their childhood, and go to the circus; not the world in which they commit sins, falls in love, say prayers or join the Communist Party." 1952, MacLellan, 142 approaches the same point from another angle: "The idea that mind resides only in a description of what it does is directly contradicted by the subjective certainty of existence… Nothing is proved except perhaps the limitations of intellect."
28. 1950, Gundry, 108.
29. Cfr 1949, Jørgensen, 126.
30. 1953, Ewing, 53-55.
According to Professor Ryle sentences such as "glass is brittle," and "that man is patriotic" do not report episodes or collections of episodes. Their job is to assert tendencies or propensities, and not that of reporting occurrences. To say that, e.g., glass has a certain disposition is to say something hypothetically about it.1 To describe someone as having a certain character is to involve oneself in the making of hypothetical or quasi-hypothetical statements about his behaviour.2 Mental statements about persons are never categoric but are always hypothetical or semi-hypothetical in form.3
Against this doctrine of dispositions, the criticism has been advanced that "the questions 'what are minds?' and 'what is the analysis of mental concepts?' have been confused with the questions 'how do we know that there are other minds?' and 'what sorts of criteria do we need for asserting that there are other minds?"4 It is admited that Ryle's account covers dispositions in so far as they are empirically observable and verifiable, but urged that there are other aspects to dispositions which Ryle's account does not cover.5
According to Ryle brittleness is a determinate or one-track disposition while intelligence and docility are determinable or polyvalent dispositions. Glass may be brittle without its actually breaking, John may be docile when he is not being taught, and Paul may be intelligent although he is asleep. The presence of a disposition is not identifiable with its actualization. On the other hand, the actualization of a disposition is never a mere episode or occurrence. To migrate is not just to fly south,6 to emigrate out of obedience is not just to leave the country, to raise one's hat as a mark of respect is not simply to remove one's headgear. Statements referring to such occurrences are, in Ryle's terminology, mongrel-categorical or semi-hypothetical propositions.
Clark states that "the importance of what Ryle has said about hypotheticals [lies] not in the support it is thought to lend to the thesis that hypotheticals are kinds of inferential principles. Rather, many of these things he has drawn our attention to are exciting and important in their own right."7 For instance, "the suggestion that, in the case of the explanation of an indiividual human action, at least, the general statement providing the link between what is explained and the motives and beliefs which explain it, need only be a 'law-like' statement, formulated to apply to a range of actions of a specified individual… entered current discussions in philosophy of history as an application of Professor Gilbert Ryle's account of dispositional explanations in The Concept of Mind."8
Howard supposes that Ryle is arguing against Aristotle's "attempt to explain the qualities here supposed as capacities or potentialities. If they are not actual, he says… what causal rôle can they play?… And if they are actual, what is gained by calling them potencies?… Dispositional propositions are [of a different logical kind than categorical ones.] Ryle calls them 'law-like statements,' to distinguish them both from episodic ones and from law statements [since unlike the latter they mention particular values.]"9 From a Thomist standpoint one could, perhaps, say that dispositions in Ryle's sense are both actual and potential. Substantial form can be viewed as the actuation of matter, or as first act of prime potency, and yet as second potency to existence or second act; similarly faculties as well as being perfections of the agent are potencies to operation. Rather than disagreeing with Aristotle, Ryle seems to be attempting to convey in English some of the implications of the distinction between poieisis and evergeia, between agere and facere.
In view of Ryle's theory of semi-hypotheticals, we may still admit that his occurrence-disposition distinction "is designed to mark the tests which are appropriate to the sentences in which the expressions occur… not Introspection, not Privileged Access but reference to the overt and perceptible performance and reactions of the person concerned."10 But one can no longer advance to the further conclusion that Ryle is a behaviourist,11 since Ryle's theory of semi-hypotheticals is incompatible with Behaviourism.
What about the dispositions themselves, which are the grounds of these semi-hypotheticals? "When we indicate a disposition or tendency," writes Rankin, "we affirm that in the standard circumstances certain things are under certain conditions necessarily true." The same author contrast with this what he calls "a causal possibility": "When we indicate a causal possibility we refuse to infer that something is false." And he thinks it at least possible that Ryle in speaking of dispositions does so in a way that confuses dispositions with mere causal possibilities.12 King seems to take a similar view. He says that Ryle insufficiently distinguishes unskilfully directed human activity from activity that is not directed at all, and merely directed activity from activity that is directed with skill. And he points out that this enables Ryle to be lacking in clarity in his treatment of actions which are intelligent and yet chance actions, directed actions it is true, but not directed with skill.13
We seem to be back at the problem of the relation between the logical principle of non-contradiction and the principle of sufficient reason. To say that a person has, e.g., a generous disposition logically entails that such a person does not habitually behave in a mean and avaricious way, but reasonably gives one grounds to suppose that the person behaves in a generous way, without this being logically implied. Ryle's respect for logic leads him to under-estimate the need of a thorough study of the reasonable implications of dispositions, without his actually denying them.
Notes:
1. Cfr 1950, Weldon, 267.
2. Cfr 1954, Hampshire, 5.
3. Cfr 1951, MacDonald, 81
4. 1950, Sibley, 267.
5. 1952, Gerhard, 127: "What has been said is very enlightening and useful, when it is limited to the empirically observable and verifiable. However, to say that such conclusions are characteristic of being as such, that any statements not reducible to such analytic terms, or not amenable to sensible or psychological verification, are meaningless, is to create another myth." 1950, Nowell-Smith, 301-02: "The later chapters in the book are marred by a certain inconsistency of outlook. Ryle has explained so much by showing that when we use biographical expressions we are making hypothetical or law-like propositions about how a person would behave in various circumstances, that he finds it incumbent on him to deny the existence of the inner life altogether." 1952, MacLellan, 138: "Ryle can only write about the mind as object, nor can any of us do otherwise, but this does not prove that the 'I' and the mind as subject may not have an existence quite outside the scope of the conclusions drawn about it by an observing intelligence."
6. King (1951, 286) tells us that scientific investigations have established the lack of physiological identity between the episodes of migrating and merely flying-south. Ryle's mistaken statement that these actualizations of two different (migratory and non-misgratory) dispositions (CM 51) may be not only indistinguishable by an observer, but in fact identical in character, brings out very clearly that dispositions are not, in his opinion, distinguished in terms only of the behaviour patterns they render possible. For mongrel-categoricals cfr 1950, Weldon, 267-70; 1950, Hampshire, 243-47.
7. 1956, Clark, 472. Cfr 1956, Welsh & Clark 19: "The instructions for making an omelette do contain 'specifications' for making an omelette, and do not contain specifications for omelettes… By contrast, what hypotheticals mention are not typically what, on Ryle's account, they must apply to."
8. W. Dray in 1963, Hook S., editor, Philosophy and History, 125. Cfr 1957, Donagan, 154. Donagan, after pointing out Gardiner and Watkin's recognition of the historical application of Ryle's work, agrees (p. 157) that "law-like statements… suffice to connect one happening with another." Gardiner in The Nature of Historical Explanation (OUP, 1952, 131) writers: "We appreciate the performance of certain actions by other people when we ourselves have had experience of what is is to do those same actions, when we also know how."
9. 1963, Howard, 159-60.
10. 1950, Hampshire, 247.
11. 1951, Miller, 270-72: "Ryle undertakes to demolish the myth of consciousness… Solipsism is the tenet that I alone exist, Behaviourism is the tenet that I do not exist but other things do. This is the culmination of human modesty. It surpasses even 'Excuse me for existing.' Professor Ryle is substantially a behaviourist." According to MacDonald, (1951, 80-90) Ryle maintains that "mind" like "human body" is not a proper name, but a peculiar kind of logical construction is a complete human person. Ryle is thus a logical or analytical though not a psychological behaviourist. He doesn't equate man with a well-conditioned machine, but he does advance the incredible thesis that I am only aware of what I do and of what happens to me by being disposed to behave in ways showing I am both awake and normal. 1954, Caillois, 257-65: "Le monde de M. Ryle possède une transparence aussi inquiétante que séduisante. Ce n'est pas un monde de choses inertes et mécaniques; c'est cependant un monde d'objets… L'illusion des deux mondes était possible parce qu'elle est une illusion fondée parce qu'il y a un sense vrai et non mythique de la distinction âme-corps… Tous les êtres du monde constituent un monde unique, un monde objet. Mais cela est-il concevable sans sujet (je ne parle plus des esprits mais du Je qui dit mon esprit)?… L'Esprit est sujet."
12. 1957, Rankin, 290.
13. 1951, King, 283-86. Cfr 1964, Kemp, 151-53: "Ryle, I think, fails to see, or at least to make consistent use of, the distinction between intelligence as capacity and intelligence as tendency… It is perhaps significant that Ryle says much more about differences such as that between the man who knows how to play chess and the man who cannot play at all than he does about differences such as that between the man who can play chess well, and the man who can play, but only badly or indifferently. Both the man who can play and the man who can play well exhibit intelligence, but only the latter exhibits skill… In any ordinary sense of the words 'intelligent' or 'rational' it would be quite untrue to say that a man who can make jokes is more intelligent, other things being equal, than one who cannot, even though he possesses a certain ability or skill that the other does not. On the other hand, the ability to play chess well might easily be regarded as an indication of superior intelligence; in other words, there is not a one-one correlation between skill and intelligence. Nor is this difference just an inexplicable fact of English usage… To explain intelligence in terms of knowing how does not commit one to a thorough-going behaviourism. The ability to see things in their proper relation to one another, which is itself a kind of knowing how, is perhaps essential to all other kinds." 1958, Roland, 380: "Ryle's distinction between 'knowing how' and 'knowing that' is really a distinction between 'knowing how to perform skills' and 'knowing propositions of a factual nature'… Such sentences as 'Johnny knows that he ought to be quiet' and 'Jones knows that he should be honest' cannot be reduced to Ryle's 'knowing how' … (p.387): Since this type of disposition is a tendency it cannot be subsumed under the 'knowing how' category. For that category as set up by Ryle… contains capacities and not tendencies." Contrast 1956, Hartland-Swann, 114: "All cases of knowing that… can and indeed must, if 'know' is a capacity verb and therefore dispositional, be reduced ultimately to cases of knowing how. Ryle… wishes to insist on certain non-parallelisms… but these non-parallelisms, though defensible by an appeal to ordinary linguistic usage, clearly break down after subjection to philosophical analysis."
Ryle says that Philosophy is not the particular study of some things not studied by the other sciences. It is not the observational science of some Third Realm. It is not an a priori deductive system. It is not, as the positive sciences are, a probable inductive generalization from particular observations. It is without presuppositions. It rectifies the positive sciences by distinguishing sense from nonsense, and by the synoptic argued analysis of meaning. It is not purely linguistic, but establishes truth about the logic of the employment of expressions.
Ryle also thinks that since philosophy cannot be satisfied with probability, there is no room for inductive argument from experience in philosophy, nor can the philosopher ever establish in philosophy matters of concrete fact. He does not deny that philosophers can prove anything, just as he does not deny that tennis-players can score goals. He appears to deny that they can prove anything as long as they are doing philosophy, just as one cannot score goals while playing tennis. And if by proof is meant logical derivation of conclusions from premisses, or the establishment of theorems by philosophers in the same way as they are established by geometricians, then I would agree that philosophers cannot prove anything. First of all because, as Ryle points out, a philosopher cannot simply assume his premisses. And secondly because the things and events in the world are all matters of fact, and not the necessary conclusions of some cosmological syllogism.
On the other hand, when Ryle excludes induction from philosophy he seems to imply that philosophy cannot establish any concrete matters of fact, but only facts about the conditions of meaning of expressions. These latter facts are established not by an appeal to the principle of non-contradiction, but by the reductio ad absurdum and other reasonable arguments. Directly constructive argument is not possible in philosophy, to any degree any way, because philosophers find themselves frustrated by wrangles about first principles, and so one must have recourse to this reductio ad absurdum method of argument, which only presupposes assent to some philosophically local, not general propositions, and goes on from there.1 But it is hard to see why concrete matters of fact should not be established by reductio ad absurdum and other reasonable arguments. Ryle says himself that it would be foolish to deny the existence of typewriters. Now perhaps the existence or non-existence of typewriters is not a philosophical question. It calls for a specialist knowledge of what sort of things typewriters are. In the same way the establishing of historical facts calls for the specialist skill of the trained historian, the establishing of topographical facts calls for the craft of the explorer or surveyor. But it seems absurd to suppose that a mind which, when specialized in some department of inquiry, is capable of establishing facts, should not be in principle capable of establishing general facts when properly trained. It will be part of the philosopher's task, as Ryle says, to effect the coordination of the various disciplines in the unity of a single viewpoint. This task, however, should lead not only to a smoother development of the empirical and theological sciences, but also should open up the way to some concrete conclusions in philosophy itself.
As pointed out by Howard,2 Ryle rarely has recourse to the strong or double-edged reductio, but prefers the weak reductio in one of three forms, viz., the infinite regress, the argument by substitution, and the appeal to spontaneous avowals. And the same author points out that "the reductio ad absurdum does rest in fact upon a logician's postulate. Ryle should explain in what sense he accepts this postulate - merely methodologically or in some stronger sense." The question here, of course, is the relation in Ryle's philosophy between reason and logic.
Sibajiban3 gives four interpretations of the principle or law of contradiction: that nothing physical or mental can be self-contradictory; that nothing can be thought to be self-contradictory; that no significant expression can be self-contradictory; that rational beings who wish to think logically must bind themselves not to fall into self-contradiction. He maintains that Ryle interprets the law of contradiction mainly in this latter sense, and that the laws of logic apply only to performers who either obey or violate them. If we assume this sort of obedience to be reasonable, we have a further pointer to the priority of the principle of sufficient reason.
To quote Blanshard: "Professor Ryle says that absurdities, in the sense of conflicts of categories, do not occur in nature. We agree… But statements of this kind are excursions into metaphysics… He seems to me to be a metaphysician, self-hobbled, as older metaphysicians were not, by a linguistic ball and chain."4 Even if Ryle thinks that no concrete facts can be established in philosophy, in practice he does try to establish them, even if indirectly. As Copleston says, "though one can doubtless speak illogically about minds, the problem of the nature of mind is not a problem of logic, in the normal sense of 'logic' and 'logical problem'… Analysis of meaning tends to become an analysis of what people ought to mean by their statements, that is, if they attended to the facts of evidence," if they were really reasonable about things. "Thus to say that Cartesians and Platonists allocated mental concepts to wrong logical types… is in the long run equivalent to saying that there are no facts of mental life which can properly be adduced in support of their theories."5 Nevertheless, Ryle's explicit distrust of proofs in philosophy leads him to undervalue explanatory theories,6 and to fail to provide an explicit justification of his own positions in any adequate way.7
Thus, Ryle is quite correct in rejecting the Ontological Argument for the existence of G-d as he propounds it, and his examination of it is thorough and instructive. It is also arguable that he is right in holding that within the framework of a rationalist or idealsist metaphsyics all other would-be proofs of the existence of G-d can be shown to be disguised forms of the Ontological Argument. We can agree, too, that "exists" is not a word which operates on the same level as predicative expressions, and that to say that such and such exists is not to assign it any determinate species or even genus. But to say that "exists" is not a predicate prompts the question, what is it? and why do we mistakenly assume it to be a predicate? Ryle says, with Plato and Aristotle, that "exists" is an expression that can function only in the context of a complete proposition, and, following Plato, he likens its job in a sentence to that of a vowel in a pronounceable syllable. But he does not specifically say where verbs, such as "exist" derive their asserting force in reasonable affirmation. In the context of his philosophy as a whole one can suppose that it stems from the normative principle of sufficient reason, but Ryle's exposition of his theories is insufficiently systematic to bring this out. His attention to detail is far preferable to a priori generalizations, and his effort, like that of other Analysts to cut loose from technical jargon and face the task of making themselves understood through the medium of ordinary language is as commendable as it is difficult. As Confucious says:
"If language is not correct, then what is said is not what is meant; if what is said is not what is meant, then what ought to be done remains undone; if this remains undone, morals and art will deteriorate; if morals and art deteriorate, justice will go astray; if justice goes astray, the people will stand about in helpless confusion. Hence there must be no arbitrariness in what is said. This matters above everything."But even if, as Ryle thinks, the time for synthesis is not yet ripe, only such a synthesis can effectively avoid such lacunæ as Ryle's failure, for instance, to advert to the need of discussing the argument he mentions: if reality can be understood in fact, and if in fact every effect has a cause, G-d in fact exists.
Ryle is correct in saying that philosophy is not a short cut to the knowledge that only empirical science or theology can give us, but this is not to say that philosophy can only deal with truths about the logical character of expressions, and never at all with concrete fact. As far as Ryle says this, he is mistaken. Ryle rightly says that it is not the philosopher's job to study philology or fine distinctions in linguistic usage; his task is to discipline our all-round skill in the use of words, and to save us from falling into nonsense by the acceptance of partly unsound language habits. Thus Ryle's main point against the Cartesian theory is that "the terms referring to mental processes are of a category or type differing from those of the physical processes."8 But Hanson points out that "ordinary language may be Cartesian here, non-Cartesian there."9 There is, in fact, a great deal of truth in Hampshire's contention that "the so-called para-mechanical hypothesis is no more than the very general fact that… we transfer terms originally used to describe visual or other sense-experience into other contexts."10 Ryle does not engage in close linguistic analyses.11
In passing we can examine Mates' opinion that ordinary use is not really a normative term for the ordinary language philosophers, but "a rough descriptive term employed with little definiteness of intention," accompanied by the belief that "it is somehow wrong or inadvisable, or at least dangerous to use ordinary words in ways different from those in which the ordinary man uses them… that in daily life words function well enough and lead to no great problems." It has been already noted that Ryle does not mean "usage" when he speaks of "use," and so in following use, he is not necessarily accepting some sort of gallup-poll test for philosophical opinions. Nor does his failure to take into account the existence of the word "misusage" seem to undermine his position.12 Mates backs up his thesis that ordinary use is not a normative term by mentioning that "whle Professor Ryle tells us that 'voluntary' and 'involuntary' in their ordinary use are applied only to actions which ought not to be done… Professor Austin states we may join the army or make a gift voluntarily, we may hiccough or make a small gesture involuntarily."13 Cavell reconciles the positions of Ryle and Austin, to some extent at least, by pointing out that the relevant statements of Ryle are meant to be generalizations, while those of Austin are statements producing instances of what is said in a language, which Ryle could admit as lawful exceptions without detriment to the truth of his own statements. Ryle's only fault, he thinks, is to have supposed the term 'voluntary' to be applicable only when there is some moral purpose in raising the question, whereas it is applicable in certain other specified circumstances as well - not, however, as frequently as some philosophers believe.14
The evidence seems to be that Ryle regards reasons as the arbiter of use, and not usage as a norm reason must unquestioingly follow. There is no grave objection to, and much in favour of his employment of ordinary language for the exposition of his philosophy. He knows full well that language grows and develops, and Passmore seems rather wide of the mark when he reminds us that "classically educated Oxford men notoriously treat the English language as if it were (or ought to be) a dead language, with Oxford usages serving as the Ciceronian model."15
The nature of Ryle's interest in language, and at the same time the need there is for a fuller justification of his basic positions, is illustrated by Hampshire: "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… 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. His philosophical thesis consists of the statement of these requirements, in direct opposition to the conditions of application which Descartes and Hume insist upon… In denying the existence of acts of will or of impalpable mental processes, and in asserting the existence of hankerings, cravings and itchings… he finds [his] standard of certainty in the conventions governing the use of physical descriptions… There has always been this connection between the so-called theory of knowledge and metaphysics… Any vocabulary that we use carries with it its own existential implications."16 It is not that Ryle is a Behaviourist or Linguistic Platonist, of course, but he finds that ordinary language does in fact embody or reflect certain philosophical views which he reasonably believes, and reasonably argues to be sound.
There seems to be room for and need of a metaphysical ontology and theology based on the reflective grasp of the dynamism of human experience. Ryle himself mentions that even today people expect philosophers to provide a metaphysic. He provides insufficient evidence for his claim that theologians have failed in recent years to supply fuel for the philosophical fire. It is true that until very recently the Analysts have shown little interest in theological questions, and Ryle has the merit of being to some extent an exception, but if the Analysts have not found problems to discuss one suspects it was because they did not look very hard.
Ryle has performed the useful preparatory task of showing how the words "G-d" and "exist" are not to be understood, and which sorts of argument for the existence of G-d are unfounded. His insistence, against Plato, that if G-d exists at all, He is a particular reality and not a universal abstraction is to the point. But it seems a pity he has not followed up the line of thought suggested by his admission that it would be foolish to deny that typewriters in fact exist. As it is, though he does not deny any Theological doctrines, he does perhaps make it appear that Theologians are somewhat gullible, or at least philosophical adolescents. The truth is that Ryle's reasonable know-how and Aquinas' wisdom are valid justifications, but seem rather a deus ex machina unless they are explicitly discussed. As Kaplan says: "the resolution of dilemnas, as Ryle conceives it, cannot be more than propædeutic… The task is to solve philosophical problems after we have disentangled ourselves from the philosophical puzzles… As a traffic policeman he is a model of unfailing courtesy and resourcefulness. But the problem of the traffic engineer - planning new thoroughfares, inventing signaling devices, designing rational systems for their location and timing - these problems fall outside the scope of his self-imposed limitations."17
Ryle holds that philosophy is mainly a form of logic, and that the characteristic philosophical argument is the hypothetical Ponendo tollens in its strong form. But if we couple Ryle's own statement that any negation includes an affirmation with his practice of not confining himself to the reductio ad absurdum, it is clear that there is no such thing as a characteristically philosophical argument, in the sense of philosophers' being able to use some sort of syllogism that other professional thinkers do not have occasion to employ. The reductio ad absurdum argument, even in its strong form, can be used in contexts one would hesitate to label philosophical.
The value of Ryle's drawing attention to the reductio ad absurdum was that it mediated the shift of emphasis in his philosophy from the principle of non-contradiction so respected by Rationalist philosophers as well as by Logicians to the principle of sufficient reason, reasonable know-how, wisdom. Now such a change of emphasis opens up the possibility of a philosophical doctrine of the factual or hypothetically necessary, and not only of the logically necessary. In maintaining, then, that philosophy cannot establish matters of concrete fact, and in rejecting as far as one can see not only a rationalist Metaphysic, but any Ontology at all, Ryle is going against the inner movement of his own thought, or at least is frustrating its full development. To say that philosophy is the skilful replacement of type-habits by type-disciplines does not justify by-passing explicit treatment of the problem of justification.18
As long as the justification of one's standards of skill and ineptitude in the use of words are left implicit, one remains open to the charge of really taking use itself as a criterion, and then we fall into Behaviourism or Linguistic Platonism. Ryle's early emphasis on logic, and his working in a milieu where logical questions are stressed, leads him to underestimate the originality and strength of his own position, and he accordingly fails to exploit all his resources.19 This results in his failing to express in his philosophy any sense of the mysteriousness of reality.20
It is a certain fascination for logic which underpins his account of philosophy as type-discrimination. Russell said that two expressions belong to the same category if they will fit significantly as alternatives in the same sentence-frame. Ryle's theory that two expressions belong to different categories if one of them will and the other will not fill the gap in a given sentence-frame is an improvement on Russell's. But Smart has pointed out that this test, if pushed to the limit, shows "every expression to be of a different logical category from every other… Thus 'the seat of the … is hard' works if 'chair' or 'bench' is put into the blank, but not if 'table' or 'bed'is. And if furniture words do not form a category, we may well ask what do. Again most logicians regard names of integers as of the same logical type… 1, 2, 3, etc., and -1, -2, -3, etc., all go into the blank of ''7/( ) = 9/2,' and yield either an arithmetical truth or falsehood. But 0 will not go into the blank…"21
From the standpoint of formal logic a definition of category construction is, indeedd, arbitrary, and from a similar standpoint Ryle's view leads him to the endless multiplication of categories. But from the reasonable point of view, it is an advance on Russell's position, and it has its uses as long as it is prudently and not recklessly exploiited. This seems to show that Ryle's early respect for logic was exaggerated if not misplaced.22 As Warnock says, "to say that some theorist has allocated some fact or concept 'to the wrong category' naturally prompts the two questions, first, to what category has he wrongly assigned it, and second, to what category should it properly be assigned. Both these natural questions presuppose, of course, that there are known and nameable categories. But in fact Ryle himself denies that this is so… and thus, I think, can be said to be refusing to gratify expectations naturally aroused by his own terminology."23
In formal logic Ryle applied his method of category-discrimination to the problem or puzzle of "heterologicality." Bowden found his treatment of Grelling's paradox to be very thorough and convincing.24 But Mackie and Smart pointed out that although his solution was reasonable enough, it was not a formally logical solution,25 and Geach pinpointed its defect, from a logical point of view, in terms of a defective theory of reference.26 This serves to illustrate the fact that Ryle is neither a historian of philosophy, nor a formal logician, but a philosopher.
As a philosopher he gives an interesting account of philosophy as type-discrimination, as the gradual replacement of category-habits by category-disciplines. And it is certainly true that much confusion arises from taking the abstract for the concrete, and from not observing the proper customs formalities on the frontiers between the various sciences themselves, and between the sciences and common sense, and more especially, I would say, between knowledge and sense-acquaintance. Ryle's treatment of these matters is, therefore, very useful, and his references to the work in the same area of Plato, Aristotle, Kant, and Wittgenstein are instructive. But no method of type-discrimination can exhaust the method of philosophy. Being without presuppositions, philosophy must somehow manage to be self-justifying. Logically, type-distinctions can be multiplied indefinitely, and they can be made in any number of ways. The fact that we may the type-distinctions we do may have its reasonable justification, but this needs to be made explicit. Ryle says that philosophizing is a question of flair, and no doubt he is right. But a passing reference to the point is not enough.
To quote Gellner: "the knowing how - knowing that dichotomy [suggests] rather than guards against the mistake of treating knowing how as a type of validation, as a legitimate answer to 'How do we know?' questions. I do not know whether in fact Ryle himself commits this mistake. The Presidential Address to the Aristotelian Society, 1945, gives the impression that he does; the relevant chapter in The Concept of Mind does not… Nevertheless The Concept of Mind whilst not repeating the mistake does not give any explicit warning against it. There is a tendency, requiring to be checked, to make knowing how do what 'intuitions' used to do. There are indeed sense of 'intuition' in which it is not self-contradictory, but only in the self-contradictory sense can intuitions perform the illegitimate task assigned to them [and] be simultaneously both the evidence, in the sense of initial conditions of an inference and the guarantee of the legitimacy of the inference from the evidence. There tends to be actually a triple impossible identification - of evidence, the rule of inference from that evidence, and the guarantee of the truth of that rule… Intuition in the harmless sense is valid in virtue of something or other, but the mythical intuition [is said to be valid] simply in virtue of having occurred… The knowing how - knowing that dichotomy is not coordinate with, but on the contrary cuts across, logical classifications such as analytic, synthetic, synthetic a priori, pragmatically justified or unverifiable. Ryle in 1945 seemed to conclude that because something was shown to be a matter of knowing how, the question concerning which of the logician's pigeon-holes it was to go into was silly. But this is not so. [We may conclude (1) that there is sometimes found a tendency] to rule out sceptical conclusions a priori, but it may well be an important feature of some human activities that the rules underlying them cannot be justified… (2) The extraction of the rule, the translation of knowing how into knowing that, may be very difficult, or impossible, and even harmful to [actual] performance, [and] these cases tempt one into misconstruing knowing how as a category of validation, or into making its presence a reason why no validation is necessary… (3) to say that somebody knows how to do something is to say [ambiguously] two things: that he can do it, and that he can do it correctly… To say that two things are meant by knowing how is not the same as to say that two processes are referred to by it, this being the fallacy which Ryle rightly attacks. Only one process is indicated, but what is also being said is that the process satisfies some criteria; this is mentioned by Ryle in The Concept of Mind but ignored, and I think implicitly contradicted, in the 1945 paper… Knowing how is an excellent thing, but it is no substitute for proof, evidence or grounds, nor, alternatively, for admission of arbitrariness."27
Notes:
1. 1955, Johnstone, 541.
2. 1963, Howard, 149-50. 161.
3. 1964, Sibajiban, 99.
4. 1962, Blanshard, 359. 367.
5. 1951b, Copleston, 329; 1951a, Copleston, 404.
6. 1951, Hofstadter, 264-68: "His failure to recognize the possibility that dualism might be intended as an explanatory theory of human behaviour rather than a descriptive differentiation of mind-related conduct from its opposite is a sign of this… The degree to which Professor Ryle undervalues explanatory theory is astounding [e.g., The Concept of Mind, 114. 325.]."
7. 1951, Ceccato, 57-59: "The plan of work and the means chosen by Ryle would, however, be revealed as insufficient as soon as one intended to make the technique, that differentiates human activity, progress towards the explicative and predictive and conditioning ends at once… For instance, Ryle is indeed disposed to renounce differentiation, by asserting, for instance, that representation, or imagination, and observation are the same thing. But if, according to his program, he can limit himself by saying that the criterion of the internal scene is inapplicable, how will he, then, make progress the differentiating techniqe that is transmitted by current language with the different symbols, for instance, precisely 'representation' and 'observation', 'mental' and 'physical'? Ryle easily resorts to the negative criterion of the 'non-observational.' But would he succeed to supply, from the position in which he nevertheless remains, a definition of 'observation' and of 'physical'? In his volume these are not to be found."
8. 1959, Gould, 299.
9. 1952, Hanson, 248.
10. 1950, Hampshire, 240.
11. 1957, Passmore, 449.
12. Cfr 1954, Passmore, 59-63.
13. 1958, Mates, Inquiry, reprint: 66-68.
14. Cavell, ibid., 77-81.
15. loc. cit.
16. Hampshire in 1957, Mace, 273-78.
17. 1955, Kaplan, 645-46. Cfr 1954, Virieux-Reymond, 164-65: "Pour rétablir la circulation normale, le sergent de ville doit en avoir la notion; de même le philosophe sait les exigences que devrait remplir la preuve correcte assurant la légitimité de son point de vue. Et en un sens, on pourrait dire qu'il possède des prémisses sur lesquelles étayer son raisonnement." Carcano, 1952, 288: "L'analisi stessa ha certamente efficacia a mettere a nudo i problemi, ma non può fornire senz'altro il criterio di soluzione di questi problemi." 1955, Urmson, 554-56: "Ryle presents his dilemnas here as illustrations of his thesis about the nature of philosophical problems - conceptual traffic-blocks. If not all, at least all analystical problems of philosophy he holds to be of this kind. But the question, e.g., of the relevance of formal to informal logic is born of wonder, not of any conceptual traffic-block."
18. Cfr 1954, Marpurgo-Tagliabue, 163: "Je n'ai rien à objecter contre l'analogie entre une philosophie et une partie de tennis, sauf que je redoute que de telle manière chaque opération humaine ne se réduise à un jeu. D'ailleurs, dans le jeu de tennis il y a encore un gagnant: c'est-à-dire qu'il y a, là aussi, un critère de dualité, et donc de vérité (et la chose ne change même pas dans un jugement à trois valeurs, gangant, perdant, hors-jeu). 1956, Specht, 315: "Aber hier zeigt sich die Grenze des Ryleschen Versuches: die Analogie mit dem Schachspiel ist zwar verfühverish, darf aber nicht darüber hinwegtäuschen, dass sie ein Grundproblem des Leib-Seele-Zusammenhangs verdeckt."
19. anon, Times Literary Supplement, 7/4/1950, xi: "He has produced a quiverful of miscellaneous and original arguments… but the idea that these arguments add up to a single logical method and tend to a single clear-cut conclusion looks like an afterthought and seems an illusion." 1955, Chastaing, 311: "Le professeur d'Oxford paraît trop modeste quand il présente les deux premiers litiges [dans son Dilemnas] comme des jeux 'académiques': leurs arguments nourissent le style de mauvais romanciers, les oracles qui publient des hebdomadaires féminins, le proverbe 'deviens ce que tu es' et quelque fameux procès de trahison."
20. 1955, Tomlin, 263-64: "To say that all is explicable is itself an illusion, since science is unable to explain the scientists explaining. The alternative way of approaching a mystery otherwise irreducible is to acknowledge its mysteriousness, which is to acknowledge its ultimateness. The existence of an intractable problem, and above all, the existence of ourselves trying to solve it, is proof of an ultimate mystery."
21. 1953, Smart, 227-28. Cfr 1959, Gould, 298-99: "A definition of category construction is an arbitrary procedure… Ryle has set up his own arbitrary test for categorising words. I intend now to show that certain undesirable consequences flow from Ryle's theory of categories… (1) Substitute in the sentence-fame 'I … C sharp,' the words 'hear' and 'taste,' and the following two sentences result: 'I hear C sharp' and 'I taste C sharp.' Are not the sense faculties members of the same category?… (2) Again subsititute in the sentence frame 'The seat of your … has a hole,' the words 'tie' and 'trousers.' Does Ryle wish to give up clothing as a category? (3) Mr. Smart has shown that in any mathematical fraction such as 'x/7 … x' any number except 7 fits, while the resulting number from the substitution of 7 is meaningless and absurd. But surely numbers are of the same category… According to his category theory all terms except synonyms are… of different categories."
22. Cfr 1956, Baker, 14-15: "I have no doubt that the implied method of doing philosophy by detecting category differences is a fruitful one… a working method for isolating problems to be tackled. But by what criteria are category differences established? Can category mistakes on their own bear the weight that is sometimes placed on them?… Is the discovery, by itself, of a category mistake as philosophically illuminating as is assumed by some contemporary writers? The category mistake method appears to generate too many categories… Every word has its own category, every sentence has its own logic… it could easily happen that any word has many categories."
23. 1958, Warnock, 96.
24. 1951, Bowden, 77.
25. 1952, Mackie & Smart, 61-64: "The adjective 'X' is m-heterological if and only if '"X" is X' is either false or meaningless. It is clear that on Professory Ryle's treatment 'heterological' is M-heterological (hereinafter abbreviated to 'M-het.'). Now consider the statement (S), '"M-het." is M-het.'. S must be true or false or meaningless. If S is true, it is either false or meaningless, if it is false it is true, and if it is meaningless it is true. It seems that this paradox cannot be resolved by Professor Ryle's method.… On the other hand, to see that '"'M-het.' is M-het." is meaningless' verifies '"Me-het." is M-het.', we have to take the latter as a meaningful statement and expand it. This paradox does turn, then, on a type of confusion: 'true' and 'false' on the one hand, and 'meaningless' on the other, are predicates of different types… A paradoxical argument often turns upon the taking of a statement in two incompatible ways at once… Some paradoxes are insoluble in terms of a mechanical sort of logic… Those who appraoch logic in this mechanical way treat meaninglessness itself as the result of the violation of certain rules… But, as Professor Ryle shows, we can see that a sentence is meaningless without first seeing that it violates any rule. This is not to deny, of course, that there are general principles about meaninglessness… To avoid paradoxes, deal in statements that assert something; to understand paradoxes, note that statements can assert nothing and can yet be taken and treated as asserting something."
26. 1961, Geach, 64-67: "The doctrine of reference put forward by Professor Ryle in his article Heterologicality is inadequate… The crucial passage of Ryle's discussion is 'If unpacked, the assertion that "heterological" is heterological would run: "heterological" lacks the property for which it stands, namely that of locak the property for which it stands, namely that of lacking… No property is ever mentioned, so the seeming reference to such a property is spurious' (p. 51) … It may be conceded that in the proposition '"Heterological" lacks the property for which "heterological" stands' the last six words are an expressin that calls for a namely-rider… But 'lacks the property for which it stands' and 'lacks the property for which "heterological" stands' are not at all the same. [Indeed the one is true just of those epithets of which the other is not true. The former can be paraphrased:] '(is an epithet that) at once (unambiguously) stands for and lacks some property or other'… We must therefore deny that 'the property for which it stands' when it occurs as part of the predicate [under discussion] ever refers to a specifiable property; the demand for a namely-rider is quite illegitimate… The logic of pronouns with antecedents was extensively studied by medieval logicians in their chapters de suppositione relativorum; the term relativa covered all prounouns with antecedents, like 'it' in this article, and not only grammatically relative pronouns. This medieval treatment of pronouns was inconclusive; and modern logicians have rather neglected the subject.… Quine has repeatedly pointed out the relation between pronouns of this sort and bound variables in logistic notation. My aim in this note has been to show the need for a detailed and thorough discussion of relativa; and to deprecate the lazy assumption that such pronouns, or phrases containing them, can be disposed of by calling them 'referring expressions' and asking what they refer to." Meager (1956, 135) advanced the view that "the defect from which the paradoxical use of 'heterological' suffers is not so much self-reference, in which it succeeds, but self-description in which it cannot but fail."
27. 1951, Gellner, 25-35.
Ryle says that knowledge cannot be belief and belief cannot be knowledge, because knowledge is a skill while belief is a motive. Historical testimony cannot give rise to knowledge, but only to highly probable belief. Sense-acquaintance is not, and perhaps in Ryle's view cannot give rise to knowledge, but only to belief. His silence about and even opposition to conscious experience at certain points in his argument suggests our interpretation of him as saying: experience cannot give rise to knowledge, but only to belief. Ryle appears handicapped by his respect for logic, and his consequent failure to exploit fully the resources of reason. Logic, the principle of contradiction, suggests that questions are to be answered with a plain "Yes" or a forthright "No". But reason is more gradual, mor subtle, more nuanced. We have to know how to believe, and sometimes we only believe that we know. This does not solve the very large issue of the nature of knowledge and belief, but it does indicate that more work is needed, that the distinction between a motive and a capacity does not solve the problem. The solution may turn on the reality in each one of us of our own experience of the dynamism of reason, of the operational pattern of the immanent principle of sufficient reason: a solution in terms not of knowledge, nor of belief, but of being.1
After P. Strawson's Individuals, R. Harré's Theories and Things, and D. Shwayder's Modes of Referring and the Problems of Universals, a book of metaphysics from Ryle would be a welcome event.2
Notes:
1. Cfr 1952, MacLellan, 142: "The antithesis is really between being and [conceptual] knowing. What we know [in the ordinary way] must be outside of us in space or treated as if it were so… But being need know nothing [in this way], not even doubt. It simply just is." I am far from sure how far MacLellan's view fits in with my own.
2. P. Strawson, Individuals - An Essay in Descriptive Metaphysics, Methuen, 1959; R. Harré, Theories and Things - A Brief Study in Prescriptive Metaphysics, Sheed and Ward, 1961; D. Schwayder, Modes of Referring and the Problems of Universals - An Essay in Metaphysics, University of California Publications in Philosophy, Vol. XXXV, 1961.
PERCEPTION
In Ryle's view perception is not an act, but the outcome of a dispositional capacity, a success or victory in the game of exploring the world. Seeing is successful looking, a species of correct observation. It is the exercise of a skill or ability or know-how. Someone who knows how to see, sees, e.g., hills, or streams, or wisps of cloud; he does not see sense-data.
In general one may not that Ryle should not simply show rival theories of perception to be false, but try to appreciate their merits as attempts to explain things that need explaining.1
Mascall reminds us that "the sensory cortex is highly differentiated… so much so that if an impulse from a taste-organ gets relayed, by a wrong link-up, to the part of the cortex which is concerned with the sensation of sound, what will be perceived will not be a taste but a noise" - and he thinks it unfortunate "that no reference is made to points such as this by Professor Gilbert Ryle."2 King points out that "a doze of drugs or fevered brain may be just as efficacious in producting observations as are the influences of the animal's environment," employing the term "animal" because he holds that "reptiles make observations as well as have sensations."3 Without analysing here the nuances of "sensation" and "observation" in different writers, suffice it to say that Ryle's account of perception and sensation generally in terms of a gradually developing know-how would seem to make adequate allowance for the problems of error and illusion.
The further criticism that Ryle's account of perception altogether ignores that it is an experience, and that "experiences are private to one person, not merely in that you cannot have my experience but in that you cannot observe it,"4 need not delay us here, being covered by our discussion of the meaning Ryle gives to the verification of dispositional statements and semi-hypothetical propositions.
Strawson claims that Ryle's attempt to explain seeing and hearing in terms of achievement verbs does not solve the problem but avoids the real issue.5 In similar vein Russell writes: "Ryle rejects the arguments of the physiologist and the psychologist on the general ground that perceiving is an achievement and not a process. But the question still remains, how these arguments affect looking at and observing, which are processes."6 Hirst puts the point more trenchantly: "Nothing is done to refuse the suggestion that the world as we see it is just appearance due to the deficiencies and distortions of our sense organs. His solution will only appeal to those who already have an unshakeable faith in the common-sense view."7 And Garnett says: "We do need some theory to explain how two persons, by observing sense data not numerically the same, can nevertheless observe the same physical object. Also we need a theory to explain how sense data appear to be outside our heads, although they appear to inform us of a world so organized that they can appear only in correlation with events inside our heads."8 With regard to this line of criticism, one must note that Ryle admits to have only dealt partially with the problems of perception, and further that his justification of his views is through an appeal to reasonableness, not to any alleged stock of common-sense beliefs.
The theory of perception that Ryle rejects decisively is the sense-datum theory. Ryle's key-position against it springs from his distinction between knowledge and sense-acquaintance, as George brings out: "Ryle puts his finger on the fundamental difficulty of attempts to preserve an indubitable element in sense-datum statements, or protocols as they are sometimes called. Simply because they are sense-statements they cannot be sensibly described as true or false, and in the same way as they cannot be true or false, neither can they be factual. The sense-datum theory which is so closely (although not necessarily) associated with phenomenalism is based on very much the same confusion," i.e., on the same failure to notice this fact.9 Ryle does well to reject the sense-datum theory; "having a visual sensation certainly is a non-inferential discerning of a particular sensible object."
Ryle's criticism of the sense-datum theory is obscured in The Concept of Mind by being expressed in language implying that observation entails having sensations - a point which is later denied by Ryle himself,10 and which is not involved by the common-sense view, nor necessarily by the sense-datum theory.11 "To talk of sense-data," writes Ayer, "is to talk of the way things seems, in the somewhat peculiar sense of seeming that I have tried to explain."12 Accordingly, the glimpses, whiffs and some sorts of the looks Ryle speaks of cannot be identified with sense-data, since the former are internal accusatives, and, in addition, glimpses and whiffs are too short-lived to be sense-data, which, even when transitory, are not merely momentary,13 according to the account of them given by their supporters. The real reason why there cannot possibly exist sense-data is that what exists can be affirmed to exist in true judgment, and that sense-data lack the necessary complexity for such affirmation. Hence Hirst writes: "the real mistake in the sense-datum theory lies in omitting 'of the dish' when it passes from look to sense-datum. It wrongly treats the 'look' as an existence of a different order from the dish… This is hinted at in various places in Ryle's discussion, but he should have given it greater emphasis."14
Ryle also claims that we cannot observe sensations, since observing entails having sensations.15 But Garnett points out that "we do not have sensations of the objects we observe. To observe a sensory object is to have at least one sensation, to notice it, and to interpret it. And this interpretation simply consists of noticing a number of other items besides the sensation, including relations, images and other sensorial and ideational elements. Thus observing a sensory object does not entail having a sensation of the object in the same sense as it does the noticing of the sensation and other details… This analysis refutes the argument on which Professor Ryle chiefly relies to show that sensations cannot be observed. It remains to show that they can. The having of sensations is not equivalent to the noticing of them. Professor Ryle quite explicitly recognizes this fact. He insists, however, that noticing is not equivalent to observing. But while it is true that noticing or heeding may be so limited and brief as not to involve observation there is no part of observation that is not noticing or heeding something. The only sense in which it can be claimed that sensations are not observed is that they are not observed in isolation."16 Despite their justice, Garnett's remarks are not effective against Ryle's central position, except in one respect, since they begin by attacking Ryle's supposition,17 that observation entails having sensations, without taking into account that this supposition is rejected18 by Ryle himself.
There is a sense in which animals can be said to be observing as they search for prey. When they find it, or at least get on the scent, they may be said to be observing successfully or having sensations.19 But human beings also speak at a higher level of successfully observing sensory objects, and sensations are, as Garnett says, only partial contributions to these higher level achievements, although they are, as Ryle holds, successes in their own right at another level.
The point where Garnett's remarks do uncover a weak spot in Ryle's position is this. Garnett rightly says, using the metaphors from sense language that we have every right to use, that we can observe those achievements which are our own sensations. Ryle, here speaking literally, says that sensations cannot be observed. Speaking literally, he is correct. But by speaking literally at this point he reveals that same inadequacy in his use of the word "verification" elsewhere remarked upon.
Ryle has also be criticized for denying that seeing and hearing are the end-stages of mental states or processes, but this criticism seems to fall to the ground if we remember that it is a para-mechanical and mechanical states and processes that Ryle objects to.20
Notes:
1. 1951, MacKinnon, 248-52: "… Ryle shows how fantastic the language that epistemologists use often is. [But] there is a danger that the onslaught on a confused and often sterile tradition will obscure the insights its originators were trying to express…" 1951, Collins, 293: "Ryle has emptied out some of the facts of conscious life along with the mistaken maps about them."
2. 1956, Mascall, 227 text and note 2.
3. 1951, King, 288-91. Contrast CM, 204.
4. 1955, Barnes, 361-63. Cfr 1953, Ewing, 58.
5. 1955, Strawson, 364-65: In Dilemnas "Ryle draws once more the parallel, which he drew in The Concept of Mind between verbs like 'hearing' and 'seeing' on the one hand, and success-words on the other… He admits that the parallel does not go all the way; but in truth it barely starts. He exaggerates the distance that it does go by repeated use of words like 'detect' and 'discover'…"
6. 1955, Russell, 348.
7. 1959, Hirst, 126-34.
8. 1952, Garnett, 352.
9. 1962, George, 134-35.
10. CM, 200.
11. Cfr 1959, Hirst, 55-58: "…'Sensations' of this kind belong to a causal context and may be 'adverbial' experiences rather than independent existents; it is not fair to equate them with sense-data, even if the supporters of the latter are not always clear about this…" Ayer in 1957, Mace, 221-22: "Let us suppose that Professor Ryle [CM, 215] is right, and that sensing a sense-datum cannot be made to do duty for having a sensation. This is still not a decisive objection to the sense-datum theory. For the theory does not in fact requrie that the two should be identified; it does not have to be interpreted as referring to sensations at all… Historically, it may well be that some philosophers have been guilty of the confusions which Ryle imputes to them. But the introduction of sense-data is not necessarily linked with any such confusion." This latter historical point is touched upon by Hirst, op. cit., 126: "Ryle's criticism that sensing sense-data is really observing sensations… is valuable against those (chiefly neurologists) who talk of perceiving sensations or percepts built of them." 1964, Malinovich, 161 expresses the view that Ryle's analysis of perception is not made invalid by Ayer's contention that Ryle's criticism of sense-data is to some extent an ignoratio elenchi. But we must agree with 1952, Pap, 212-13 that "if it is linguistic confusion to suppose, with Broad, that there are mysterious non-physical objects, called 'sensa,' ready to be sensed, it does not in the least follow that it is linguistic confusion to suppose that there are events, called sensations,' which are not publicly observable in the way physical events are publicly observable… Ryle has shown [the the concept of a perception-reporting sentence without physical implications but] with a communicable meaning is self-contradictory - and in that sense meaningless - but has not shown what needs to be shown in order to refute the theory of private sensations, viz., that the supposition of the occurrence of pure sensations unconnected with physical situations is meaningless… That ordinary language contains no 'neat' sensation-vocabulary… simply proves that ordinary language is inter-subjective." Ryle's feeling that there was no need to show this brings out, I think, not any alleged over confidence in ordinary language as it stands, but that his standards of adequacy in argument are reasonable rather than logical in any purely formal way. This does not, however, lessen the weight of 1955, Sibley, 467's further criticism: "By not treating 'look for' and 'look at' separately, Ryle jumbles together concepts of two different types… His 'achievement' category contains at least two kinds of concepts, the 'completion' kind and the 'success' kind… Scrutinies have no typical successes corresponding to them in the way quests have… 'see' in its achievement sense is of the 'success' not of the 'completion' type… Perception verbs, like 'see,' have other functions besides indicating achievements… they signify the exercise, for a period of time, of an ability, not merely the possession of an ability."
12. Hirst, op.cit., 56-57.
13. Ibid., 58
14. CM, 206.
15.
16. 1952, Garnett, 350-52.
17. CM, 206, etc.
18. CM, 200.
19. Cfr 1951, King, 288.
20. Hirst, op.cit., 126-34: "…Nor are Ryle's linguistic arguments for showing that seeing is not a process very convincing… Aristotle was distinguishing between 'processes' (kinéseis) and 'activities' (évérgeiai). He meant 'end' (télos) in the sense of 'goal' not 'terminus,' and his argument is not concerned with instantaneity, but is to show that an 'activity' may continue indefinitely. We must say either that seeing or hearing the object is the whole causal process or that it is the end-stage of it. The latter allows one to say that perceiving is instantaneous, but means that one perceives not external objects but their remote mental effects; the former is far better, but it means the abandonment of Ryle's thesis and of the common-sense notion of perception as immediate confrontation…" Hirst's mode of expression is not without para-mechanical overtones.
According to Bradley, Ryle "holds that such avowals as 'I feel bored' are not really descriptions or reports of private - or non-private - states of affairs, but rather just a part of, or item in, the whole complex behaviour-pattern that constitutes, say, being bored. As such, he argues, it doesn't make sense to ask whether avowals are true or false, since only propositions are true or false and avowals are not, or do not express, propositions."1 But we have seen that, pace Blanshard,2 Ryle's philosophy is not even some sort of "recent and more sophisticated behaviourism."
More closely connected with the question of the interpretation of avowals is the remark of Spilsbury to the effect that "many of the logical problems raised by Ryle's analysis can be traced to a failure to distinguish between the meaning of a statement and the evidence for its true or falsity."3 Avowals cannot be gainsaid by a mere challenge for evidence, but, as Fleming says, "at least some of the differences between saying 'I feel bored' and 'I have brown hair' can be accounted for without talking about different sorts of meaning." "An avowal may tell us something in the way that so-called descriptive statements tell us something."4 It will be useful to take note of some of Fleming's arguments against Ryle's position in The Concept of Mind. "The assimilation of the meaning of an utterance to the point of uttering it may often be illuminating; but that paradigm of descriptive utterances - 'The cat is on the mat' - can function as a complaint or howl of rage… or as a request or demand… and we do not conclude that 'The cat is on the mat' gives us no information in these uses. Thus even if 'I want'… were primarily employed to make a request or demand, it would not simply follow that sentences of this form have a different sort of meaning from 'I have brown hair'… But surely we commonly say 'I want' in cicrumstances where these practical purposes, such as requesting or demanding, cannot be served… and it seems plausible to suppose that such uses are logically primary, for this reason, that it is much easier to see how we might pass from them to the requesting and demanding use than it is to see how we should do the reverse. [Again] you may want to go to Spain without intending to do so, without even hoping to do so."5 "Ryle goes on to admit that the avowal is the first and best index of whether a man feels bored, because it is meant to be heard and understood. But isn't this just the beginning of the logical difference between a yawn and 'I feel bored'?… If we did not know what 'I feel bored' means, we should not say it when we were bored; but we should not know what a yawn means, unless we simply yawned, without meaning anything by it, when we were sleepy… Anyone who avows 'I'm bored'… gives us the right to think that he is bored, in a way that the man who yawns does not give us the right to think that he is sleepy… If someone says 'I feel bored' in a tone of voice that is so very bored, we may suspect that he is not being entirely candid, and look for an ulterior motive. Conversely, we have, in novels, come across passages like this: 'What bothered Smith most was the way she said it. She wasn't angry or excited; she simply remarked, cooly, quietly, "I hate Jones more than anything else in the world."6 "My saying 'I promise' is or can be my promising… while my saying 'I feel bored' is not my feeling bored… any more than my saying 'I have brown hair' constitutes my having brown hair."7 Ryle, then, does well to admit that the logical geography of avowals is not yet fixed.
Notes:
1. 1964, Bradley, 195-96.
2. 1962, Blanshard, 190.
3. 1953, Spilsbury, 344.
4. 1955, Fleming, 625.
5. Ibid., 615.
6.Ibid., 616-18.
7.Ibid., 619.
Speaking of The Concept of Mind Miller says that "no chapter is more interesting than that on Imagination."1 In the preface to his book, Imagination, Furlong acknowledges that it originated "primarily in some of the remarks on imagination made by Professor Ryle in The Concept of Mind."2 The need for such a book was felt. "Many philosophers who are in general sympathy with Ryle's demolition of the Cartesian myth have boggled at his analysis of imagination."3
It is, of course, a misrepresentation of Ryle's theory to say that he holds that "people imagine things but images do not occur," and that he "wholly ignores such private or quasi-private phenomena as after-images and eidetic images."4 Ryle's point is that even when we see images, we do not 'see' them, but with their help we imagine that we see what they help us to 'see.' And "it may be admitted that 'seeing' something is not to be described as seeing a special sort of copy of something."5
What is wrong with Ryle's account of imagination is that he "fails to make any distinction between the various senses of the word 'see' when it is used in inverted commas."6 More precisely we may distinguish four senses of imagining:
Notes:
1. 1951, Miller, 278.
2. 1961, Furlong, 11.
3. 1957, Passmore, 447.
4. 1950, Nowell-Smith, 302. That in some sense images can, but need not, accompany imagining is further brought out by Danto (1958, 18), who admits that "it is a reasonably well-known fact about brains and mental behaviour that alpha-rhythms are generally incompatible with visual imagery." (P. R. Hofstätter says these rhythms are stronger in cyclothymic extroverts than in schizothymic introverts, and seem to fade out during periods of psychic tension - cfr Psychologia, translated by P. Faglioni, Milano: Feltrinelli, 1964, pp. 78-9.) On the other hand, Danto (p.13) thinks "it perfectly natural to speak of certain kinds of imagining in visual terms because the kinds of imagining to which I refer consist in the actual mental gazing at actual mental pictures". This latter point is made by Smythies (1958, 389): "The statement 'I am imagining the facade of my house by having or entertaining images of the facade of my house' makes perfectly good sense." Since, however, one does not imagine the facade of a house by imagining images of the facade, Ryle's position would appear to resist this criticism.
5. 1952, Shorter, 528-42. Shorter also says there may be exceptions to this, since we say either "'see' an oasis" or "see a mirage," but I think it is clear that "see" in "see a mirage" does not coincide with "see" in "see a tree," "see a misprint," "see the point," "see one's way out of the wood," etc. We do not learn how to "see a mirage".
6. Ibid.
7. Cfr 1953, Flew, 246-53; 1957, Furlong, 361; 1961, Furlong, 11.
Ryle says that although there are pleasant feelings, pleasure itself in the sense of enjoying or wanting simply means that someone is inclined to do what he is doing and not to do anything else, and is some sort of attention. Ryle's account is inadequate. "From the fact that we do ask 'Where is the pain?' but not 'Where is the pleasure?' he straightaway concludes that pleasure is not a sensation on a par with pain. But this amounts to placing an exaggerated importance upon certain idiomatic variations." "The main facts seem to support the parallelism."1 We do not as often locate pleasures, as we do pains, but on the one hand "the mother who is hurt or pained by her child's behaviour is not hurt or pained in any part of her anatomy," and on the other people are, on occasion, "quite ready to say that they have a pleasant sensation or a delicious or a thrilling sensation or a lovely feeling, and even to specify in what part of their anatomy it occurred."2
Ryle seems to have a good point when he says that if pleasures were feelings, it would be in order to ask whether they were pleasant or not. But while there is something odd about speaking of a "pleasant pleasure," there is nothing odd about saying that a given pleasure was a "real pleasure." Pleasure not only sometimes involves feelings; sometimes, though not always, it is a feeling, viewed from a certain point of view. Nor is this fact changed by the masochist's experience, which "teaches us that enjoying is not identical with having a pleasant sensation, that disliking is not equivalent to having an unpleasant sensation."3 Indeed, there seems nothing odd in saying that, in thyis case, pleasant sensations are unpleasant and vice versa.
Notes:
1. 1957, Myers, 183-87.
2. 1955, Barnes, 359.
3 1957, Myers, 183-87.
While supporting Ryle's attack on para-mechanical volitions, one must of course notice that his argument does not touch the scholastic volitio.1 Ryle tells us what willing is not, but he fails to give any adequate account of what willing is.2 This derives from his failure to be sufficiently explicit about the principle of sufficient reason, and from his consequent failure to affirm the subject as object, and his experience as objective.
When he speaks of the oddness of talking of 'difficult volitions' he should remember that… confessors often hear their penitents do just that."3 Conations or efforts of volition consist in trying to accomplish something; observing, for instance, is "trying to find something out."4 These efforts may well be difficult or fatiguing.5 But whether they are or not, they are objective indications to us of subjective purpose.6 And this appreciation we have of human activity as purposeful fully justifies, contrary to what Ryle thinks, our talk of voluntary and involuntary over an area wider than that of reprensible actions.7 By and large, Ryle's treatment of volitions is unsatisfactory when taken in isolation, and needs to be integrated with what he says about life as purposeful, and about knowing the difference between right and wrong. He fails to make the most of the possibilities of his own philosophy because he is impeded in his explorations by his preoccupation with the information supplied by his logical instruments.
Notes:
1. Cfr 1962, Geach, 3-4.
2. 1951, King, 296: "He has not touched the problem as to what an act of will is." 1950, Hampshire, 253: "It is odd to dismiss 'the will' as a myth (CM, 63ss) because of the Kantian theories associated with it; and it is both historically and logically untrue that the problem of free-will arises wholly or mainly from Mechanism." 1956, Specht, 312: "Eine ander Grenze des Ryleschen Versuches, alle Substanz-und-Kausalvorstellungen vom Geiste als Kategorienfehler zu entlarnen, zeigt sich vielleicht im Kapitel über den Willen."
3. 1951, MacKinnon, 253.
4. CM, 203. Cfr 1952, Garnett, 357-58.
5. 1953, Ewing, 68: "Surely we do talk about difficult or sudden or painful efforts or decisions, we are interrupted in making up our minds or in trying to do something, and we are strong-willed or weak-willed. It is obvious that frequent perplexing decisions and strong efforts of will are fatiguing, and moralists have constantly told us that we learn to will better in future by practice in willing to the best of our ability."
6. Ibid., 63: "We only applaud a man seriously for physical performances because we think they express his purpose, and purpose is surely a mental phenomenon not capable of direct observation by anybody else."
7. 1957, Ranklin, 290-95: "… We can no longer restrict the distinction between voluntary and involuntary to reprehensible actions. For men of religion heaven may play as important a part as hell; reward is of equal importance to, and often greater importance than, punishment."
Ryle does well to acknowledge that the conceptual geography of "I" is not yet fully worked out, since his account of the concept of the person is woefully inadequate. Animus ad habendum se ipsum angustus est.1 Certainly an account of the human person as a unity is very much to be preferred to a dualistic theory. But the account must provide us with a unity which "does not diminish or dismiss the significance of that which we have hitherto thought inexplicable without the introduction of a separate principle, namely mind."2 Ryle's neo-Aristotelianism is a move in the right direction, but the exposition of his views through the medium of ordinary language is a difficult undertaking. Firstly, because contemporary usage bears the imprint of recent dualistic theory. Secondly, and more fundamentally, because ordinary language will always bear the imprint of fallen man's tendency to construe knowing as looking, the sensibly apparent as the real, and the terminus of his biological extroversion as objective. Ryle has to a large extent overcome these difficulties, so that his philosophy is moving in the right direction.
However, much ground remains to be covered. For instance, the problem of other minds is not as easily disposed of as Ryle seems to think. Newman spoke advisedly of two luminous beings. Robinson says: "If you are… a machine, you none the less reveal to me that there is mind behind you: my problem is not - Is there another Mind?, but rather - Is that Mind localized here or not? Is this 'person' merely a product of Mind, or is it the embodiment of Mind, a true person?"3 It seems to me that this question can be given a reasonable answer, but the answer to be reasonable will involve a thorough inquiry into existence-propositions, the conditions for the affirmation of the existence of a person, and among these the affirmation of a particular, concrete Personal reality, the other luminous Being of whom Newman wrote, and in whom "we live, and move, and have our being."4
Notes:
1. St. Augustine, Confessions, X, 8.
2. 1953, Paul, 343-44.
3. 1960, Robinson, 47.
4. Acts 17:28.
The preface declared our theme. The introduction provided the historical setting. Our first part stated Ryle's view of Philosophy and showed his philosophy in action. The second part made some criticisms, and tried to bring out the value, which is considerable, of Ryle's method and doctrine.
Ryle has not completely accepted the third-person approach to Epistemology inaugurated by Moore. He rejects Lord Russell's theory that words are symbols. He dissents fom Ayer's exclusive appeal to sense-experience for verification. Knowing is not sense-acquaintance: hence sense-experience never is a method of verification; no words used in true expression are names in the sense in which names can be gesture-substitutes; belief may be very useful, but it is not knowledge, since judgment being transcendent always attains third-person truth.
A great point in Ryle's favour is his insistence on human discipline rather than on habituation; his application of this doctrine to philosophy is important but secondary.
Perhaps the biggest question mark is this:- is it really established that true judgments cannot stand for things, just because they are complex and not names? Or rather can we not say that names as used to express sense-acquaintanceship refer to only one dimension of reality, that there are distinguishable and varied co-functioning factors in things, and that, in consequence, judgments alone really stand for them?
With this invitation to reflect on the contemporary relevance of the scholastic view of the being of sensible realities as compounded of the three dimensions of matter, form, and the act of being we may, perhaps, conclude.
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