The Concept of Mind
by Gilbert Ryle
(Oxford 1949)
Part E: Trivial pursuit
Death of crazy horse
Let us, for completeness, flog a dead horse here.
Logically, part of Ryle's argument is the triviality that
"[not-machine and ghost] implies that [machine and ghost]" is false.Yet, this statement in no way requires that a ghost's existence be false.
If, however, we join most modern writers and assume that the machine paradigm is correct, we cannot infer from [not-(machine and ghost)] that [not-ghost] holds.
Descartes was puzzled about how the soul animated the body and where it was located, conjecturing that it was in the head's pineal gland that employed a physically acausal process to operate the brain-body machinery. These days, cognitive science has demonstrated just how much conscious "decision-making" depends on specific physical brain functions. Yet, some still wonder, could there also be a "something" that is father to the thought that might be characterized as "action at a distance"? What of the possibility that this ghost, while intimately interlinked with the physical brain, is of a non-physical nature? That question has not been answered. Yes, modern physicalists object that the ghost's existence is not at present a testable conjecture, but it does not follow that such a notion can never find empirical support.
Just as Descartes argued a priori that the ghost must inhabit the machine, many these days argue a priori that a ghost does not inhabit the machine.
Genetic engineering is perhaps the most convincing evidence against any form of vitalism, that the assumptions of Darwinists, philosophers like Ryle and much of the intelligentsia have been borne out. Yet long before I wrote the linked essay
Toward a Signal Model of Perception
there were words of caution. Harold J. Morowitz pointed out in 1980 that the reductionists' unrelenting drive toward a purely physicalist (i.e., electronic-materialist) view of life was confounded by the finding of modern physics that basic physical effects require the mind of an observer, as shown by the constancy of the velocity of light relative to the observer and by the measurement problem of quantum mechanics. (Morowitz specialized in the origin of life and was a foe of creationism and its close cousin, vitalism.)
As discussed in my paper,
The Many Worlds of Probability, Reality and Cognition
this loop implies a noumenal world, of which we may catch glimpses by new technical experiments or, possibly, by other means.
In Douglas Hofstadter's reply [4] to Morowitz, Hofstadter argues, while citing no supporting evidence, that artificial intelligence can be designed that does not take into account the conundrums of relativity and quantum physics. At this, we pause to reflect. So, supposing that consciousness influences physical outcomes, we have the possibility of designing a machine that does not influence physical outcomes by the act of observation. If this last were to hold, then it would still, if we accept Hofstadter's premise, be possible to design non-human, and quite possibly non-conscious, intelligent systems. We would guess such a machine would be an extraordinarily layered and sophisticated calculator, but we may well doubt that the machine would "know" anything, as evidenced by the fact that its "observation" would not affect measurement.
Or if we thought we had imbued the gizmo with consciousness, how would we test for such "awareness"? One way would be to see whether its "knowledge" influenced outcomes. The problem with that idea is that it – conscious or not – would become part of the measurement device for one of us, just as Wigner's friend does.
Thus, apparently, consciousness – a word Ryle frowns upon – is something for which finding an objective test would be very difficult. An extremely sophisticated calculator could mimic all the outward signs of consciousness. Alan Turing's paper, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, is meant to rebut arguments that, in principle, a machine could not mimic human intelligence. Turing does allow, however, that a Rhine-type test for telepathy might identify the machine. (Hostadter and Dennett pan Turing's acceptance of the statistical results in a short response that is more polemic than reasoned argument.) Yet, suppose the interrogator was unconsciously psychokinetic, muses Turing. In that case, he might affect the telepathy statistics in favor of the machine.
These afterthoughts seem, at first blush, ridiculous. Still, they are only so if one assumes out of hand that so-called psi phenomena are a result of deliberate trickery or a naive tendency to connect dots wrongly. As Morowitz wrote, the apparent continuous loop between the observer and physical events poses intriguing questions for investigators.
Soft in the head
These days one might argue that the mind-body problem is to be summarized as the mind-brain problem. If the brain is the hardware, then does it follow that the mind is the software? A problem with this analogy is that the software must update itself continuously; yet I would say this problem is largely solvable through the use of negative feedback subprograms. One might then argue that the software indeed inhabits the hardware and is, in fact, a distinct entity. Yet Ryle spent much of his book trying to dissuade us from the view that mind, as a distinct entity, makes much sense. Rather, what we call "mind" is a collective term for various behaviors.Of course, the software-hardware conundrum appeared after Ryle wrote, but even so we have a near-counterexample to his notion that the mind is not a specific entity that inhabits anything.
To be more precise, a software program certainly is a ghost in the hardware. It exists as a something, but if one were to look inside the machinery, the program would be difficult to locate without the special testing tools used by computer experts. All one would see is a hodgepodge of microcircuits.
On the other hand, to credit Ryle, we do see that the "mind" – software – exists and operates according to physical law. Of course a caveat to that concession is that neither the hardware nor the software got there by accident. Both were designed. In other words, when we use the computer metaphor to talk about minds, we find that, rather than having solved our problem, we have simply pushed it back.
Ted Honderich [Sre19] takes aim at mechanist reductionism, which he frames thus:
Our own conscious thoughts and feelings are not different from electrochemical events in our brains. They are nothing but electrochemical events, which are causally and logically related to certain things, notably what is called input and output.
This is the root proposition of functionalism, cognitive science, and much psychologized and computerized philosophy of mind in so far as it applies to us rather than computers, Martians, or whatever else. If it is true, then what we are most sure about does not exist.
Ryle knew nothing of all that. His means of coping with consciousness was to deny it as a valid term.
"Consciousness" was, he says, imported to play in the material world the part played by light in the (non-Hobbesian?) mechanical world. The myth of consciousness is a piece of "para-optics." To Ryle, a myth is a mistaken interpretation of facts; the dots have been wrongly connected. Still, one can perhaps imagine a seemingly fully alert AI robot losing consciousness by degrees as its power is reduced and as various subsystems are shut down. Once the machine has been fully turned off, few would think that its spirit or soul had left – although, granted, we can conceive of someone getting the disquieting impression that the robot had lost "consciousness."
Still, Ryle does not knock "phosphorescent" theories of consciousness in order to understand what that word might mean; his real aim is to show that the process represented by the word requires no spiritual assistance.
Now, to give Ryle his due, let us turn again to the Gestalt concept.
If we take the mind to be a physical epiphenomenon (beware, this word is a source of philosophical controversy), we must revert to the concept of a human as an automaton, where "free will" is a robotic delusion, notwithstanding that conscious "decisions" are part of the feedback control system. Still, spontaneous attraction and love for another person do not seem altogether physical, even taking emotional feedbacks into account. If one denies the automaton theory (that is to say, that the brain and behavior of a human being can, in principle, be replicated by artificial intelligence), then there is nothing for it but to accept a non-physical ghost in the robot. This is a point which no amount of wrangling can resolve. If we believe, however, that robots cannot act humanly on quantum measurement, then unlikely is any claim that they would ever be able to experience love. (I say that knowing that technically I have committed a non sequitur.)
Out of the silent deep
The idea of emergence tracks back to Aristotle. In his view entelechy is that which "realizes or makes actual what is otherwise merely potential." Thus, Leibniz held, his monad concept dovetailed nicely with Aristotle's concept. Leibniz posited monads in an attempt to escape Cartesian dualism. These soul-like essences underlie the illusion of the material world, he held, which cannot be as it appears because, he argues, space and time do not exist. Causation – as in, how does the Cartesian immaterial soul or mind compel the material body/machine to do anything – is a consequence of the unseen monadic world's pre-ordained harmony. [zz1]One can see how the notion of entelechy covers very well such things as Cantor's actual infinities, the collective macro behavior of myriads of gas molecules, the Lotka-Volterra predator-prey equations and, presumably, the phenomenon of conscious awareness. In the last case however there is so far nothing to bridge the gap between smaller units and the entelechy of consciousness: no set of equations that captures the emergence of consciousness from lower levels.
I do not recall seeing in Ryle this brilliant conception of Aristotle's. Yet most of Ryle's book is implicitly dependent on the idea of entelechy, if not on some form of monism.
Hofstadter uses the word in the sense of Gestalt in his Mind's I comment on a long excerpt from The Selfish Gene by Richard Hawkins. That selection shows nicely Hawkins's view that he can imagine a whole – a complex – emerging from many parts. Re-reading it after many years was instructive for this writer. Dawkins wove a very compelling, lawyerly case for the possibility that consciousness, say, could have emerged by increments until voila! there it was. The jury is persuaded. Case closed. Yet closer inspection shows a very skillfully presented conjecture with many gaps in the reasoning. We are not to notice that the input values of genetic coding go into a black box that transforms the information into an output that corresponds with something wondrous to behold.
That there are many who are, like Dawkins, convinced that the black box's content can be laid bare, hardly implies that that conviction is close to realization.
Dawkins no doubt heartily approves of modern science's supposed disavowal of metaphysics – a term sullied by the dislike of the Vienna Circle of philosophers for anything judged non-scientific. That disdain has carried down the generations, from the period when, in particular, the logician Rudolf Carnap [6a] promoted the notion that metaphysical problems were the result of a misapplication of terms, a point also made by Ludwig Wiitgenstein and later echoed by Ryle's assertion that terms could be wrongly categorized.
A basic flaw of metaphysics, argued Carnap and the logical positivists, is that metaphysicians tend to make statements that can neither be proved nor disproved within their own systems. How would one, for example, go about proving the notion of spiritual universe? Metaphysics, Carnap further held, posed statements that had the appearance of implying problems, but which in actuality were posers that violated the empirical and syntactical criteria of meaningfulness. That is to say, metaphysical questions are words strung together to create the form of meaning but not the actuality of meaning. (So much for soul, immortality [sf51] and all the interesting stuff.)
Carnap took Martin Heidegger to task for his saying Das Nichts selbst nichtet ("The nothing itself nothings") from Was ist Metaphysik? Can't anyone see this is an example of vacuous humbuggery? To drive home the point, consider the sentence "Nothing is P" represented by
~(Ex)Px. If x is an instantiation of "Nothing is P" we have an absurd infinite regress. Yet I reply that merely because a statement cannot be easily fit into a symbolic formal system does not mean there is nothing worth pondering.
In addition, Carnap's attempt to avoid metaphysics (afterphysics) has only been honored in the breach by the scientific community. Consider the intense discussions of the various "many worlds" theories, of the inflationary universe and all its possible bubble universes, of the Parmenides-like spacetime block, of cyclic cosmoses, of ideas over whether time is open or shut, of strings that supposedly could unify "all" physical law, of loop quantum gravity. True, all of this speculation is aimed at "extending" physical law rather than at checking for spirit-like possibilities. Hard indeed is imagining, however, what physical law transcends the idea of motion in a spacetime block. How would one go about measuring change, if time and motion are both illusions that are due to our congenital misperception of something greater?
Much to Einstein's consternation when faced with the perplexities of quantum measurement, the sage of Princeton found there is no escaping metaphysics. The fact that some scientists push this problem aside as currently unresolvable demonstrates that metaphysics is for them a wall that they haven't the inclination to hurdle.
The Vienna Circle took Einstein and Ernst Mach, the 19th Century philosopher of science, to be among its forebears. Interestingly, Einstein cited Mach in his decisions to simplify physics by discarding irrelevant concepts, such as the ether. The ether was required under the old metaphysical paradigm of a cosmos that transmits action via bits of matter bumping into each other (though scientists realized that the ethereal vibrating medium could not be of the ponderable-object variety).
Yet Einstein was no cheerleader for the Vienna Circle. Though he absolved Hume of responsibility, Einstein was skeptical of the modern "fear of metaphysics," which he saw as a malady that was paralleled by the old philosophical ailment of speculation with no connection to what is given through the senses. In fact, Einstein said Russell's book on epistemology, An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth [zzz15] appeared to suffer from this defect, and elsewhere he debated Carnap on the assumptions of the Circle. In particular, Einstein was suspicious of Russell's notion that "bundles of qualities" are to replace the "things" of the ordinary world.[np54]
Einstein cites Russell's example of two precisely matched Eiffel towers, one in Paris and one in New York. Without the use of spatio-temporal coordinates, Russell had argued, the towers would be indistinguishable and so would be "the same thing." Einstein argued that he could "see no metaphysical danger in taking the thing (the object in the sense of physics) as an independent concept into the system together with the proper spatio-temporal structure."
In other words, what is wrong with simply granting an independent existence to each tower? Doubtless, Russell could have then asked how this could be done without an observable space-time difference? (We might add that, because no two electrons are distinguishable, we indeed find difficulty in granting each independent existence without the use of space-time considerations.) Nevertheless, we must grant that Einstein was really getting at the physical reality of each tower. That is to say, as I interpret him: why not simply accept the metaphysical idea of two different objects, without resorting to perceptual considerations? (We note that Russell says in Inquiry that he regards things to be a "metaphysical delusion," with events being the basic atoms of reality.) [2dd]
To bolster that thought, Einstein cites Russell's own paradox about naive realism. "Naive realism leads to physics, and physics, if true, shows that naive realism is false. Therefore naive realism, if true, is false; therefore it is false."[zzz15] I am assuming that Einstein is implying that, with such a paradox, it is rational to put "naive realism" on a metaphysical basis (i.e., the metaphysical position of common sense).
Russell's reply [2dd] shows that he appears not to have grasped that Einstein was defending naive realism, first by citing Russell's own paradox concerning science and second by lamenting the contemporary attack on metaphysics, which, Einstein was suggesting, was a necessary and not absurd underpinning for scientific (naive) realism.
In any case, Einstein's onetime favorite Mach was only one of an influential band of 19th century positivists. August Comte was the man who laid down the positivist credo: "no proposition that is not finally reducible to the enunciation of a fact, particular or general, can offer any real and intelligible meaning."
John Stuart Mill nicely summarized Comte:
We have no knowledge of anything but phenomena; and our knowledge of phenomena is relative, not absolute. We know not the essence nor the real mode of production of any fact, but only its relations of other facts in the way of succession and similitude. These relations are constant, i.e., always the same in the same circumstances. The constant resemblances which link phenomena together, and the constant sequences which unite them as antecedent and consequent, are termed their laws. All phenomena without exception are governed by invariable laws, with which no volitions, either natural or supernatural, interfere. The essential nature of phenomena and their ultimate causes, whether efficient or final, are unknown and inscrutable to us. [zzz11]
Yet, curiously Einstein's "positivist" decision to oust the ether undermined that very scientific materialism so beloved of practical scientists and the latter-day positivists, who sought to save materialism with some clever tinkering. In another irony, Mach opposed the atomic theory of matter on grounds atoms were undetectable, and hence irrelevant. Yet Einstein was the scientist whose analysis of Brownian motion, along with his unraveling of the photo-electric effect, that convinced scientists of their existence.
One perhaps should be inclined to accept that part of the positivist credo that favors not taking metaphysical axioms as gospel.
The scientific method, as mapped out by Francis Bacon, is a program for obtaining practical knowledge of Nature, being basically a means and not a metaphysical system. One might argue that both Descartes and Hobbes, among others, misused the method, along with the discoveries of Galileo and Newton, to claim a universally valid system known as materialism.
Even so, just as a metaphysical proposition may be discarded as being of vacuous merit, so might one be bolstered by the advance of scientific knowledge. Democritus and Lucretius both favored the metaphysical idea of matter being atomic. Yet, as Whitehead points out, John Dalton was the one who made that speculation far more plausible, because his theory gave mathematical relations that fit well with facts discovered empirically by chemists. Dalton's proposal, at the least, could be used on an interim basis for practical science, in contrast with the ancient Greek suggestion.
Similarly, some may regard the Higgs field as the immaterial substance that holds Nature together. Yet one might maintain that that field has far more explanatory power than the substances of the metaphysicians, precisely because its relations are quantitative and apply to all sorts of phenomena. Even so, we don't know how that field fits together with the relativistic spacetime block, which might be regarded as another universal substance underlying the material world. Do those two substances imply pluralism? Or is there, as most scientists believe, a single unifying theory (that would possibly imply a single unifying substance)?
There is a sort of materialism, interestingly, that is not fully deterministic (not robotic) that was promoted by the young Marx, though Ryle's book discloses no awareness of this fact. As Warren Breckman observes [xx30] in his excellent study, Marx, the Young Hegelians, and the Origins of Radical Social Theory,
whereas Democritus had imagined atoms as rigidly determined by their movement, Epicurus insisted on the possibility of undetermined motion, the "swerve" or "declination" that Marx made the keystone of his discussion. In conceiving the possibility of undetermined motion, Marx argued, Epicurus had found a way to overcome the "blind necessity" and purely materialist physics of Democritus. Epicurus could thus ascribe to atoms an "ideal" or spiritual side, a moment of "self-determination."... Finally, in Marx's positive assessment, the freedom of atomic motion in Epicurus's theory dispensed with the need for any theological explanation of being.
What do you know?
Quantum weirdness gives weight to idealism, the set of doctrines that asserts that reality is in the mind of the beholder and that contrasts with mechanism/physicalism, the notion that one's mental states are products of an external, physical reality [wp35].Useful page on idealism
https://archive.vn/Bi5a
The question of how one knows there exist other minds that are not merely products of one's ideation does not rest on logical analysis, in my estimate. Knowing entails more than the actions of some highly complex Boolean circuit.
Consider the method of approximation at presenting a proof:
Step 1: An outline of the proof, with many details lacking, is given.
Step 2: That outline is refined, so as to make the logic come into focus.
Step 3: The precise proof is presented, the observer's mind having been adequately prepared.
So during and after step 1, the observer sees the basic line of reasoning. Once this has registered, he is able to see the line of reasoning toward the theorem more clearly. Finally, he grasps the concise proof, with all and only necessary details.
A mechanical proof checker would – assuming the proof has been correctly encoded – simply check the statements and implications of step 3. If steps 1 and 2 were lemmas needed for step 3, it would check those.
There is no need for it to see a rough idea, perhaps accompanied by an aha! before being able to grasp the next approximation and finally to see the proof. It doesn't need any help at insight because it has no insight.
So then, we have two types of knowledge. There is a knowledge of forms, such as the relations of logic and mathematics, and possibly including Platonic ideals/forms. Then there is knowledge by direct apprehension of the consciousness. Direct knowledge springs not from ordinary physical law, but from some aspect of the largely hidden, noumenal world.
Kant's concept of a noumenal self takes aim at the Cartesian contradiction of how an interior soul could push the levers of the robot it inhabits. The causal nature of reality is an aspect of the sensory world we experience, Kant argued. But beyond the world of phenomena is the world of noumena – the "objects" behind the phenomena we detect. If I get hunger pangs and then have a bite to eat, I am responding to an inclination, and can be said to be reacting causally. Hunger caused me to eat. On the other hand, if I get hunger pangs and decide against eating, I may be exercising free will, which originates in my noumenal self, and that self interacts directly (rather than via sense perception) with the noumenal world.
Kant's general argument was meant to justify the idea of a higher, human self in a way that did not require any particular religious orientation. Moreover, he hoped that his general scheme eliminated the schizophrenic dualism of Descartes.
Be that as it may, clearly Ryle saw Kant's noumenal self as just another ghost. Still, we may notice that the "machine" paradigm troubled both philosophers greatly. Kant's metaphysical approach, however, seems to this writer to have achieved far more than Ryle's rather limited behaviorism.
No car and no driver
We would be remiss if we did not mention lifeforms other than human. For animal lifeforms with rudimentary brains there seems to be a range of levels of awareness, or, in other words, a range of levels of consciousness. Granted, thus far, no computer can attain to the neuronal complexity of a housefly, making for difficulty in saying whether computing complexity equivalent to a fly's would result in machine consciousness, as opposed to an automaton that mimics fly behavior perfectly.Ryle likens the ghost-machine idea to a driver of a car. The driver tells the car what to do, just as the ghost tells the body what to do. Yet, a human is not like that, he says. Still, the philosopher might be impressed that today's machine-guided cars need no human drivers. Even so, a person using the car must give it directions, despite the fact that one can foresee cars preprogramed to drive at will, carrying out some major task, such as searching for criminals. Yet again we see that such analogies break down because the cars do not design themselves. The "ghost" has not been ruled out, after all.
Disturbingly, we now face the possibility of self-directed assassin robots roaming the planet –Terminators without time travel. Driverless cars and assassin robots are used by many as a basis of the belief that a human doesn't need a soul or a spirit in order to live as a self-directed individual. What they are not facing is that, as a machine, "self-directed" is an incongruent idea. "I" doesn't make a decision, but the "I" is directed by the brain's machinery to do something, which "I" then calls a "decision" – a decision "I" didn't make. Consciousness becomes irrelevant, about like being born with an extra finger. Talking to oneself, whether aloud or internally, is simply some evolutionary consolation system, having little or no influence on the automaton.
Tough talk
When "I" talk to "my Self," we face the prospect of an infinite regress.("I' as sender) --> (brain subsystem as transducer) – > ("I" as receiver)in which case,
(Sender) --> (Transducer) --> (Sender),yielding an infinite regress.
One might counter that the speech part of the "I" complex is distinct from the listening part of that complex. Yet prior to and during speech, "meaningful" verbalization must pour forth into the listening area, which then edits speech. So something is already listening both before and during verbalization. The speech then arcs through consciousness, being received and appreciated by a listening sector.
Even if such a program could be devised, would it not be redundant for an AI automaton, which one would think could pass the Turing test without inner reflection? In the machine paradigm, the so-called Self appears to be a contradictory, or at least redundant, subsystem. Yet, most of us, when fully awake, are convinced of the existence of Self. A number of modern cognitive scientists, however, would argue that this Self is indeed a "ghost in the machine." It exists as some sort of delusion, as numerous recent brain/machine interface experiments seem to show. The expert says this while using her powers of reasoning to convince her Self of the apparent contradiction. Still, can an illusion do anything at all, let alone reflect on arcane philosophical points? That is to say, on close analysis the machine paradigm appears to break down. Of course, we are aware that mystics have long held that such irreconcilables dissolve in their non-physical theories. Whether that is so is not so easy to determine. On the other hand, we would not err to conclude that some form of non-physical theorizing could be appropriate.
In any case, we all agree that the so-called Self can believe false ideas concerning the Self, but that we can hardly fault the Self for believing in its existence. "I think, therefore I am." Yet, numerous cognitive scientists and philosophers would respond that the existence of the "I" is doubtful, and that Descartes's premise begs his conclusion. Even so, I suggest that our argument above is another way of arriving at Descartes' contention that a non-physical entity is implied by a somewhat cohesive "I."
Again: The assumption of the reality of the unitary Self leads to contradiction. Some argue that a way out of this problem is to posit the Self as a something that exceeds the sum of its parts. Reductionism fails to capture the object (the Self/mind). If the Self is a feedback-looped Boolean circuit output, it is an output that no one could guess from the initial input values. Consider the Mobius band, a single-sided surface that can be visualized as a strip of paper twisted at the ends and glued together (even though, like a line or a point, no such surface could ever be physically detected). If we examine a patch of the surface locally, it seems to have two sides: with an orthogonal vector pointing out from one side exactly matched with the negative of that vector pointing out from the other side. Anywhere we look, there are two sides. Still, if we look everywhere at once – take in the Gestalt of the whole – we find only one side.
Assuming that the Self cannot be solely an auto-modifying software program, we may fairly conclude that neither is the Self entirely a machine or machine output. Ergo, it is a ghost (which may itself be controlled by some other ghost or soul). Of course, Roger Penrose's idea that the Self, or some equivalent, is an expression of quantum gravity is akin to the Mobius band metaphor. Quantum gravity, however, is at this stage not a physical theory, but is rather a group of conjectures. Further, how quantum gravity would influence the brain to produce introspection is very far from the realm of current physics. Hence, "Mobius-style" solutions at this stage only permit us to call the ghost by some more scientific-sounding name.
The philospher's I shadow
Ryle likens the elusive "I" to the shadow of one's head that can never be caught. I note that the concept of "I" – as in "know yourself" – can be expanded by an examination of one's true motives, which are ordinarily repressed. On the other hand, to know oneself seems a bit like a dog chasing its tail. Undecidability theorems show that if the human brain is modeled as a Turing machine, full self-knowledge would be impossible. Ryle hadn't the competence to discuss such matters.The best I can do to characterize Ryle's theory is to call it a peculiar brand of behavioristic holism. Had he been writing a few decades later, I suspect he would have been attracted to the notion of mind as an emergent property; yet I note he never refers to Gestalt psychology, or the notion of the whole "exceeding" the sum of the parts. Even so, he does take potshots at reductionism.
On other philosophical points of contention, I find Ryle has little to contribute. For example, echoing his onetime mentor Wittgenstein [7] , he brushes off the question of solipsism with a common sense approach.
"Horse races do not stop, when I shut my eyes [how does he know that?], and vintage wines are not obliterated, when I have catarrh [the usual assumption, but is it certain?].
In the 18th Century, the Scot Thomas Reid promoted a common sense system, which, he contended, is (to use an anachronism) hard-wired into our mental processes. Reid argued that the perceptions common to men are unlikely to be deceptive. "If there are certain principles, as I think there are, which the constitution of our nature leads us to believe, and which we are under a necessity to take for granted in the common concerns of life, without being able to give a reason for them; these are what we call the principles of common sense; and what is manifestly contrary to them, is what we call absurd."
As Ryle maintained: "We do not ... have to rig up one theater, called 'the outside world,' to house the common objects of observation, and another, called 'the mind,' to house the objects of some monopoly observations."
In other words, our privately felt sensations – such as pangs or twinges – are not part of some inner reality but are in fact not really different from observed objects – whether robins or cheeses – in the purported "outside world." Of course, he writes at a time when it was a bit too early to speak of the brain's part in constructing much or all of the "outside world." [Yet pangs and twinges do not seem to be higher order constructions, but direct signals from the body to the conscious mind-brain demanding some decision by "the executive."]
Admittedly, Ryle's theory regards the external and internal "worlds" as products of a false duality, and yet the don does not accept that a holistic view then ushers in the problem of solipsism, which he states as: "I can witness what your body does, but I cannot witness what your mind does." His solution is to be rid of specific entities called minds and to observe your behaviors. Your behaviors constitute evidence of mind.
Still, as he has no theory of how "reality" comes to be in consciousness, the sage has not addressed how he knows he is not experiencing a delusion in which other people only exist as dream-like characters. He does not see that his view implies the problem of solipsism.
I suppose Ryle might have said – although he did not – that the dualism of objective vs. subjective realities is a false dichotomy, that objective and subjective run together in a continuous whole, and so the puzzle is resolved by seeing that the coin has two sides. Of course, one can always make such a case, but that would not alter the fact that I feel as if I reside inside my body, specifically inside my head behind my eyes and between my ears. This perception may be an illusion, but if so, we need to know what makes it an illusion. Such issues are never addressed by the eminent don.
It seems to me that really Ryle wishes to show that words are, after all, adequate to describe reality; it's just a question of careful definition. When he was writing his book, however, logicians were already aware that such an assumption was highly unlikely to hold, with formal systems limited as to what can be represented symbolically. The theorems of Post, Tarski, Gödel, Rosser and Turing were already old news by the time The Concept of Mind was published – though perhaps Ryle was only subliminally aware that symbolic logics are languages with precise grammars.
The don doesn't quite say in Concept that his chosen philosophical problems are resolvable with a precise and correct grammar, but his program makes no sense unless that is the case.
Sally Parker-Ryan observes that Ryle championed "ordinary language," having written a number of papers dealing with such issues as what counts as "ordinary" language, what are the nature of "meanings" and how the appeal to ordinary ways of describing things can help resolve philosophical problems [papers published from 1931 to 1961].
In particular, Ryle became famous for his treatment of mental phenomena in his Concept of Mind ... The book contains, overall, a "behaviorist" analysis of mental phenomena that draws heavily on Wittgensteinian anti-Cartesianism – or anti-dualism (of "mind" and "body"). On this view, the mind is not a kind of "gaseous" but non-spatial, non-physical medium of thoughts, nor is it a kind of "theatre" via which we observe our own experiences and sensations. Our mental life is not, according to Ryle, a private domain to which each individual has exclusive access. Our psychological language expresses our thoughts; it does not describe what is going on in the mind in the same way that physical language describes what is going on in the body...See Parker-Ryan's article on ordinary language philosophy at the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy:
The 'ordinary language' movement
https://www.iep.utm.edu/ord-lang/#H5
That Russell was vehemently unimpressed with this trend we can see as being a matter of course. How could he think otherwise? [pHH34]
In Being and Time, Martin Heidegger foreshadowed Ryle by two decades. There Heidegger adopts a new vocabulary in order to avoid the deep-rooted linguistic influence of Cartesian concepts. Heidegger's severe holism rejects the language of consciousness, experience and mind – which were also seen by Ryle as deceptive terms. As a phenomenologist – one who studies structures of consciousness as experienced from a first-person point of view – Heidegger had no need to assume the existence of a mind in which ideas appear, nor had he a need to assume an activity known as consciousness that shines out at the world. Although Ryle does not refer to himself as a phenomenologist, he might well have done so.
Otherwise the views of Heidegger and Ryle diverge greatly.
The Oxford savant saw himself as the destroyer of an iconic concept of mind as a particular, not altogether physical thing. These days many generally agree with this iconoclasm, yet I find Ryle's attempts to redefine various qualities associated with mind unconvincing. I am sure this is partly attributable to my bias in favor of a "scientific" – i.e., logico-mathematical – approach, which leads me to beware disregarding any cause, including those not categorized by known laws of physics.
It is not all that unusual for philosophers to be unversed in matters of science [eu42]. Yet, a scientific background has proved imperative for the greatest thinkers. Consider Aristotle, Descartes, Kant for starters [zs94]. Even Hegel was decently informed on scientific subjects and as a young man taught calculus. Of course the difficult, arcane nature of 20th Century science greatly limited the percentage of philosophers willing to swim in that sea. Nevertheless, one has difficulty grasping how a philosopher could go about tackling the mind/body problem with virtually no scientific comprehension [ds45].
The British philosopher F.H. Bradley confessed a lack of mathematical background – yet had no qualms expressing supposedly profound opinions concerning the subject.
But there is another point on which the reader may look for some explanation. He may ask why I have failed to examine one of those views of Equational Logic which treat the subject mathematically. And I am compelled to throw the burden of the answer on those who had charge of my education, and who failed to give me the requisite instruction. It would have been otherwise a pleasure to have seen how the defects of the Equational theory appeared in a mathematical form. For, at the risk of seeming no less prejudiced than ignorant, I am forced to state the matter so. If I knew perhaps what Mathematics were, I should see how there is nothing special or limited about them, and how they are the soul of logic in general and (for all I know) of metaphysics too. Meanwhile I may suggest to the mathematical logician that, so long as he fails to treat (for example) such simple arguments as "A before B, and B with C, therefore A before C," he has no strict right to demand a hearing. Logic is not logic at all if its theory is based on a previous mutilation of the facts of the subject. It may do something which perhaps is very much better, but it does not give any account (adequate or inadequate) of reasoning in general. And at the risk of exhibiting prejudice once more, I may say that this consideration seems to me to be vital.
F.H. Bradley
The Principles of Logic
(Oxford 1883)
The Principles of Logic
(Oxford 1883)
Upon reading Bradley's major works, we see rather quickly that he knows nothing of science either. Because, had he had the knowledge, surely he would have salted his work with science-based analogies.
Granted, one must not assume that a mathematician has thought every thought about the subject of logic. And there is no denying that, for Bradley and the idealists, logic was a subject quite a bit wider than the logic of standard textbooks. Yet some of his quibbles on syllogisms and so forth are quite peculiar. A bit of mathematical/scientific background would have kept him off quite a lot of thin ice.
In any case, Bradley's brilliance and depth – whether one agrees with him or not – means he can be forgiven a great deal from an intellectual standpoint (though I am of course not competent to speak of his eternal destiny). The same does not, in my estimation, hold for Ryle.
As for me, I might agree that a live human body is not a machine, and thus that that body may not need a ghost to inhabit and animate it – but this is not the place for me to put forward my own conjectures on the mind/body problem.
The conclusion remains that Ryle has not made his case.
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