H. P. Grice, "Ryleian dispositions and Ryleian agitations"

Ryle, Gilbert (1900–76), English analytic philosopher known especially for his contributions to the philosophy of mind and his attacks on Cartesianism. His best-known work is the masterpiece The Concept of Mind (1949), an attack on what he calls “Cartesian dualism” and a defense of a type of logical behaviorism. This dualism he dubs “the dogma of the Ghost in the Machine,” the Machine being the body, which is physical and publicly observable, and the Ghost being the mind conceived as a private or secret arena in which episodes of sense perception, consciousness, and inner perception take place. A person, then, is a combination of such a mind and a body, with the mind operating the body through exercises of will called “volitions.” Ryle’s attack on this doctrine is both sharply focused and multifarious. He finds that it rests on a category mistake, namely, assimilating statements about mental processes to the same category as statements about physical processes. This is a mistake in the logic of mental statements and mental concepts and leads to the mistaken metaphysical theory that a person is composed of two separate and distinct (though somehow related) entities, a mind and a body. It is true that statements about the physical are statements about things and their changes. But statements about the mental  are not, and in particular are not about a thing called “the mind.” These two types of statements do not belong to the same category. To show this, Ryle deploys a variety of arguments, including arguments alleging the impossibility of causal relations between mind and body and arguments alleging vicious infinite regresses. To develop his positive view on the nature of mind, Ryle studies the uses (and hence the logic) of mental terms and finds that mental statements tell us that the person performs observable actions in certain ways and has a disposition to perform other observable actions in specifiable circumstances. For example, to do something intelligently is to do something physical in a certain way and to adjust one’s behavior to the circumstances, not, as the dogma of the Ghost in the Machine would have it, to perform two actions, one of which is a mental action of thinking that eventually causes a separate physical action. Ryle buttresses this position with many acute and subtle analyses of the uses of mental terms. Much of Ryle’s other work concerns philosophical methodology, sustaining the thesis (which is the backbone of The Concept of Mind) that philosophical problems and doctrines often arise from conceptual confusion, i.e., from mistakes about the logic of language. Important writings in this vein include the influential article “Systematically Misleading Expressions” and the book Dilemmas (1954). Ryle was also interested in Greek philosophy throughout his life, and his last major work, Plato’s Progress, puts forward novel hypotheses about changes in Plato’s views, the role of the Academy, the purposes and uses of Plato’s dialogues, and Plato’s relations with the rulers of Syracuse.