Ghost in The Machine - Gilbert Ryle

Gilbert Ryle

Gilbert Ryle (1900–76) was a philosopher who taught at Oxford and who made important contributions to the philosophy of mind and to "ordinary language philosophy". His most important writings included Philosophical Arguments (1945), The Concept of Mind (1949), Dilemmas (1954), Plato's Progress (1966), and On Thinking (1979).

Ryle's The Concept of Mind (1949) is a critique of the notion that the mind is distinct from the body, and a rejection of the theory that mental states are separable from physical states. In this book Ryle refers to the idea of a fundamental distinction between mind and matter as "the ghost in the machine." According to Ryle, the classical theory of mind, or "Cartesian rationalism", makes a basic "category-mistake", because it attempts to analyze the relation between "mind" and "body" as if they were terms of the same logical category. This confusion of logical categories may be seen in other theories of the relation between mind and matter. For example, the idealist theory of mind makes a basic category-mistake by attempting to reduce physical reality to the same status as mental reality, while the materialist theory of mind makes a basic category-mistake by attempting to reduce mental reality to the same status as physical reality.

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Famous quotes containing the word gilbert:

    Things are seldom what they seem,
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    —Sir William Schwenck Gilbert (1836–1911)