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Gilbert Ryle

Gilbert Ryle (19 August 1900 – 6 October 1976) was a British philosopher,[7] principally known for his critique of Cartesian dualism, for which he coined the phrase "ghost in the machine." He was a representative of the generation of British ordinary language philosophers who shared Ludwig Wittgenstein's approach to philosophical problems.[8]

Some of Ryle's ideas in philosophy of mind have been called behaviourist. In his best-known book, The Concept of Mind (1949), he writes that the "general trend of this book will undoubtedly, and harmlessly, be stigmatised as 'behaviourist'."[9] Having studied the philosophers Bernard Bolzano, Franz Brentano, Alexius Meinong, Edmund Husserl, and Martin Heidegger, Ryle suggested that the book instead "could be described as a sustained essay in phenomenology, if you are at home with that label."[10]

Biography[edit]

Family tree[edit]

Gilbert Ryle's father, Reginald John Ryle, was a Brighton doctor, a generalist who had interests in philosophy and astronomy, passing on to his children a large library. Gilbert's father was a son of John Charles Ryle, the first Anglican Bishop of Liverpool.[11][12] The Ryles were Cheshire landed gentry; Gilbert's elder brother, John Alfred Ryle, of Barkhale, Sussex, became head of the family. Their ancestor John Ryle, a silk merchant, was a friend of theologian and evangelist John Wesley; members of this Ryle family include the silk manufacturer ("father of the United States silk industry"[13]) John Ryle, as well as his nephew and business partner, William.


Gilbert Ryle's mother, Catherine, was daughter of Samuel King Scott (younger brother of the architect Sir George Gilbert Scott) by his wife Georgina, daughter of William Hulme Bodley, M.D., and sister of architect George Frederick Bodley, himself a student of Sir George. Cousins of the Ryle family thus include the haematologist Ronald Bodley Scott, architect George Gilbert Scott Jr., founder of Watts & Co., and his son, Giles Gilbert Scott, designer of the Battersea Power Station.[14]

Early life and education[edit]

Gilbert Ryle was born in Brighton, England, on 19 August 1900, and grew up in an environment of learning.


He was educated at Brighton College and in 1919 went up to The Queen's College at Oxford to study classics, but was soon drawn to philosophy. He graduated with a "triple first"; he received first-class honours in classical Honour Moderations (1921), literae humaniores (1923), and philosophy, politics, and economics (1924).

Career[edit]

In 1924, Ryle was appointed lecturer in philosophy at Christ Church, Oxford. A year later, he became a fellow and tutor at Christ Church, where he remained until 1940.[15]


In the Second World War, Ryle was commissioned in the Welsh Guards. A capable linguist, he was recruited into intelligence work and by the end of the war had been promoted to the rank of Major. After the war he returned to Oxford and was elected Waynflete Professor of Metaphysical Philosophy and Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford. He published The Concept of Mind in 1949. He was president of the Aristotelian Society from 1945 to 1946, and editor of the philosophical journal Mind from 1947 to 1971. Ryle died on 6 October 1976 at Whitby, North Yorkshire.[15]


Ryle's brothers John Alfred (1889–1950) and George Bodley (1902–1978), both educated at Brighton College, also had eminent careers. John became Regius Professor of Physic at the University of Cambridge and physician to King George V. George, after serving as Director of Forestry first for Wales and then England, was Deputy-Director of the Forestry Commission and appointed a CBE.[16]


Ryle was the subject of a portrait by Rex Whistler, which he said made him look like "a drowned German General". He was a lifelong bachelor, and in retirement he lived with his twin sister Mary.[17]

Legacy[edit]

Ryle's notion of thick description[22] has been an important influence on cultural anthropologists such as Clifford Geertz.[24][25]


The Concept of Mind was recognised on its appearance as an important contribution to philosophical psychology, and an important work in the ordinary language philosophy movement. But in the 1960s and 1970s, the rising influence of the cognitivist theories of Noam Chomsky, Herbert A. Simon, Jerry Fodor, and others in the neo-Cartesian school became predominant. The two major postwar schools in the philosophy of mind, Fodor's representationalism and Wilfrid Sellars's functionalism, posited precisely the 'internal' cognitive states that Ryle had argued against. Philosopher Daniel Dennett, a student of Ryle's, has said that recent trends in psychology such as embodied cognition, discursive psychology, situated cognition, and others in the post-cognitivist tradition, have provoked a renewed interest in Ryle's work. Dennett provided a sympathetic foreword to the 2000 edition of The Concept of Mind.[26]


Author Richard Webster endorsed Ryle's arguments against mentalist philosophies, suggesting in Why Freud Was Wrong (1995) that they implied that "theories of human nature which repudiate the evidence of behaviour and refer solely or primarily to invisible mental events will never in themselves be able to unlock the most significant mysteries of human nature."[27]

1949.

The Concept of Mind

1954. , a collection of shorter pieces

Dilemmas: The Tarner Lectures 1953

1962. : Auguste Comte Memorial Lecture Delivered on 26 April 1962 at the London School of Economics and Political Science

A Rational Animal

1966.

Plato's Progress

1971. Collected Essays 1929 - 1968, in two volumes, 57 essays

1977. , editor

Contemporary Aspects of Philosophy

1979. [28]

On Thinking

Gilbert Ryle, The Philosophical Review LXII (1953)

"Ordinary Language"

. Gilbert Ryle; J. N. Findlay, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 35 (1961): 223–242.

"Symposium: Use, Usage and Meaning"

(Issue dedicated to Ryle)

The Electronic Journal of Analytic Philosophy – Issue 7, 2002

Archived 16 January 2021 at the Wayback Machine Linacre College houses Gilbert Ryle's library along with a collection of his papers

The Gilbert Ryle Collection at Linacre College, Oxford.

The New York Times, 20 October 1976 (obituary)

"Gilbert Ryle, British 'Philosopher Of Mind,' Dead in Yorkshire at 76"