The Concept of Mind is a book by the philosopher Gilbert Ryle

Gilbert Ryle

Gilbert Ryle , was a British philosopher, a representative of the generation of British ordinary language philosophers that shared Wittgenstein's approach to philosophical problems, and is principally known for his critique of Cartesian dualism, for which he coined the phrase "the ghost in the...

. It argues that the concept of "mind" is "a philosophical illusion hailing chiefly from Descartes

René Descartes

René Descartes ; was a French philosopher and writer who spent most of his adult life in the Dutch Republic. He has been dubbed the 'Father of Modern Philosophy', and much subsequent Western philosophy is a response to his writings, which are studied closely to this day...

 and sustained by logical errors and 'category mistake

Category mistake

A category mistake, or category error, is a semantic or ontological error in which "things of one kind are presented as if they belonged to another", or, alternatively, a property is ascribed to a thing that could not possibly have that property...

s' which have become habitual." Richard Webster

Richard Webster (author)

Richard Webster was a British cultural historian, and the author of five published books, dealing with subjects such as the controversy over Salman Rushdie's novel The Satanic Verses, Sigmund Freud and psychoanalysis, and the investigation of sexual abuse in Britain...

 praises its "lucidity and vigour", but suggests that while Ryle's argument effectively dissolves the mind-body problem, its case that the remaining subjective aspects of our experience, consisting of our sensations, memories, consciousness and sense of self, are not the essence of "mind" has not been universally accepted by contemporary philosophers, neuroscientists, and psychologists, with the result that its arguments have "failed to bring about the revolution in human knowledge they might reasonably have been expected to." Webster sees Ryle's willingness to accept the characterization of The Concept of Mind as behaviorist

Behaviorism

Behaviorism , also called the learning perspective , is a philosophy of psychology based on the proposition that all things that organisms do—including acting, thinking, and feeling—can and should be regarded as behaviors, and that psychological disorders are best treated by altering behavior...

 as misrepresenting its more nuanced position, writing that Ryle's acceptance of that description is far from "harmless", as Ryle himself suggested. Webster stresses that Ryle "does not seek to deny the reality of what we frequently term 'internal' sensations, thoughts or imaginings. He merely denies that these belong to a realm which is logically distinct from, and independent of, the 'external' realm of ordinary human behaviour."

Stuart Hampshire

Stuart Hampshire

Sir Stuart Newton Hampshire was an Oxford University philosopher, literary critic and university administrator. He was one of the antirationalist Oxford thinkers who gave a new direction to moral and political thought in the post-World War II era.Hampshire was educated at Repton School and at...

 comments in a review of The Concept of Mind that, "There is only one property which I can discover to be common to Professor Ryle and Immanuel Kant

Immanuel Kant

Immanuel Kant was a German philosopher from Königsberg , researching, lecturing and writing on philosophy and anthropology at the end of the 18th Century Enlightenment....

; in both cases the style is the philosopher - as Kant thought and wrote in dichotomies, Professor Ryle writes in epigrams

Epigram

An epigram is a brief, interesting, usually memorable and sometimes surprising statement. Derived from the epigramma "inscription" from ἐπιγράφειν epigraphein "to write on inscribe", this literary device has been employed for over two millennia....

. There are many passages in which the argument simply consists of a succession of epigrams, which do indeed effectively explode on impact, shattering conventional trains of thought, but which, like most epigrams, leave behind among the debris in the reader's mind a trail of timid doubts and qualifications."

Bryan Magee

Bryan Magee

Bryan Edgar Magee is a noted British broadcasting personality, politician, poet, and author, best known as a popularizer of philosophy.-Early life:...

writes of Ryle that, "As a student he read Schopenhauer, and much later, in his fiftieth year—having, he thought, forgotten Schopenhauer almost entirely—published The Concept of Mind, in which not only the central thesis, but the essentials of the subsidiary theses come straight out of Schopenhauer. Ryle genuinely believed he was putting forth his own ideas. Only when someone pointed it out after publication did he realize he had recycled Schopenhauer."

External links

• Read the book "The Concept of Mind" by Gilbert Ryle on Scribd