Gilbert Ryle
British philosopher
born Aug. 19, 1900, Brighton, Sussex, Eng.
died Oct. 6, 1976, Whitby, North Yorkshire
Main
British philosopher, leading figure in the “Oxford
philosophy,” or “ordinary language,” movement.
Ryle gained first-class honours at Queen’s College,
Oxford, and became a lecturer at Christ Church College in
1924. Throughout his career, which remained centred at
Oxford, he attempted—as Waynflete professor of metaphysical
philosophy (1945–68), in his writings, and as editor
(1948–71) of the journal Mind—to dissipate confusion arising
from the misapplication of language.
Ryle’s first book, The Concept of Mind (1949), is
considered a modern classic. In it he challenges the
traditional distinction between body and mind as delineated
by René Descartes. Traditional Cartesian dualism, Ryle says,
perpetrates a serious confusion when, looking beyond the
human body (which exists in space and is subject to
mechanical laws), it views the mind as an additional
mysterious thing not subject to observation or to mechanical
laws, rather than as the form or organizing principle of the
body. What Ryle deems to be logically incoherent dogma of
Cartesianism he labels as the doctrine of the
ghost-in-the-machine.
In Dilemmas (1954) Ryle analyzes propositions that appear
irreconcilable, as when free will is set in opposition to
the fatalistic view that future specific events are
inevitable. He believed that the dilemmas posed by these
seemingly contradictory propositions could be resolved only
by viewing them as the result of conceptual confusion
between the language of logic and the language of events.
Among his other well-known books are Philosophical
Arguments (1945), A Rational Animal (1962), Plato’s Progress
(1966), and The Thinking of Thoughts (1968).
