Ryle's Criticisms of Cartesian Dualism - Essay Example

? Ryle's Criticisms of Cartesian Dualism Table of Contents I. Ryle's Criticisms of Cartesian Dualism 3 II. Account of the Mind Offered by Ryle to Replace Cartesian Dualism 6 III. Weighing in on Ryle and Descartes: On Which of the Two Accounts is More Plausible 8 Reference List 10 I. Ryle's Criticisms of Cartesian Dualism The Cartesian view essentially posits that mind and body are two separate realities, with the body having its career in time and space, and mind having its career outside of that. Consciousness is the manifestation of mind, to be accessed and confirmed through introspection and through the self-acknowledging that consciousness by going inside. This extends to existence as having two separate planes, a material existence and a mental existence, with the two planes diametrically opposed to each other and separated profoundly, having no link of causation between the two. In the physical world, people can communicate, but the mental conscious world is completely hidden from view and unknowable by others. To the question of what kind of knowledge can be obtained by the mind's workings, the Cartesian dualist perspective asserts that consciousness is able to get a good grasp of the present workings of one's mind, which cannot be shaken as unreal, in spite of inputs by Freud with regard to some unconscious, subconscious impulses that can also govern the conscious processes. The data is presented within the immediate time frame, available to the consciousness or mind. Together with this data are the fruits of one person’s going into himself, introspectively, to examine his mind's contents as a kind of self-observation. The other, meanwhile, is not privy and is completely shut out of this immediate consciousness experience. Even language is said to reflect this view of consciousness as something innate and to which the external actions in the environment register and make impressions. Ryle calls this whole infrastructure of thought the ghost in the machine dogmatic formulation. He contests this dogma on several grounds and objects to its validity. Ryle testifies that the whole ghost in the machine infrastructure or theory of mind is completely false (Ryle, 1949, pp. 11-16) “I shall often speak of it, with deliberate abusiveness, as ‘the dogma of the Ghost in the Machine’. I hope to prove that it is entirely false, and false not in detail but in principle. It is not merely an assemblage of particular mistakes. It is one big mistake and mistake of a special kind. It is, namely, a category mistake (Ryle, Descartes' myth, 1949, pp. 15-16, Paragraph #2) The core of the objection is with regard to the Cartesian view of the dualism of mind and body as a category mistake and a myth of the philosopher, meaning that in essence those mental processes are miscategorized and made to fit a category to which they do not belong. Ryle gives the example of the University tour given to someone who after being shown the facilities asks where the university is as if the university was in the same category as the buildings and the grounds, rather than constituting the entire of it. He cites another example of a first-time cricket game watcher, who mistakes team spirit as being in the same category of the different players and the positions that they occupy, rather than being constituted by the cooperation and camaraderie of the players in the team. These are examples of category mistakes, to which the philosophers subscribing to the Cartesian dualist frame of mind likewise succumb to. In the examples, Ryle notes that the problem lay with the perceivers having difficulty in grasping the nuances of language and the limitations of their vocabulary. It is the same with an ignorant man perceiving the constitution as something magical and ethereal, or the fictitious John Doe in the same magical and ghostly terms, because that ignorant man is unable to get away from using the categories of thought that he is familiar with when dealing with physical presences concerning the idea of the constitution and of John Doe. In the same manner, Ryle explains that some category mistakes lie at the heart of the false view of mind posited and accepted by the Cartesian dualist school. The fallacy is in transferring the thinking with regard to physical bodies and their complex characteristics to imagining that a ghost in the machine likewise has complex characteristics and parts, as a counterpart soul or spirit or ghost inhabiting the body. This is the same as viewing the constitution as having the same reality as other formal institutions of government, or of Jane Doe having the same characteristics as other people, thus the search from the ignorant man. The mistake is essentially in viewing the mind and its artifacts as things constituted in a different way from the body and physical things, but in a way that is just as complex as physical bodies and things. This mistake, in this context, can be seen from the way the dualists grapple with cause and effect between physical bodies and minds as if the two realities belong to the same categories so as to be able to affect one another. The difficulty in figuring this out reflects, according to Ryle, the inherent problems with viewing mind in such terms. The analogy extends to mental processes subject to rigorous non-physical laws in the same manner that physical bodies are subjected to complex physical laws, with both being determined realities. Free will is problematic here, as is choice and responsibility, according to Ryle, as far as the mind goes, because if the mind is as determined in its workings as the body, then where is free will? (Ryle, 1949, pp. 16-20): “The physical world is a deterministic system, so the mental world must be a deterministic system. Bodies cannot help the modifications they undergo, so minds cannot help pursuing the careers fixed for them. Responsibility, choice, merit and demerit are therefore inapplicable concepts” (Ryle, Descartes' myth, 1949, p.20, Paragraph #2). This is the error of Descartes related to imagining that there is a counterpart rigorous set of rules that should apply to mind as it does to the body. The ghost in the machine is an improper categorization of mind, as the author states, in much the same way as the mistakes have been made with John Doe, the constitution, and real people and institutions. In essence, Ryle is theorises that mind is not in the same category as the physical body, and so to class the two as being in the same category would be absurd, in the same way that it is absurd to classify the Constitution in the same plane of existence as the Supreme Court and the Office of the President, for instance, and treat them all as if the operations of language, thought and reason could be applied to all of them in equal fashion and along the same categories of thought and expression (Ryle, 1949, pp. 16-20). II. Account of the Mind Offered by Ryle to Replace Cartesian Dualism In this instance, Ryle debunked the whole Cartesian dualist conception of mind as wrong: the categorization of mind as a separate entity that has to exist in the same category as the human body, and to be compared and interpreted linguistically and metaphysically in the same category as the body. In its place he posits that mind is not separate from the body, but is an aspect of the body. To be more specific, Ryle posits that the mind is, in effect, an aspect of the body imbued with certain capabilities and capacities, and that as far as the mind goes, the way to understand and theoretically grasp it is through activities that can be witnessed, as done by the body itself (Columbia Encyclopedia, 2012; Ryle, 1949, pp. 20-24). Ryle stresses that mind and body are not polar opposites in this sense, and neither are they of the same type to be treated as such linguistically and logically. When one says that body exists and mind exists, the use of the term “exists” is not the same in those two instances, and therefore, it would be wrong to consider the two as having the same comparable set of attributes so as to exist in one category of intellectualizing and of speaking. Ryle goes on to say that this is just the kind of category mistakes, one piled on top of the other and reinforcing each other, which has allowed Cartesian dualists to blind others and themselves with regard to the operation of the mind and its relation to the body. In fact, as Ryle posits, mind can be observed and is not a ghost in the human machine, and the means of observation is through the actions of the body. Mind is not in the same category as the body, but rather is a separate set of capabilities associated with the body itself. Mind is an aspect of body, rather than something wholly separate from the body, as the Cartesian dualists have erred in concluding through their category mistakes (Ryle, 1949, pp. 20-24; Columbia Encyclopedia, 2012). This aspect of the mind as something that can be perceived through observation of activities is what has come to be known, in essence, as Ryle's “logical or philosophical behaviorism” (LaFave, 2008, Paragraph #1- 2). Ryle's logical behaviorism, formulated as such, did not gloss over mental realities as if they were not real and did not exist, but rather gave them a central place as a set of capabilities that are not removed from the body itself but are aspects of that physical body. It is much in the same way that Ryle, in formulating logical behaviorism, is said to affirm a person's intentionality, rather than rejecting it, and gave it a central place in that philosophy. To be exact, for Ryle the intentionality of language was a prerequisite to gaining an understanding of how and why people behave the way they do. The mental aspect of the body, according to Ryle, can be grasped according to if and then statements, with both the if and the then components able to be grasped as external, public behaviors that can be observed. This formulation of the mental reality in terms of if and then statements is Ryle's way of altogether bypassing the problematic mind and body formulation of the Cartesian dualist worldview. For the purposes of epistemology, the reality is singular, and so is the body with the mind as an aspect of it. On the other hand, outside of this, Ryle's metaphysics was considered to be pluralistic in that as far as being in concerned, he accepted that things can be either physical or mental, or can also be a hybrid along a continuum of being. The bone of contention is with the very fallacy that Ryle posits is at the root of the error of Cartesian dualist thought. By avoiding the language of the dualists, through the use of logical behaviorist formulations such as the if-then statements discussed above, Ryle was also able to reformulate the categories by which the mind and the body are conceived, not two, but one, with the mind being an aspect of the physical body and existing in a unitarian reality (LaFave, Logical behaviorism, 2008, Paragraph #2-3; Ryle, 1949, pp. 20-24; Columbia Encyclopedia, 2012). III. Weighing in on Ryle and Descartes: On Which of the Two Accounts is More Plausible Ryle's formulation is to attack the root of the dualist fallacy with regard to the category mistakes he pointed out, and then reformulating the language and logic referring to the mind in such a way as to re-frame mind in the context of observable activities by the body. There is no division between the two, but rather an affirmation of mind and body existing in the relationship of mind being a bodily aspect, a set of capabilities that are expressed outwardly through the body's activities. Descartes' dualist formulation, meanwhile, as Ryle pointed out, assigns to the mind a separate reality and separate, but equally complex, operative laws in comparison to the material laws that operate on the complex human body. Ryle brilliantly exposes the problems that are attendant to viewing mind in such terms, when it comes to categorizing the realities for philosophical purposes. On the other hand, from personal experience and from a casual look at the beliefs inherent in religions around the world, one can see that a dualist frame of mind permeates much of modern thinking. For instance, the idea of a soul that houses consciousness and which exists for all eternity apart from the body seems to be in congruence with Cartesian dualist thought. Also, while the logical behaviorist formulation of mind seems to work out from a philosophical point of view, it seems absurd in one sense to imagine the mind as being just an appendage of the body, a set of capabilities, not to be distinguished from other capabilities such as the autonomous body processes that maintain it. For sure, on some subjective level people know that their thoughts are something other than their body, only intuitively. Ryle's approach seems plausible from a philosophical formulation point of view but is rather dry and arguably counter-intuitive (LaFave, 2008; Ryle, 1949, pp. 20-24; Columbia Encyclopedia, 2012). Also, as the literature notes, there are problems with Ryle's formulation too. For instance, if behavior were all that matters, then how would one explain mind in the context of two different people reacting to pain differently, one exhibiting pain behaviors and the other bearing it out and remaining stoic? Also, with regard to if-then formulations, the problem is with regard to not really knowing how one person thinks, making the formulations themselves virtually inapplicable in the real world. Given these criticisms and the discussion above, it makes more sense intuitively to accept that mind, as soul, and body are distinct and separate realities (LaFave, Logical behaviorism, 2008, Paragraph #8-10; Ryle, 1949, pp. 20-24; Columbia Encyclopedia, 2012). Reference List Columbia Encyclopedia, 2012. Gilbert Ryle. [Online] Available at: http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/Gilbert_Ryle.aspx [Accessed 30 September 2012]. LaFave, S., 2008. Logical behaviorism. West Valley College. [Online] Available at: http://instruct.westvalley.edu/lafave/Logical_Behaviorism.html [Accessed 30 September 2012]. Ryle, G., 1949. Descartes' myth. Chapter 1, Concept of Mind. The University of Chicago Press [Online] Available at: books.google.com [Accessed 30 September 2012] Read More