Ryle and the Ghost in the Machine
(05-Feb-2004)
Reading : Western Philosophy III.10 "The Myth of the 'Ghost in the Machine'"
Ryle describes Descartes' view as "the official doctrine", deriding it as "The
Myth of the 'Ghost in the Machine'". According to this view:
- the mind is private - only I can know it
- the mind is "inner" - it's "inside" (metaphorically) the body
- the mind is not governed by physical laws
- the mind is temporal but not spatial
- everything in the world is either physical or mental, where the two are
in "polar opposition" to one another, and mind is defined as the negation of
matter
This presents two problems:
- How do mind and body interact (if they are in polar opposition)?
- How do different minds interact (given that they're private/inner)?
in fact, if we can solve (1) then (2) is also solved: since the only
way people interact is through the material world (unless telepathy
exists)
Ryle says that the reason Descartes comes up with this view is that he found
himself with a foot in two camps: on the one hand, he was a scientist and
couldn't deny that science provides mechanical explanations of the way the
material world works, but on the other, Descartes' religious beliefs meant
that he needed to come up with a way to fit the spiritual aspect into the
picture.
Ryle describes "category-mistakes": he says that it is meaningless to use X
and Y to form a conjunction ("X AND Y") or disjunction ("X OR Y") unless X and
Y are of the same logical type. So for example:
- Conjunction : I saw the library, the lecture theatres, the halls
of residence, and the university
- Disjunction : "Do you want to meet the Smith family or the average
family?"
Ryle says that to treat "mind" as being in the same category as "matter" is to
commit a category mistake. So the statement "everything is either mind or
matter" is meaningless, because "mind" isn't the same logical type as "matter".
weekly paragraph
Mind and World page