Gilbert Ryle: Behaviorism and the “Ghost in the Machine”

1. Gilbert Ryle: Behaviorism and the “Ghost in the Machine”

2. Overview • The Dogma of the Ghost in the Machine • Preliminary Problems for the DGM • Category Mistakes • Analytical Behaviorism

3. The “Official Doctrine:” The Dogma of the Ghost in the Machine • Every human being has (or is) • A nonphysical mind • A physical body • Bodies occupy space and are subject to the mechanical laws governing objects in space. • Minds do not occupy space and are not subject to mechanical laws.

4. Characteristics of Mind • A person’s mental life is utterly private; the only way one mind can affect another is through the physical world. • Each mind has special access to itself, but not to any others.

5. The Problem of Other Minds • Each mind has unproblematic access to its own operations. • But no mind has access to the operations of another mind except by way of observed, overt, bodily behavior. • The inference from behavior to mental events cannot be empirically corroborated. • So, that inference is, at best, an article of faith.

6. A Preliminary Problem for the DGM • The Problem • We have “mental” concepts, and we are generally competent to apply them to one another. • To acquire these concepts, we would have to be able to confirm the correctness of our uses of the concepts, but such confirmation is impossible on the DGM. • So, DGM is unable to explain what it is supposed to explain, viz. our correct application of mentalistic concepts. • A reply: Nativism

7. Category Mistakes • A category mistake is the representation of facts of a certain sort as if they were of one logical type when they are really of another. • Ryle’s examples • The University • Esprit de corps • The military division • The Constitution • The Average Citizen

8. Analytical Behaviorism and the Cartesian Category Mistake • The Category Mistake: The DGM treats mental phenomena as if they were of the same type as ordinary physical phenomena, and must therefore posit a special forum (the non-physical mind) in which they occur. • Analytical Behaviorism: Our mental terms refer not to special, non-physical events, but to • Ways in which people behave, or • Ways in which people are disposed to behave

9. Review • The DGM is interactionist dualism. • Ryle thinks the DGM • Makes it impossible for us to use mentalistic concepts correctly • Is itself a category mistake • Ryle is a behaviorist