When1: 1949
When2: 1979
Who: Gilbert Ryle [Ryle, Gilbert]
What: philosopher
Where: Britain
works\ Concept of Mind [1949]; Dilemmas [1954]; Thinking and Meaning [1962]; Plato's Progress [1966]; Collected Papers [1971]; On Thinking [1979]
Detail: He lived 1900 to 1976.
Epistemology
Philosophy should make language clear and find why some statements have no meaning or do not work in contexts. Statements have categories {statement types}. Knowledge can be about skill {knowing how} or about facts and events {knowing that} [1949]. Statements of one category often use contexts that require another category {category mistake, Ryle} {type error}.
Words belong to categories {logical type} by usage {logical behavior}. Mental ideas mean what happens in behavior {operational behaviorism} or what disposes people to behave in way {logical behaviorism, Ryle}. Words can be about mental dispositions and feelings. Words can describe values. Words {achievement word} can be about mental processes or activities that have results, such as solving, detecting, and seeing.
Words about mental processes can have different types. For example, people perform some mental processes and have skills, while some processes seem to just happen. Mental processes can have causes or antecedents, while others seem spontaneous.
Pairs can require each other for meaning {polar concept}, like up or down and correctness or error. Because there can be error, people can be correct.
However, this does not state when or where error or correctness was. Pairs, like finite and infinite, can have one member that has no reference.
Mental-event descriptions describe agent possible actions and statements, not actual mental events.
Thinking is acting in organized ways.
Mind
The idea that thinking things reside inside bodies or minds {ghost in the machine, Ryle} is ridiculous. Mind-brain dualism does not exist, because statements about minds are not statements about matter. Mental states are dispositions {reactive disposition} to behave in specific ways {dispositional analysis}. Mental states are not substances but substance processes.
If will causes voluntary actions, and will is voluntary, will has infinite regress.
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Date Modified: 2022.0224