Reinterpreting Ryle: A Nonbehavioristic Analysis

Reinterpreting Ryle: A Nonbehavioristic Analysis Shelley M. Park Journal of the History of Philosophy, Volume 32, Number 2, April 1994, pp. 265-290 (Article) Published by Johns Hopkins University Press DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/hph.1994.0043 For additional information about this article https://muse.jhu.edu/article/226029/summary Access provided by University of Central Florida Library (14 Jul 2017 20:41 GMT) Reinterpreting Ryle: A Nonbehavioristic Analysis SHELLEY M. PARK 1. INTRODUCTION GILBERT RYLE IIAS BEEN VARIOUSLY INTERPR~r~D aS a naive realist, x a p r a g m a tist,, a n i n s t r u m e n t a l i s t , s a f u n c t i o n a l i s t , 4 a n o m i n a l i s t , 5 a v e r i f i c a t i o n i s t , 6 a p h e n o m e n o l o g i s t , 7 a n d e v e n as a d u a l i s t , g M o s t p r e v a l e n t l y , h o w e v e r , R y l e h a s b e e n i n t e r p r e t e d as a b e h a v i o r i s t . 9 A s t h e title o f this essay s u g g e s t s , it is this I wish to thank David Sanford, Tad Schmaltz, Carl Posy, and the reviewers for the Journal of the History of Philosophy for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper. ' Stuart Hampshire, "Critical Notice of The Concept of Mind," Mind 59 095o): 24z; Bertrand Russell, "What is Mind?'Journa/of Philosophy 55 0958): lO;J. N. Wright, "Mind and the Concept of Mind," Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, supplementary volume (1959): 13. 'Ryle's project is likened to Dewey's by Albert Hofstadter, "Professor Ryle's CategoryMistake," Journal of Philosophy 48 (1951 ): 257; Morris Weitz, "Professor Ryle's 'Logical Behaviorism'," Journal of Philosophy 48 (1951): 3m; and Arthur Pap, "Semantic Analysis and PsychoPhysical Dualism," Mind 61 (1952): 21 i . sJ. j. C. Smart, in Oscar P. Wood and George Pitcher, eds., Rile: A Collectionof Critical Essays (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday and Co., 197o), 294-3o6, and Richard Rorty, Ph//osophy and the Mirror of Nature (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1979), 1o2. 4 Hofstadter, "Professor Ryle's Category-Mistake," 249; Hugh R. King, "Professor Ryle and The Concept of Mind," Journal of Philosophy 48 ( 1951 ): ~86; P. S. MacLellan, "Professor Ryle and the Concept of Mind," tlibbertJournal 5o (1952): 14o. Hofstadter ("Professor Ryle's Category-Mistake," 264• is especially vehement on this point. 6 Hampshire, "Critical Notice," 245. 7Michael Murray, "Heidegger and Ryle: Two Versions of Phenomenology," Review of Metaphys/cs 27 (1973). sj. N. Wright, "Mind and the Concept of Mind," 13. 9Cf. John Wisdom, "The Concept of Mind," Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 095o): 191; Russell, "What is Mind?" 8; Hofstadter, "Professor Ryle's Category-Mistake," 257; Dickinson Miller, "Descartes' Myth and Professor Ryle's Fallacy,"Journa2 of Philosophy48 (t951): 272; Campbell Garnett, "Mind as Minding," Mind 61 ( 195~): 349; Hampshire, "The Concept of Mind," 244; Weitz, "Professor Ryle's 'Logical Behaviorism'," 3m and pass/m; Pap, "Semantic Analysis and [~65] 266 .JOURNAL OF T H E H I S T O R Y OF P H I L O S O P H Y 3 2 : 9 APRIL 1 9 9 4 last p e r v a s i v e i n t e r p r e t a t i o n o f Ryle t h a t I will discuss h e r e . I n t e r p r e t a t i o n s o f Ryle as a b e h a v i o r i s t stem p r i m a r i l y f r o m r e a d i n g s o f The Concept of Mind.'o T h i s w o r k is difficult to i n t e r p r e t a n d several c h a r a c t e r i z a t i o n s o f Ryle can, with v a r y i n g d e g r e e s o f plausibility, be s u p p o r t e d by passages f r o m t h a t text. I n p a r t i c u l a r , Ryle o f t e n s o u n d s like a b e h a v i o r i s t w h e n h e says s u c h t h i n g s as: " . . . in d e s c r i b i n g t h e w o r k i n g s o f a p e r s o n ' s m i n d . . , we a r e d e s c r i b i n g t h e ways in w h i c h p a r t s o f his c o n d u c t a r e m a n a g e d " (CM 5 o) o r " m y m i n d " is simply " m y ability a n d p r o n e n e s s to d o c e r t a i n sorts o f things" (CM 168). Yet, as I will a r g u e below, the b e h a v i o r i s t label yields a c a r i c a t u r e o f Ryle's position in The Concept o f M i n d that c a n n o t be a d e q u a t e l y fleshed o u t by r e f e r e n c e to the l a r g e r c o r p u s o f R y l e a n texts. Ryle was a w a r e o f the c a r i c a t u r i n g effect o f a n y "ism" a n d , f o r this ( a n d o t h e r ) r e a s o n s , stalwartly r e f u s e d to ally h i m s e l f with a n y p h i l o s o p h i c a l c a m p . I n " T a k i n g Sides in P h i l o s o p h y , " h e explains: There is a certain emotion of repugnance which I . . . feel when asked the conventional question, " I f you are a philosopher, to what school of thought do you b e l o n g ? " . . . T h e gist o f my position is this. There is no place for "isms" in philosophy. T h e alleged party issues are never the important philosophic questions, and to be affiliated to a recognizable party is to be the slave of a non-philosophic prejudice . . . . To be a 'so-and-so-ist' is to be philosophically frail . . . . " Psycho-Physical Dualism," 21o; Peter Geach, Mental Acts (London: Roudedge and Kegan Paul, 1957), sections 3 and 4; J. J. C. Smart, Philosophy and ScientOfc Realism (New York: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1963), 89; D. M. Armstrong, A Materialist Theory of Mind (New York: Humanities Press, 1968), 54; David Lewis, "Psychophysicai and Theoretical Identifications," Australa.~nJourhal of Philosophy 5~ (197~): 255-56; Jerry Fodor, The Language of Thought (New York: Crowell, a975), Chapter 1, passim; Daniel Dennett, Brainstorms (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1981), 119; Richard Rorty, Philosophyand the Mirror of Nature, 98- tot; and Steven Stich, From Folk Psychologyto Cognitive Science (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1983), 247 n. 4~oGilbert Ryle, The Conceptof Mind (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1949). For Ryle's works, the following abbreviations will be used: CM The Concept of Mind D Dilemmas:The Tanner Lectures, 1953 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1956). RP "Introduction" to A. J. Ayer, et. al., eds. The Revolution in Philosophy (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1965), 1-11. R "Autobiographical" preface to Oscar P. Wood and George Pitcher, eds., Ryle: A Collection of Critical Essays, 1-15. CP CollectedPapers, 2 volumes (London: Hutchison and Co., 1971). OT Kostantin Kolenda, ed., On Thinking (Totawa, N.J.: Rowman and Littlefieid, 1979). Since Ryle's Collected Papers span several decades, I will specify the original date and place of publication in referring to these articles, although all page references will pertain to their appearance in CP. " Gilbert Ryle, "Taking Sides in Philosophy," Philosophy 12 ( ~937), reprinted in CP 2: 153-54. "/'his entire article is devoted to Ryle's arguments and polemics against "isms" in philosophy. REINTERPRETING RYLE z67 In p o r t r a y i n g The Concept of Mind as a behaviorist manifesto, Ryle's critics h a v e systematically p o r t r a y e d him as philosophically feeble. Early reviewers o f the b o o k explicitly accused h i m o f b e i n g naive, confused, eccentric, d e l u d e d , a n d even p a t h o l o g i c a l . " A n d , a l t h o u g h such adjectives are seldom used any m o r e in describing Ryle's views, the sentiments are implicit in the quick dismissals o f "Rylean b e h a v i o r i s m " in c o n t e m p o r a r y treatises in the p h i l o s o p h y o f m i n d . I n this p a p e r , I h o p e to suggest that "Rylean b e h a v i o r i s m " is easily t o p p l e d because it is a straw target. T h e r e a r e two pr/ma fac/e reasons f o r suspicion c o n c e r n i n g i n t e r p r e t a t i o n s o f Ryle as a behaviorist. First, Ryle explicitly denies b e i n g a behaviorist, b o t h in Th~ Concept of Mind a n d elsewhere (CM 3 z, 84, 3 z 7 - 3 o ; CP z: viii a n d passim; O T 17, 18, 31, 97, 1~ Secondly, Ryle explicitly asserts that his p u r p o s e in The Concept of Mind is simply to "rectify the logical g e o g r a p h y " o f o u r c o n c e p t o f mind, r a t h e r t h a n to p r o v i d e any inform a t i o n a b o u t m i n d s (CM 9). I n d e e d , Ryle insists that p h i l o s o p h y is u n a b l e to verify (or falsify) assertions a b o u t m i n d s (ibid.). T h u s , if we are to take h i m at his word, we s h o u l d hesitate to attribute any ontological theory a b o u t m i n d s to Ryle.,3 O n the i n t e r p r e t a t i o n o f Ryle that I will o f f e r here, he is best c h a r a c t e r i z e d as a n "ontological agnostic." Ryle's aim, I believe, is to d e v e l o p a n o n denotational theory of meaning for mental-conduct t e r m s - - a theory of meaning which does n o t p r e s u p p o s e any metaphysical or ontological t h e o r y a n d , hence, does not p r e s u p p o s e behaviorism.,4 In o r d e r to show b o t h 1) that Ryle's work o u g h t to be r e i n t e r p r e t e d a n d ~) that, if r e i n t e r p r e t e d as I suggest, The Concept of Mind provides an i m p o r t a n t alternative to c o n t e m p o r a r y (ontological) positions in the p h i l o s o p h y o f m i n d , I will p r o c e e d as follows: In section z, I outline two d i f f e r e n t but related i n t e r p r e - "Cf. Russell, "What is Mind?" 7-11; Wright, "Mind and the Concept of Mind," 1o-~3; Hofstadter, "Professor Ryle's Category-Mistake," z57, 964-7o; Hampshire, "Critical Notice," z4o-43, z45; Pap, "Semantic Analysis and Psycho-Physical Dualism," 21o, z14 n. a; and J. L. Austin, "Intelligent Behavior," in Rile: A Collectionof CriticalEssays,49. ,s Ryle's rejection of "isms" could also be plausibly interpreted as a rejection of metaphysical and ontological theories. In "Taking Sides in Philosophy," CP z: 163, for example, he refers to "isms" as "Thingummisms." ,4 This theory of meaning could be characterized positively as a theory of"meaning as use" or, alternatively, as a theory of "warranted assertion." Ryle hopes to persuade philosophers of mind to replace their denotat/ona2notion of truth with an ep/stemo/og/ca/notionof the evidential circumstances warranting our use of mental-conduct terms. Since the primary purpose of this paper is to distinguish Ryle's position from behaviorism (and other theories of the mind which presuppose a denotational theory of meaning), however, I will simply speak of Ryle's nondenotational theory of meaning. In the latter sections of this paper, I label this theory "linguistic Antirealism" in order to compare and contrast it to a variety of other Realist and Antirealist positions, but nothing much hangs on the use of this--:or any other--label. 268 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 3 2 : 2 APRIL x 9 9 4 tations o f The Concept of M i n d as a w o r k that advocates ontological behaviorism. Following this, in section 3, I discuss s o m e difficulties that those i n t e r p r e t a t i o n s e n c o u n t e r . Specifically, I a r g u e that such behaviorist i n t e r p r e t a t i o n s a r e u n a b l e to a c c o u n t f o r the style, substance, a n d a v o w e d m e t a p h i l o s o p h i c a l p u r p o s e o f Ryle's work. I n sections 4 a n d 5, I e x a m i n e the i n t e r p r e t a t i o n o f Ryle as a "logical behaviorist," a r g u i n g that while this i n t e r p r e t a t i o n correctly c a p t u r e s Ryle's interest in l a n g u a g e , it still fails to m a k e a d e q u a t e sense o f Ryle's m e t h o d s a n d claims. T h i s is d u e , at least in part, to the fact that logical b e h a v i o r i s m ultimately p r e s u p p o s e s ontological behaviorism. Finally, in the c o n c l u d i n g sections o f this article, I explicate h o w i n t e r p r e t i n g Ryle as a d v o c a t i n g a nond e n o t a t i o n a l a c c o u n t o f the m e a n i n g o f m e n t a l - c o n d u c t t e r m s enables o n e to a c c o u n t f o r Ryle's conclusions a n d strategies o f a r g u m e n t in a systematic, a n d not m e r e l y a n ad hoc, way. 2. RYLE AS AN ONTOLOGICAL BEHAVIORIST T h e r e a r e t h r e e stances o n e m i g h t take with r e g a r d to the ontological status o f minds. T h e s e a r e as follows:,s N o n r e d u c t i v e Realism (O): (l) M i n d s exist; a n d (2) T h e y exist immaterially. Reductive Realism (O): (1) Minds exist; but (2) T h e i r existence is material. Antirealism (O): (1) Minds d o not exist; a n d t h e r e f o r e (2) T h e question o f their materiality o r i m m a t e r i a l i t y is a pseudo-question. T h e first position e n c o m p a s s e s idealism a n d dualism, '6 while the second enc o m p a s s e s b o t h t y p e - a n d token-physicalism (including such diverse theories as C e n t r a l State I d e n t i t y T h e o r y , Functional State I d e n t i t y T h e o r y , a n d certain r e d u c t i v e f o r m s o f behaviorism), a n d the t h i r d position is otherwise k n o w n as Eliminative Materialism, which m a y also t a k e a behaviorist f o r m . ,5 The distinction between various ontological and linguistic formulations of the Realism/ Antirealism debate I sketch in this section is modelled on a distinction utilized by Carl Posy in order to distinguish Kant's transcendental idealism from Berkeleyan idealism. See, for example, his "Autonomy, Omniscience and the Ethical Imagination: From Theoretical to Practical Philosophy in Kant," Proceedings of the Conference on Kant's PracticalPhilosophy (Jerusalem, 1986), ao6-35; and "Kant's Mathematical Realism," Monist 67 (1983): l a5-34. I think, however, that this distinction can be analogously utilized to distinguish Ryle's position in the philosophy of mind from a behaw'orist position. ,6 Idealism can be described as a position which seeks to "reduce" matter to mind and thus, the label "Nonreductive Realism" is, in some sense, a misnomer. The contemporary use of the term "Reductivism," however, signifies positions that seek to reduce mind to matter and thus the label should not be too misleading. REINTERPRETING RYLE 269 Many readers of The Concept of Mind have interpreted Ryle as adopting one of the latter materialist stances with regard to the mind, but there has been little consensus regarding which of these two positions Ryle adopts. According to one interpretive opinion, Ryle seeks to make an ontological reduction o f minds to (actual or hypothetical) physical behavior, while according to another interpretive opinion, he seeks to make an ontological elimination of minds in favor of such behavior. D. M. Armstrong provides the paradigmatic account of Ryle as a reductive behaviorist. According to Armstrong, Ryle is a "scientifically oriented philosopher" who (rightly) ridicules the Cartesian view of spiritual substance and (wrongly) offers a modified version of Watsonian behaviorism in its place. According to Armstrong's Ryle: "the mind was not something behind the behavior of the body, but was simply part of that physical behavior. My anger with you was not some modification of a spiritual substance which somehow brings about aggressive behavior; rather it is the aggressive behavior i t s e l f . . . . T h o u g h t is not an inner process that lies behind, and brings about, the words I speak and write: it is my speaking and writing. The mind is not an inner arena, it is outward act."~7 On this interpretation of The Concept of Mind, Ryle is attempting to reduce all of our mental conduct to merely physical conduct, or, more accurately, to our behavior patterns and dispositions.'S This interpretation of Ryle is implicitly supported by a number of authors, but is most explicitly supported by J. j. c. Smart, who claims that for Ryle " f e a r . . . is a characteristic behavior pattern,"'9 and by Jerry Fodor who portrays Ryle as a behaviorist whose "ontological impulse" was "reductionistic. '''~ In an early review of The Concept of Mind, Dickinson Miller provided the latter, eliminativist interpretation of Ryle. According to Miller, Ryle is "denying the facts of private consciousness" and arguing that we have "only" various behavioral dispositions, tendencies, and capacities. For Miller, Ryle's views can only be understood by placing scare quotes around all of Ryle's uses of the intentional idiom, because "what Professor Ryle is d o i n g . . , is denying that we exist." For Miller's Ryle, persons are simply bodies "without consciousness."~, J. L. Austin concurs that Ryle has persuaded himself that" 'occult' episodes 'in the mind', which are 'private' to one person, simply do not occur at all--not merely t h a t . . , their numbers and varieties have been exaggerated." Ryle is, '~ Armstrong, "The Nature of Mind," in C. V. Borst, ed., The Mind~Brain Identity Theory (London: MacMillan, 197o), reprinted in Ned Block, ed., Readings in Philosophyof Psycholog~ (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard UniversityPress, 198o), 1: 193. ,s Ibid., 194. *gJ.j. C. Smart, Philosophyand Sciem~c Realism, 89. '~ Fodor, Representalior (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, t981), 3-4"' Miller, "Professor Ryle'sFallacy," z72 and pass/ra. 270 J O U R N A L OF T H E H I S T O R Y OF P H I L O S O P H Y 3 2 : 2 APRIL 1994 according to Austin, revolting against the dualist's dichotomy by maintaining that "only one of the alleged pair of opposites really exists at all." Although Ryle does not believe that the body is a machine, he does believe "that it alone, and not the 'ghost' exists."" This interpretation of The Concept of Mind also derives explicit support from Morris Weitz, who argues that "Ryle is at pains to show that the consciousness, sense-data, images, and sensations o f Cartesianism are non-existent."'3 Although there is no unanimity concerning the specific form of behaviorism that Ryle holds, both Ryle's critics and his sympathizers agree that he is advocating some version of behaviorism which is "congenial to physicalism."'4 Few would disagree with Stuart Hampshire's characterization of Ryle as a materialist whose central thesis in The Concept of Mind can be summarized by the "slogan": "Not Two Worlds, but One World; not a Ghost, but a Body."'5 The notion that Ryle must be advocating some version o f materialistic monism results from the following implicit line of reasoning: T h e r e are (as stated above) only three positions with regard to the ontological status of minds, and Ryle emphatically rejects Nonreductive Realism (O). Therefore, he must be either a Reductive Realist (O) or an Antirealist (O). Hence, Ryle claims either that minds are nothing but publicly observable behavior or that minds are nothing. This is, indeed, the explicit reasoning o f J . N. Wright, who sets forth his conclusion more tentatively than most: "It is difficult to determine whether in rectifying the logical geography of mind concepts Professor Ryle is committed to a doctrine of physicalism, and if so, of what sort, for if there is one process and not two, an unsophisticated person would naturally conclude, in view of the deeply ingrained dualism that besets us all, that the denial of the occult leaves the physical as the sole candidate for occupancy. ''*~ Having reached this conclusion, Wright goes on to make the "well-worn" objection to Ryle's "behaviorist" project: The mind's behavior, "if we mean by behavior, some form of physicalism, cannot exhaustively be delineated in physical terms nor theorised about as if it could be so delineated." Thus, The Concept of Mind seems to Wright "to fall short in the recognition of precisely those characteristics which have been recognised by most philosophers as being the prerogative of mind and which present to them such stubborn problems.'*7 This common objection to "Rylean behaviorism" is not, perhaps, without its merits if Ryle ,J.9 L. Ausdn, "IntelligentBehavior,"in R 47-48. isWeitz, "ProfessorRyle's'LogicalBehaviorism',"~97-98. 4Cf. 9 Smart and Armstrong. 15Hampshire, "Critical Notice," 238. Cir.J. L. Austin, "Intelligent Behavior,"in R 48: "he preaches with the fervour of a proselytea doctrineof 'one world'." ,tj. N. Wright, "Mindand the Concept of Mind," 20. 7Ibid., 9 a I. REINTERPRETING RYLE 271 was in fact proposing to either reduce mind to behavior or eliminate it in favor of behavior. There is, however, a mistake in the line of reasoning which culminates in a behaviorist interpretation of Ryle. Underlying the general interpretive argument is the unargued-for assumption that Ryle is undertaking an ontological project. This assumption, which is pervasive in interpretations of The Concept of Mind, can only be dissipated by a closer look at Ryle's larger corpus of works. 3- PROBLEMS WITH THE ONTOLOGICAL BEHAVIORIST INTERPRETATION In the "Introduction" to Volume I o f his Collected Papers, Ryle suggests that "to elucidate the thought of a philosopher we need to find the answer not only to the question 'What were his intellectual worries?', but, before that question and after that question, the answer to the question 'What was his overriding worry?'" (CP I: ix). According to Ryle, his own overriding concerns were metaphilosophical (ibid.) and The Concept of Mind was a book "written with a meta-philosophical purpose." In the autobiographical remarks prefacing Rile: A Collection of Critical Essays, Ryle describes The Concept of Mind as "an example of the [philosophical] method really working, in breadth and depth and where it was really needed" (R 1~). Thus, The Concept of Mind needs to be viewed as a case study of a broader method, as part of a larger project which Ryle is pursuing. Ryle clearly believes the correct method of philosophy is the Socratic or dialectic method, and he exhibits a predilection for reductio ad absurdum arguments throughout The Concept of Mind and, for that matter, throughout his career. In "Philosophical Arguments," an inaugural lecture delivered in 1945, just four years before the publication o f The Concept of Mind, Ryle claims that "a pattern of argument which is proper and even proprietary to philosophy is the reductio ad absurdum," an argument which "moves by extracting contradictions or logical paradoxes from its material. '''s And in both earlier and later papers, Ryle indicates an explicit sympathy for the Socratic method which is "intended to drive the answerer into self-contradiction."'9 In fact, he sometimes goes so far as to identify philosophy with dialectic.so A satisfactory interpretation of The Concept of Mind should make sense of this characteristically Rylean method o f argument and should also charitably explain the frequent appeals to ordinary language that are to be found ,s Ryle,"PhilosophicalArguments,"Inaugural Lecture(1945), reprinted in CP 2: t 97. 9Ryle, 9 "Dialecticin the Academy,"in R. Bambrough, ed., New Essayson Plato and Aristotle (1965), reprinted as "The Academyand the Dialectic"in CP 1: 99soRyle,"TakingSides in Philosophy,"CP 2:~6 s. 272 J O U R N A L OF T H E H I S T O R Y OF P H I L O S O P H Y 3 2 : 2 APRIL t 9 9 4 t h r o u g h o u t that work. Why does Ryle think that a theory is ridiculous if it leads us to say things that no one ever says? This is something that most behaviorist interpretations of Ryle have been completely unable to answer. Indeed, rather than trying to explain Ryle's procedures, many who have given behaviorist interpretations of The Concept of Mind have simply claimed that the entire book fails to hit its mark. Miller's comments in " 'Descartes' Myth' and Professor Ryle's Fallacy" are typical: "Ryle's book turns out to be a perpetual skirmishing that never comes in contact with the main body o f the enemy." Even if we grant the truth of what Ryle has to say about the usage o f language and the importance of behavior, "we still find that he has not touched the facts that decide the question at issue . . . . His fallacy is that o f presenting an argument irrelevant to his conclusion. His book is one long ignoratio elenchi."s~ While this is a rather uncharitable view of The Concept of Mind, it is the view o f Ryle's work that one is naturally led to, if that work is interpreted as a behaviorist attack against dualism. As Hofstadter claims, "if dualism is false or improbable, it will have to be shown to be so on grounds o f the sort used to invalidate a scientific theory, not on the g r o u n d s that [Ryle] alleges. I f dualism is a mistake, it is not merely a logical one. T o suppose that it is, is itself a mistake, an ignoratio elenchi.'s" Hofstadter is right. Reductio ad absurdum a r g u m e n t s will only demonstrate a claim's absurdity, they will not demonstrate its falsity or improbability. Nor will ordinary language demonstrate the scientific accuracy or inaccuracy o f an ontological position. These facts should, however, indicate that Ryle's a r g u m e n t s against "the Cartesian myth" are misconstrued as arguments for replacing a two-world view with a one-world view. Although almost all philosophers produce some fallacious arguments, one should suspect that a philosopher's position has been misinterpreted if all o f his a r g u m e n t s t u r n out, on that interpretation, to be fallacious. This is especially true if the philosopher in question, like Ryle, has m a d e it "part o f [his] business to be able to tell people, including [him]self, what philosophy is" (R 6). What the philosopher does is typically described by Ryle in metaphorical terms: the philosopher attempts to "chart" or " m a p .... the logical g e o g r a p h y " o f o u r concepts. The Concept of Mind, as an example o f this task, attempts to rectify the logic of o u r mental-conduct concepts, since "Descartes left as one of his main philosophical legacies a myth which continues to distort the continental g e o g r a p h y of the subject" (CM 8 and passim). T h e m e t a p h o r Ryle employs here is instructive and should not be viewed as a merely decorative device. Ryle frequently likens philosophy to cartography and contrasts it with science, 3, Miller, " 'Descartes' Myth' and Professor Ryle's Fallacy," 27 I. Hofstadter, Smart, Austin, and Rorty all concur. 3, Hofstadter, "Professor Ryle'sCategory-Mistake,"258-59. REINTERPRETING RYLE 273 which he likens to sleuthing. This distinction between philosophy and science is, as I will argue below, of central importance to Ryle and a primary reason for rejecting a behaviorist interpretation of The Concept of Mind. Part of Ryle's "overriding worry" is that the term "analysis" had systematically misled many of his colleagues to overlook the difference between philosophic and scientific endeavors. In "The Theory of Meaning" Ryle worries that the term "analysis" suggests that "philosoPhical problems are like the chemist's or the detective's problems" in that one could "work on problem A this morning, file the answer, and go on to problem B this afternoon." This suggestion, he says, does violence to the vital fact that philosophical problems interlock in all sorts of ways. It would be patently absurd to tell someone to finish the problem of the nature of truth this morning, file the answer and go on to solve the problem of the relations between naming and saying, holding over until tomorrow problems about the concepts of existence and non-existence . . . . [P]hilosophers liken their task to that of the cartograp h e r . . , not to that of the chemist or the detective.aS If we keep these metaphilosophical views of Ryle in mind, we get a clearer picture of Ryle's central antagonist in The Concept of Mind. Throughout The Concept of Mind, Ryle characterizes "the Cartesian myth" he rejects as a theory which creates "mysteries" that imply that the philosopher has to be a "detective" or "sleuth" (CM 9 o, 91, lo 3, 151, 17o, t74, 184). Philosophical theories should not, he argues, give rise to "Sherlock Holmes questions" (CM 232). Ryle's antagonist in The Concept of Mind is not merely--perhaps, not even--Descartes. Although several reviewers of Ryle's book have taken him to task for misinterpreting Descartes, the absence of textual citations to Descartes in The Concept of Mind would suggest that Ryle was--as the phrases "the Cartesian myth" and "the pars-mechanical legend" would also indicate-more interested in the mythological or legendary Descartes, than in Descartes himself. Nor is Ryle's antagonist in The Concept of Mind merely Cartesian dualism. Indeed, it would be puzzling, as Russell notes, if Ryle were to devote an entire book to refuting a view which had been "rejected by Malebranche, Leibniz, Berkeley, Hegel and William James" before him, a view which no "philosopher of repute" any longer accepted.s4 What Ryle's critics have failed to recognize, in interpreting The Concept of Mind as a behaviorist tract against dualism, is that "the Cartesian myth" Ryle seeks to "explode" in that work encompasses a vast array of traditional and contemporary philosophical positions, which are united only in their metaphilosophical outlook. Ryle's arguments and polemics in The Concept of Mind ssRyle,"The Theory of Meaning,"in C. A. Mace,ed., BritishPhilosophyin Mid-CenturJ(Allen and Unwin, 1957), reprintdd in CP 2: 372s4Russell,"Whatis Mind?"5. 274 JOURNAL OF T H E HISTORY OF P H I L O S O P H Y 3 2 : 2 APRIL 199 4 are aimed at p h i l o s o p h e r s - - i n c l u d i n g his f o r m e r selfss--who have mistaken a philosophical e n t e r p r i s e for a scientific one and, thus, have confused problems o f justification with problems o f causal etiology. T h e result o f this metaphilosophical confusion, according to Ryle, is a proliferation o f " m y s t e r y m o n g e r i n g " theories. T h r o u g h o u t The Concept of Mind (CM to 3, x33, 152-53, a85, 225, 229, 239, 2 6 4 - 6 5 , 285, 989, 291, 3 o 3 - 3 o 4 , 3o6, 3 t o , 315, 3 1 7 - 1 8 ) a n d elsewhere in Ryle's writings ( O T 83-84), Ryle's polemics are often directed against epistemological theories which explain how people know (learn, r e m e m b e r , etc.) things by means o f theories which r e n d e r the fact that they know those things a complete mystery to others. H e says: the great epistemologists, Locke, Hume and Kant . . . . thought that they were discussing parts of the occult life story of persons acquiring knowledge. They were discussing the credentials of sorts of theories, but they were doing this in par'a-physiological allegories . . . . One of the strongest forces making for belief in the doctrine that a mind is a private stage is the ingrained habit of assuming that there must exist the "cognitive acts" and "cognitive processes" which these names [of traditional epistemology] have been perverted to signify. (CM 318) While Ryle's critique is most explicitly aimed at "Cartesian . . . . double-life theory" a n d its views o f "privileged access" and "self-luminating consciousness," it n e e d s to be u n d e r s t o o d as a critique o f the r e c o m m e n d e d ontologies o f both rationalist a n d empiricist epistemologies. T h e ontologies Ryle criticizes in The Concept of Mind include those recomm e n d e d by materialists, in addition to those r e c o m m e n d e d by dualists a n d idealists, which poses a serious difficulty for behaviorist interpretations o f that work. T h e i n t e r p r e t a t i o n o f Ryle as s o m e o n e who seeks to eliminate minds in favor o f b e h a v i o r construes Ryle's diatribe against "the Cartesian myth" as m e r e antimentalism. But Ryle explicitly disavows antimentalism. In characterizing his project, he says: "I am n o t . . , d e n y i n g that t h e r e occur mental processes. Doing long division is a mental process a n d so is making a j o k e " (CM 22). A r m s t r o n g recognizes this difficulty, which is the p r i m a r y reason he interprets Ryle as a reductive, r a t h e r than an eliminative behaviorist. Accord351 thank J. O. Urmson for conveying to me that, in conversation, Ryle had frequently claimed that his "main target was his former self" and that his work was primarily aimed at "ridding his own mind of conceptual error." Ryle also reveals this motivation in the Introduction to The Concept of Mind, stating that "the assumptions against which I exhibit the most heat are assumptions of which l.myself have been a victim. Primarily I am trying to get some disorders out of my own system" (CM to- i l). If one compares Ryle's earliest works to The Conceptof Mind and later works, one can trace a gradual shift in Ryle's metaphilosophical views. In "Systematically Misleading Expressions," for example, Ryle seems to regard philosophical analysis as a project of uncovering and displaying the logical form of "facts," a view which he abandoned by the time of writing the The Concept of Mind, and which he explicitly rejects in his essays collected in On Thinking. REINTERPRETING RYLE 275 ing to Armstrong, "the only reason" Ryle denied behaviorism was that he took this to be "the doctrine that there are no such things as minds." Thus, since he "did not want to deny the existence of minds, but simply wanted to give an account of the mind in terms of behavior," he denied that he was a behaviorist.s6 The problem for the reductive account of Ryle, however, is that Ryle disavows it too. In both the opening and closing chapters of The Concept of Mind, Ryle is clear about his view that all three of the ontological positions outlined in section 2 above are mistaken in the same principled way. At the outset of the book, Ryle claims that "if [his] argument is successful . . . . the hallowed contrast between Mind and Matter will be dissipated, but dissipated not by either of the equally hallowed absorptions of Mind by Matter or of Matter by Mind, but in a quite different way" (CM 22). And again, in summarizing his position, he claims that "if [his] arguments have any force, then these concepts [the cardinal mental concepts] have been misallocated in the same general way, though in opposing particular ways, by both mechanists and para-mechanists, by Hobbes and by Descartes" (CM 329). As these remarks suggest, Ryle thinks that problems in the philosophy of mind are to be rectified by clarifying the contours of our concept of mind, rather than by investigating the contours of our minds. Ryle's thesis in The Concept of Mind, as the tide should immediately indicate, is a conceptual, rather than an ontological, thesis. More precisely, since concepts are not to be construed as "special entities," the thesis o f The Concept of Mind is a thesis about our mental-conduct language. This fact is captured by interpretations of Ryle as a logical behaviorist. 4. RYLE AS A LOGICAL BEHAVIORIST According to Steven Stich, The Concept of Mind is to be interpreted as "the magnum opus of philosophical behaviorism," a version of behaviorism which is to be distinguished from psychological behaviorism.s7 Philosophical behaviorism, as Stich describes it, was "inspired by the verificationist theory of meaning," which held that "all meaningful empirical terms must be definable in terms of observables," and thus sought to define "mental" locutions in terms of observable behavior. This project was quite different from the project of behaviorist psychologists who sought an explanatory paradigm which related environmental stimuli to an organism's observed behavior. Behavioral psychologists denied the existence--or at least the explanatory relevance--of inner mental states, but didn't need to have a professional opinion concerning Armstrong, A MaterialistTheor~of Mind, 55. sTSteven Stich, FromFolkPsychologyto CognitiveScience,3-4, 947 n. 4. 276 JOURNAL OF T H E HISTORY OF P H I L O S O P H Y 3Z:~' APRIL 1994 the meaning o f o u r talk about such mental states. Philosophical behaviorists, like Stich's Ryle, on the other hand, were more concerned with the m e a n i n g o f o u r mental-conduct attributions, than they were with d e f e n d i n g or rejecting ontological paradigms. T h e view that Stich attributes to Ryle is more c o m m o n l y known as "logical behaviorism," the thesis, as described by Hilary Putnam, that "all talk about mental events is translatable into talk about actual or potential overt behavior."3s A variety of commentators attribute some version o f this thesis to Ryle: Peter Geach claims that Ryle is attempting to "reduce" reports o f mental acts to statements about overt behavior;39 A . J . Ayer suspects that Ryle is attempting to " r e f o r m u l a t e " talk about mental states and processes in a way that eliminates any reference to an inner life;4o Stuart H a m p s h i r e accuses Ryle o f attempting to "identify" the meaning of mental-conduct statements with their m e t h o d o f verification; a n d A r t h u r Pap portrays Ryle as trying to "define" mental acts in terms o f publicly observable actions.4, On this interpretation, as Pap explains, "Ryle's basic thesis is that the theory of mental acts like believing, knowing, aspiring, results from the failure to see that sentences containing such psychological verbs are statements about (behavioral) dispositions . . . . Ryle is s a y i n g . . , that statements which the dualists interpret as referring to 'ghostly' mental acts are really about behavioral events or behavioral dispositions."4' T h e distinction between ontological (or psychological) and logical (or philosophical) behaviorism is a distinction that seems well-matched to Ryle's distinction between science and philosophy, which lends the latter interpretation o f The Concept of Mind initial plausibility. At the very least, the interpretation o f Ryle as a logical or philosophical behaviorist seems m o r e plausible than interpretations o f Ryle which align him with reductionists or eliminativists like Watson and Skinner. As early as 193~, Ryle expressed a g r e e m e n t "with Husserl's official view" that "the business o f philosophy is not to give new information about the world, but to analyse the most general forms of what experience finds to be exemplified in the world."4s This idea is reiterated in Ryle's 1937 paper, " T a k i n g Sides in Philosophy," where Ryle claims "there is no philosophical information": "Philosophers do not m a k e known matters of fact which were u n k n o w n before. T h e sense in which they throw light is that ss Hilary Putnam, "Brains and Behavior," in Ned Block,ed., Readings in Philosophyof Psychology l: z5. s9Peter Geach, MentalActs, section 3. 40A. J. Ayer, "An Honest Ghost?" in R 54-55 and pass/m. 4, Arthur Pap, "Semantic Analysisand Psycho-PhysicalDualism," 2 *i. 4sIbid., ,o9-1o. 4sRyle, "Symposium: Phenomenology,"AristotelianSociety, supplementary vol. xi (x93~): 7*. REINTERPRETING RYLE 277 they make clear what was unclear before, or make obvious things which were previously in a muddle."44 Philosophy, unlike science, is f u n d a m e n t a l l y c o n c e r n e d with questions o f meaning, according to Ryle: Meanings (to use a trouble-making plural noun) are what Moore's analyses have been analyses of; meanings are what Russell's logical atoms were atoms of; meanings, in one sense, but not in another, were what Russell's 'incomplete symbols' were bereft of; meanings are what logical considerations prohibit to the anfinomy-generafing forms of words on which Frege and Russell tried to found arithmetic; meanings are what the members of the Vienna Circle proffered a general litmus-paper for; meanings are what the Tractatus, with certain qualifications, denies to the would-be propositions both of Formal Logic and of philosophy; and yet meanings are just what, in different ways, philosophy and logic are ex officio about. (R 8) And, in fact, Ryle characterizes his philosophical work, retrospectively, as work o n the notion o f meaning, a l t h o u g h he does so with some recalcitrance: "My interest was in the t h e o r y o f M e a n i n g s - - h o r r i d s u b s t a n t i v e ! - - a n d quite soon, I am glad to say, in the t h e o r y o f its senior partner, Nonsense" (R 7)Nonetheless, while the i n t e r p r e t a t i o n o f Ryle as a logical behaviorist correctly captures Ryle's interest in d e v e l o p i n g a theory o f meaning, the specific t h e o r y o f m e a n i n g attributed to Ryle by this interpretation is mistaken. T h e truth contained in the logical behaviorist interpretation o f Ryle is that Ryle is not taking a stance r e g a r d i n g the status o f minds, but is instead taking a stance r e g a r d i n g the status o f sentences a b o u t minds. T h e e r r o r contained in this interpretation o f Ryle is that Ryle's stance toward sentences about minds is one which explicitly differentiates them f r o m , r a t h e r than likening t h e m to, sentences about bodily behavior. 5" PROBLEMS WITH THE LOGICAL BEHAVIORIST ACCOUNT T h e claim that Ryle is seeking to r e d u c e statements about minds to, or identify statements about minds with, statements about publicly observable behavior seems to be in direct conflict with certain central passages in The Concept of Mind. In the o p e n i n g c h a p t e r o f his book, Ryle lodges the following complaint about "the Cartesian myth": [T]he dogma of the Ghost in the M a c h i n e . . . maintains that there exist both bodies and minds; that there occur physical processes and mental processes; that there are mechanical causes of corporeal movements and mental causes of corporeal movements . . . . [T]hese and other analogous conjunctions are absurd . . . . [T]he phrase 'there occur mental processes' does not mean the same sort of thing as 'there occur physical processes', and t h e r e f o r e . . , it makes no sense to conjoin or disjoin the two . . . . [T]he 'reduction' of the material world to mental states and processes, as well Ryle, "Taking Sides in Philosophy," in CP ~: x66. 278 JOURNAL OF T H E H I S T O R Y OF P H I L O S O P H Y 32"2 APRIL 1994 as the reduction o f the mental states and processes to physical states and processes, presuppose the legitimacy o f the disjunction 'Either there exist minds or their exist bodies (but not both)'. (CM ~ ) Claims r e g a r d i n g the existence o f bodies a n d t h e causes o f physical m o v e m e n t s a n d p r o c e s s e s a r e t r u e o r false, d e p e n d i n g u p o n w h e t h e r the entities a n d o c c u r r e n c e s t h e y r e f e r to a r e as t h e y describe t h e m . B u t this is, a c c o r d i n g to Ryle, a n i n c o r r e c t m o d e l o f i n t e r p r e t a t i o n f o r claims a b o u t m i n d s a n d r e a s o n s f o r acting, b e c a u s e s t a t e m e n t s a b o u t (linguistically) m i n d s a r e n o t a b o u t (referentially) minds.4s T h r o u g h o u t The Concept of Mind, Ryle u r g e s that, w h e n we use m e n t a l c o n d u c t t e r m s to talk a b o u t a p e r s o n ' s m i n d , we s h o u l d n o t be misled into t h i n k i n g t h a t t h e s e t e r m s d e n o t e , n a m e , r e f e r to, o r s t a n d for46 states ( C M 99, i i9), e p i s o d e s (CM IO 9, 1 i6, I 17, 909, 949, 993, 318), h a p p e n i n g s o r e v e n t s (CM I 13, I 6 I , I 7 8 , 999, 985, ~95), acts (CM I I8, 135, I 5 I , I 5 3 , '-93, 925, ~45, ~63, 972, 985, 2 9 I , 293, 994, 3 o i , 3o4, 318), incidents (CM 125), o c c u r r e n c e s (CM 19, I 3 3 , 176, 2,-8, "~,29, 94~, 945, 263, 994, 319), p r o c e s s e s (CM 19, 44, 135, 229, 293, 994, 3o3, 318), p e r f o r m a n c e s (CM 15I), o p e r a t i o n s (CM 47, I 5 I , 927, 228, ~'57, 285, 3o3, 3 l I , 314) o r t h i n g s (CM 9o 9, 295 ). T h e t e r m ' m i n d ' d o e s n o t signify a p e r s o n , place, o r t h i n g a n d t h u s d o e s n o t signify a n animal, vegetable, m i n e r a l , o r ghost. T h u s : The statement 'the mind is its own place', as theorists might construe it, is not true, for the mind is not even a metaphorical 'place'. On the contrary, the chessboard, the platform, the scholar's desk, the judge's bench, the lorry-driver's seat, the studio and the football field are a m o n g its places. These are where people work and play stupidly or intelligently. 'Mind' is not the name of another person, working or frolicking behind an impenetrable screen; it is not the name of another place where work is done or games are played; and it is not the name o f another tool with which work is done, or another appliance with which games are played. (CM 51, emphasis mine) T h e s e a n d o t h e r p a s s a g e s in The Concept of Mind a n d e l s e w h e r e u n d e r m i n e the i n t e r p r e t a t i o n o f Ryle as a logical behaviorist s e e k i n g to t r a n s l a t e state45This is the terminology Ryle employs in a short Analysis paper which argues against "a presumption, often unwarranted, that if S is 'about (I)' Q, then S is 'about (r)' Q." This simple mistake of equivocation, he notes, is the source of "many mistakes in logic and metaphysics" ("About," Analysis i [1933], in CP 9: 82-84). 46CM 25, 51 , 88, 91 , lO9, i 17, 1a9, 12o, 176, 187, 19o, 193, 199, 2o3, ~o9, 253, ~85, 3o3 . Ryle alternates between these locutions in TheConceptofMind, but most often denies that mental-conduct terms denote. By the time of his article, "The Theory of Meaning" (1957) in CP ~: 35o-7 ~, he explicitly criticizes what he terms "the doctrine of denotation" (37o). Here, too, however, he somedines uses the other locutions: "the notion of having meaning is... different from the notion of standingfor" (354); "expressions are matters not of naming things, but of saying things" (362). I suspect Ryle considers these terms interchangeable, but I have spoken of "denotation," following his most common usage. REINTERPRETING RYLE 279 ments which are ostensibly about (referentially) minds into statements which are really about (referentially) observable behaviors. In particular, they undermine Hampshire's contention that Ryle holds a "literalist" or "naive correspondence theory o f language."47 U n d e r the subheading "What do o u r principal mental concepts stand for?" H a m p s h i r e provides the standard criticism o f Ryle's (alleged) logical behaviorism, namely, that its program of translation is not and cannot be successfully carried out. According to Hampshire's Ryle: [P]utative statements, whether biographical or autobiographical, about immaterial and imperceptible occurrences must in each representative case be exhibited as disguised hypothetical statements about perceptible behavior. The argument . . . . therefore, at first looks like one further application of the old high empiricist Hume-and-Russell method of 'analysis', the logical construction method, whereby impalpable and oppressive substances, the Mind no less than the State, are shown to be logically reducible to less pretentious material. But such a simple design is never in fact executed, Professor Ryle himself indicating (e.g.p. i 17), not only where in particular such reductions or rules of translation cannot be provided (e.g. for statements about emotional agitations, hankerings, pangs and thrills, silent calculations and imaginings), but also hinting in various places that to look for translations of categorical statements about mental states and activities into hypothetical statements about perceptible behavior is, as a matter of logic, a pure mistake.4S Indeed, for these reasons, in addition to reasons already outlined above and Ryle's emphasis in The Concept of Mind on "mongrel-categorical" statements (CM 141 and passim), we should be suspicious of interpretations o f Ryle as a would-be logical behaviorist. T h e core of Ryle's a r g u m e n t is, as H a m p s h i r e contends, that to talk of a person's mind is "to talk of the person's abilities, liabilities a n d inclinations to do and u n d e r g o certain sorts o f things, and o f the doing and u n d e r g o i n g of these things in the ordinary world" (CM 199). Yet, it is misleading to characterize Ryle as (unsuccessfully) attempting to translate "categorical statements about 'ghostly' (= invisible, intangible, inaudible) events, as hypothetical statements about events in the so-called 'ordinary' world, where 'ordinary' strangely means (literalism or correspondence theory again) whatever can be perceived by anyone (not 'Privileged Access') by the use of one or more offive senses."49 A t t e m p t i n g to reinterpret ordinary language about minds and mental activities in a way that relieves it of ontological commitments foist u p o n it by other philosophical interpretations needn't require translating ordinary language into the observational vocabulary of behavioral psychology. A n d rejecting the doctrine of Privileged Access does not entail replacing it with a doctrine o f Public Access. I f the mind is not a person, place, or thing, then questions concerning whether"it" is privately 47Hampshire, "Critical Notice," 241 , 242. 48Ibid., 243-244. 49Ibid., 243. 280 JOURNAL OF T H E H I S T O R Y OF P H I L O S O P H Y 32:2 APRIL 1994 o r publicly accessible, located inside o r outside the head, observable by the introspection o f o n e o r the sense p e r c e p t i o n o f many, are moot. H a m p s h i r e himself recognizes the absurdity o f such questions in his criticism o f The Concept of Mind. According to H a m p s h i r e , Ryle's " t e r m i n o l o g y o f 'standing for', 'designating', and 'naming' leads him to write as if t h e r e were a real a n s w e r . . , to such questions as 'Does the verb 'mind' or 'try' designate a single distinct activity or a complex o f activities?'--as t h o u g h the world consisted o f just so m a n y distinguishable Activities (or Facts o r States o r T h i n g s ) waiting to be c o u n t e d and named."5o But, according to Ryle, treating mentalc o n d u c t terms as if they were c o u n t - n o u n s is the p r i m a r y mistake o f most previous p h i l o s o p h e r s o f mind. I n d e e d , it is the general t e n d e n c y o f philosophers to be "systematically misled" by terms which function grammatically as nouns into thinking that the sentences which contain t h e m must be t r u e o r false in virtue o f accurately o r inaccurately depicting something (process, event, etc.) that The Concept of Mind is written to counteract. In his "Discussion o f R u d o l f C a r n a p : 'Meaning and Necessity'," a p a p e r published in the same year as The Concept of Mind, Ryle refers to the t h e o r y o f meaning, a d o p t e d by many o f Ryle's philosophical colleagues and a t t r i b u t e d to Ryle himself by H a m p s h i r e , as "the 'Fido'-Fido t h e o r y o f meaning": "Frege, like Russell, had i n h e r i t e d . . , the traditional belief that to ask W h a t does the expression 'E' m e a n ? is to ask T o what does 'E' stand in the relation in which 'Fido' stands to Fido? T h e significance o f any expression is the thing, process, person o r entity o f which the expression is the p r o p e r name."5' Against this "grotesque" theory, Ryle argues that t h e r e may not be any things to which m a n y terms apply and even if there are, these things are not a part o f what the expressions m e a n "any m o r e than a nail is o r is not p a r t o f how a h a m m e r is used."5, As the above passages make clear, Ryle is no disciple o f Russell. N o r is h e a disciple o f Frege o r Carnap. A l t h o u g h Ryle characterizes himself, in a later essay, as sincerely interested in "the same cardinal problems as those which exercised Frege and the y o u n g Russell, problems, namely, about the relations between n a m i n g a n d saying,"ss Ryle objects to the solutions p r o p o s e d to those problems by his colleagues. Frege and, following him, the early Russell saw ~oIbid. s, Ryle, "Discussion of Rudolf Carnap: 'Meaning and Necessity'," Philosophy24 (1949), reprinted in CP ~: 226. s, Ibid. 228. Cf. "The Theory of Meaning," in CP 2: "The notion of denotation, so far from providing the final explanation of the notion of meaning, turns out itself to be just one special branch or twig on the tree of signification. Expressions do not mean because they denote things; some expressions denote things, in one or another of several manners, because they are significant" (365). 5sRyle, "Letters and Syllablesin Plato," PhilosopAicalReview64 096o), in CP 1: 71 . REINTERPRETING RYLE 281 m e a n i n g as a function o f words, r a t h e r than as a function o f sentences and this led them, according to Ryle, to (mis)construe m a n y words as names. T h u s , Frege and Russell, and later C a r n a p as well, c o n c l u d e d that m e a n i n g was based on denotation. A n d this, in turn, gave rise to Duplicationist and Reductionist ontologies.5( Some philosophers, like the early Russell, began assigning Platonic universals or essences to every word, in o r d e r to account for their meaningfulness. T h e assumption was that either philosophical talk (including talk a b o u t the mind) had to he inflatable to suprascientific talk, to talk about suprascientific entities, o r it had to be a b a n d o n e d . Others, like the logical positivists, d e n i e d that large areas o f o u r discourse were meaningful. T h e i r assumption was that either philosophical talk (including talk about the mind) had to be reducible to scientific talk, to talk about publicly observable entities, o r it had to be a b a n d o n e d . According to Ryle, these dilemmas were false ones which resulted f r o m applying an i n a p p r o p r i a t e t h e o r y o f m e a n i n g to philosophical discourse. Philosophy wasn't science. N o r was it suprascience. But it wasn't meaningless either.ss Philosophical statements are, for Ryle, m e a n i n g l e s s - - o r , in his terms, " a b s u r d " - - o n l y if they are misconstrued as i n f o r m i n g us about the world, if their constituent terms are taken to d e n o t e some sort o f entity or other. For Ryle, philosophical statements, including statements about the mind, are neither t r u e n o r false in the 'Fido'-Fido sense, because their r e f e r e n c e is not a part o f their meaning, which is identified, by Ryle, with their use. T h e i r correctness or incorrectness is, instead, a function o f their intelligibility o r absurdity, which is discovered i n d e p e n d e n t l y of, and p r i o r to, ontological investigations. In o t h e r words, Ryle neither accepts, n o r attempts to apply, but instead rejects the "naive c o r r e s p o n d e n c e t h e o r y o f language" held by the logical behaviorists and attributed to him by H a m p s h i r e . 6. RYLE'S NONBEHAVIORISTIC THEORY OF LANGUAGE T h e r e are, roughly, t h r e e d i f f e r e n t theories o f language that o n e could a d o p t in i n t e r p r e t i n g everyday claims about minds: N o n r e d u c t i v e Realism (L): (1) T h e m e a n i n g o f sentences about the m i n d is a function o f the denotation o f 54In Ryle's posthumously published essays collected in On. Thinking, Ryle argues fervently against two camps of philosophers: "Duplicationists," who propose "inflationary" ontologies and "Reductionists," who propose "deflationary" ontoiogies. According to Ryle, disagreements between these two parties CTweedledum" and "Tweedledee," 88) are pseudo-debates generated by a shared mistake about the nature of philosophy and of philosophical language. ss Ryle thus shared Wittgenstein's view that "the sciences aim at saying what is true about the world; philosophy aims at disclosing only the logic of what can be truly or falsely said about the world," "Ludwig Wittgenstein," Ana/ys/a 19 (1951), in CP 1: o52. Yet he disagreed with the conclusion of the Tractatus that, therefore, philosophers couldn't say significant things. 982 J O U R N A L OF T H E H I S T O R Y OF P H I L O S O P H Y 3 9 : 2 APRIL 1994 their constituent mental-conduct terms, and such sentences are to be j u d g e d as true or false d e p e n d i n g u p o n whether or not those terms successfully denote; a n d (2) T h e object d e n o t e d by a mental-conduct term is an immaterial entity. Reductive Realism (L): (1) T h e m e a n i n g o f sentences about the m i n d is a function o f the denotation o f their constituent mental-conduct terms, a n d such sentences are to be j u d g e d as true or false depending u p o n whether or n o t those terms successfully denote; but (2) T h e object denoted by a mental-conduct term is a material entity. Antirealism (L): (1) T h e meaning o f sentences about the mind is not a function o f the denotation of their constituent mental-conduct terms, and sentences about the m i n d are not to be j u d g e d as true or false (if true means, as above stipulated, true by virtue o f denotation) because their constituent terms are not m e a n t to denote; a n d thus (2) T h e question concerning whether mental-conduct terms denote material or immaterial entities is a pseudoquestion. Ryle's negative thesis (his a r g u m e n t against the "Cartesian myth") is the thesis o f linguistic Antirealism. It is important to note that there is no connection between the linguistic version of Antirealism sketched here a n d the ontological version of Antirealism sketched in section 2 above. Antirealism (O) does not entail Antirealism (L). Instead, it presupposes a variation of Reductire Realism (L). T h e eliminadvist claims that sentences about minds are false (or, perhaps, meaningless) because there are no such things as minds or, in other words, because their constituent t e r m s fail to denote. Nor does Antirealism (L) entail Antirealism (O). For the linguistic Antirealist, the success or failure o f denotation is irrelevant to the semantic success or failure o f a sentence about minds. According to this p o s i t i o n n w h i c h could be characterized positively as a theory o f m e a n i n g as u s e - - w e are justified in saying certain things about particular persons' minds (or, even less misleadingly, we are justified in saying certain things about those persons) u n d e r certain sorts o f epistemic conditions, independently of questions about denotation. T h e linguistic formulation o f Antirealism in this area of discourse simply claims that t r u t h and falsity (on the 'Fido'-Fido model) are not applicable to sentences about minds. Anti- REINTERPRETING RYLE 283 realism (L) is simply a rejection of a theory of meaning based on reference. And, as such, Antirealism (L) is ontologically neutral: it neither affirms nor denies the existence of minds. Nonetheless, the linguistic formulation above of the Realism/Antirealism debate in the philosophy of mind does share certain connections with the more common ontological formulation I gave earlier. The precise nature of these connections, however, differs depending on which side of the debate one takes. A brief examination of these connections illuminates the real disagreement between Ryle and his critics--a disagreement which has been obscured by his critics' (mis)interpretations of The Concept of Mind. The linguistic Realist, by virtue o f adhering to a denotational ('Fido'-Fido) notion of truth, places ontology prior to language. Thus, for the linguistic Realist: (i) Nonreductive Realism (L) presupposes Nonreductive Realism (O); and (ii) Reductive Realism (L) presupposes Reductive Realism (O). Because the linguistic Realist assumes that any claim (linguistically) about the mind, is about (referentially) the mind, he reasons that Descartes's claims about the mind are true only if ontological dualism is true; and the materialist's statements about the mind are true only if ontological monism is true. Ryle's critics have systematically assumed--either explicitly or implicitly--the truth of linguistic Realism. Indeed, this has been the guiding assumption behind their interpretations of Ryle, their criticisms of his position thus interpreted, and their proposed alternatives to Ryle. By interpreting Ryle's attack on the "Cartesian myth" as an attack on ontological dualism, they have interpreted Ryle as essentially arguing that: (1) Nonreductive Realism (L) entails Nonreductive Realism (O). But (2) Nonreductive Realism (O) is false. T h e r e f o r e (3) Nonreductive Realism (L) is false 0,2 modus tollens). Hence, (4) Reductive Realism (L) is true (3 double negation). And, since (5) Reductive Realism (L) entails Reductive Realism (O), (6) Reductive Realism (O) is true (4,5 modus ponens). Specifically, (4a) logical behaviorism is true (by the verificationist theory o f meaning). And, since (5a) logical behaviorism entails ontological behaviorism, (6a) ontological behaviorism is true. Of course, Ryle's a r g u m e n t - - t h u s understood--is a notoriously bad argument. Ryle's detailed delineations of the logical geography of our mentalconduct concepts in The Concept of Mind will not establish premise 2 above (the falsity of ontological dualism) and, thus, they will not establish Ryle's (allegedly) desired conclusion. Moreover, in addition to failing to demonstrate the falsity of ontological dualism, Ryle fails to demonstrate that behaviorism, rather than some other version of materialistic monism, should be dualism's replacement. Several of Ryle's critics (e.g., Armstrong, Fodor, and Stich) have used the same form of argument as outlined above to establish alternative 284 J O U R N A L OF T H E H I S T O R Y OF P H I L O S O P H Y 3 2 - ' 2 A P R I L 1994 versions o f physicalism (e.g., Central State Identity Theory, the Representational T h e o r y of Mind, and Eliminative Materialism respectively).s6 For the linguistic Antirealist, however, the problems with the schematic argument provided above go far beyond those registered by Ryle's critics. First, premise 4 must be abandoned. The falsity of Nonreductive Realism (L) will not establish the truth of any form of Reductive Realism (L), because these two positions are not, as the above argument suggests, mutually exclusive and exhaustive. Antirealism (L) provides a third option, namely, Ryle's own. Secondly, premisses i and 5 will also be flatly rejected. For the linguistic Antirealist, language is prior to ontology and, hence, the nature of the connections between linguistic and ontological Realism need to be understood quite differently than the schematic argument above suggests. Thus, Ryle argues that (i) Nonreductive Realism (O) presupposes Nonreductive Realism (L); and (ii) Reductive Realism (0) presupposes Reductive Realism (L). Ontological dualism is acceptable only if the dualist's statements about (linguistically) the mind are acceptable; and ontological monism is acceptable only if the materialist's statements about (linguistically) the mind are acceptable. But, of course, for the linguistic Antirealist, both the dualist's and the materialist's statements about (linguistically) the mind are unacceptable insofar as both parties interpret statements about (linguistically) the mind as about (referentially) the mind. To say, however, that such statements are unacceptable is not to say that they are false. T h e linguistic Antirealist will also reject premise ~ above insofar as it presupposes a denotational'('Fido'-Fido) theory of truth. This is why Ryle rejects the "Cartesian myth" as absurd, rather than attempting to show that it is false. What both dualists and monists overlook, according to Ryle, is the simple fact that, in our nonphilosophical moods, we know how to operate with mental-conduct terms quite independently of any scientific or pseudoscientific theories about entities.sv We have learned to use mental-conduct language to describe, predict, evaluate, and otherwise inform each other of the performances of others. But, it is only by understanding the meaning of these reports in terms o f their use, rather than in terms of their reference, that it is possible to explain our ability to learn such language. If we were to apply a 'Fido'-Fido theory o f meaning to psychological language, then, as Ryle argues in The Concept of Mind, 56CL Armstrong, A Materialist Theory of Mind; Fodor, The Language of Thought and Representations; Stich, From Folk Psychology to Cognitive Science. 57This message permeates almost all of Ryle's work, but see esp. CM, Chapter II, "Knowing How and Knowing That"; and D, Chapter V, "The World of Science and the Everyday World." REINTERPRETING RYLE 285 .. 9the verbs, nouns and adjectives with which in ordinary life we describe the wits, characters and higher grade performances of the people with whom we have to do, are required to be construed as signifying special episodes in their secret histories, or else as signifying tendencies for such episodes to occur. When someone is described as knowing, believing or guessing something, as hoping, dreading, intending or shirking something, as designing this or being amused at that, these verbs [would be] supposed to denote the occurrence of specific modifications in his [to us] occult stream of consciousness 9(CM 15) This would entail the u n h a p p y consequence that we could n e v e r be assured that o u r c o m m e n t s about the mental c o n d u c t o f others "have any vestige o f t r u t h " (ibid.). Yet, this is absurd since, 9 it was just because we do in fact all know how to make such comments, make them with general correctness and correct them when they turn out to be confused or mistaken, that philosophers found it necessary to construct their theories of the nature and place of minds 9Finding mental-conduct concepts regularly and effectively used, they properly sought to fix their logical geography. But the logical geography officially recommended would entail that there could be no regular or effective use of these mental-conduct concepts in our descriptions of, and prescriptions for, other people's minds. (ibid 9 T h e s e and o t h e r passages in The Concept of Mind indicate that the core o f Ryle's a r g u m e n t against the "Cartesian m y t h " is that by virtue o f its p r e s u m p t i o n o f linguistic Realism it r e n d e r s m i n d - l a n g u a g e unlearnable. O n the 'Fido'-Fido t h e o r y o f meaning, it would be impossible to show s o m e o n e the connection between m i n d - l a n g u a g e and the reality which it is p u r p o r t e d to describe. Yet, o u r " r e g u l a r and effective" use o f such language is presupposed by the application o f this (or any other) t h e o r y o f m e a n i n g to it. H e n c e , learning the meaning o f mental-conduct sentences must be possible and, c o n t r a r y to the claims o f linguistic Realism, it must consist simply in learning the a p p r o p r i a t e and i n a p p r o p r i a t e conditions o f their use. 7" ADVANTAGES OF A NONBEHAVIORISTIC INTERPRETATION OF RYLE T h e (nonbehavioristic) interpretation o f Ryle sketched above offers several advantages over traditional (behavioristic) interpretations o f Ryle. In particular, it helps us to u n d e r s t a n d The Concept of Mind as a book with a metaphilosophical p u r p o s e , it enables us to make sense o f Ryle's style o f a r g u m e n t in that work, it explains Ryle's impatience with traditional epistemology, and it differentiates his position f r o m positions he explicitly d e n o u n c e s . Moreover, it does all o f these things without caricaturing Ryle as anyone's disciple. Philosophy, according to Ryle, is a conceptual and not a factual enquiry and The Concept of Mind is i n t e n d e d to d e m o n s t r a t e this to us both explicitly and 286 J O U R N A L OF T H E H I S T O R Y OF P H I L O S O P H Y 3 2 : 2 APRIL ~994 implicitly, by both its claims and its performance. T h e explicit thesis o f the book is that the "Cartesian m y t h " - - a shorthand for a whole series o f interconnected theses and their a t t e n d a n t difficulties in the philosophy o f m i n d - - a r i s e s f r o m misapplying the theory o f m e a n i n g appropriate to u n d e r s t a n d i n g scientific discourse (the 'Fido'-Fido theory) to philosophical discussions. T h e Cartesian myth arises, in other words, f r o m treating a philosophical p r o b l e m - - i n this case the mind-body p r o b l e m - - a s a matter for factual investigation. T h u s it provides an example o f how not to do philosophy. And Ryle's own diagnosis o f the mistake, by means ofreductio adabsurdum arguments, and his dissolution o f it, by means o f bypassing enquiries concerning the alleged denotation of mentalconduct terms and replacing them with enquiries concerning the use o f those terms, is m e a n t to provide us with an example of how to do philosophy. Far f r o m advocating behaviorism, The Concept of Mind is a case study in the great difference it makes to apply (consciously or unconsciously) one, rather than another, theory o f m e a n i n g to philosophical statements. Hence, interpreting Ryle as a linguistic Antirealist explains Ryle's predilection for reductio ad absurdum a r g u m e n t s in The Concept of Mind. A l t h o u g h Ryle maintains that philosophers do not uncover new information, he claims that they do discover something, namely, arguments, and thus make advances in their field (R 5). This is a view Ryle a d h e r e d to for some time preceding The Concept of Mind. In " T a k i n g Sides in Philosophy," Ryle characterizes the philosophical endeavor as follows: Every rigorous philosophical argument is a discovery. And in a looser sense of the word 'discovery', even every plausible philosophical argument is a discovery. A valid philosophical argument is itself a revealing of something of the sort of which philosophy is the search. Every philosopher who produces one new philosophical argument has made a philosophical advance. But it is not just the conclusion of his argument which is his discovery; it is the total argument for the conclusion.sS Philosophical a r g u m e n t s cannot, however, be either inductive or deductive arguments, according to Ryle. Inductive arguments are the sort o f a r g u m e n t s proper to science, and deductive arguments are the sort o f a r g u m e n t s p r o p e r to mathematics, but philosophy is to be distinguished from both science and math. Inductive a r g u m e n t s are intended to establish particular matters of fact, but philosophy is not in the business of fact-finding. Conceptual enquiries can neither establish facts, nor can they utilize facts. T h e r e f o r e : Philosophical arguments are not inductions. Both the premisses and the conclusions of inductions can be doubted or denied without absurdity. Observed facts and plausible ss Ryle, "Taking Sides in Philosophy," in CP 2:t6 5. REINTERPRETING RYLE 287 hypotheses have no more illustrative force in philosophy than is possessed by fictions or guesses. Nor have either facts nor fancies any evidential force in the resolution of philosophical problems. The evidential force of matters of fact is only to increase or decrease the probability of general or particular hypotheses and it is absurd to describe philosophical propositions as relatively probable or improbable.s9 N o r are philosophical a r g u m e n t s deductions. T h e s o u n d n e s s o f a d e d u c tive a r g u m e n t rests on the t r u t h o f its premisses, but p h i l o s o p h e r s d o not discover truths. C o n c e p t u a l enquiries c a n n o t establish empirical t r u t h s m o n c e a g a i n that is the j o b o f the scientist. N e i t h e r can they establish axiomatic t r u t h s - - t h a t is the j o b o f the m a t h e m a t i c i a n : " D e m o n s t r a t i o n ordine geometrico belongs to m a t h e m a t i c s a n d not to p h i l o s o p h y . . . . Spinoza's notion o f philosop h y as a sort o f metaphysical g e o m e t r y is a c o m p l e t e l y m i s t a k e n sort o f a priorism. "6~ A p h i l o s o p h e r ' s work is, unlike the scientist's, d o n e a priori, 6' but philosophical d e b a t e "does not take the shape o f a chain o f t h e o r e m s , " n o r do the a r g u m e n t s in such d e b a t e " a d m i t o f notational codification" (D 11 t, 112). P h i l o s o p h y is the study o f informal, n o t formal, logic a n d a l t h o u g h the philosop h e r is a "client" o f the f o r m a l logician, "the h a n d l i n g o f philosophical p r o b l e m s . . . [cannot] be r e d u c e d to the derivation o f the application o f t h e o r e m s a b o u t logical constants" (D 12 3, a 24). H e n c e , the f o r m o f a r g u m e n t particularly well suited to the philosophical e n d e a v o r is the reductio ad absurdum, 6. a n a r g u m e n t which is premiseless, a n d t h e r e f o r e , i n d e p e n d e n t o f both empirical a n d axiomatic truths. "Reductio ad absurdura a r g u m e n t s . . , a p p l y to the e m p l o y m e n t a n d m i s e m p l o y m e n t o f expressions."63 T h e y d o not d e m o n s t r a t e the t r u t h or falsity o f statements, but o n l y their legitimacy o r absurdity. T h e y establish conclusions a b o u t the use, r a t h e r t h a n the d e n o t a t i o n , o f expressions. T h u s , p u t in the c o n t e x t o f his b r o a d e r views o n the n a t u r e o f p h i l o s o p h y a n d o f philosophical statements, Ryle's predilection for the use o f such a r g u m e n t s in The Concept of Mind is readily explicable. ~gRyle, "Philosophical Arguments," in CP z: 196. CL "Taking Sides in Philosophy," CP z: 16z-63; and "Phenomenology," in CP 1: 177, where he makes this claim about the methods of philosophy of psychology in particular. 6oRyle, "Phenomenology," in CP 1: 17o. 6, Ryle, "Academy and the Dialectic," in CP 1: lo9. 6, Ryle distinguishes between a strong reduetio ad absurdum and a weak reductio. The latter demonstrates the truth of a statement by deducing from its contradictory consequences which conflict with other accepted statements and, thus, proves only either that the required statement is true if those others are or that both are false. The former proceeds by deducing from a statement or set of statements consequences which conflict with one another or the original statement. Thus, it demonstrates the illegitimacy or absurdity of a statement (as opposed to its truth or falsity) by showing it to have logically absurd corollaries. It is this stronger form of the reductio ad absurdum that Ryle thinks is well suited to philosophy. (CP z: zo4) Ibid., zo4. 288 . J O U R N A L OF T H E H I S T O R Y OF P H I L O S O P H Y 3 2 " 2 APRIL ~994 Ryle's f r e q u e n t appeals to the use o f ordinary language are also readily explained on the present interpretation of The Concept of Mind. Closely related to the (negative) thesis o f linguistic Antirealism is, as I've suggested above, a (positive) identification o f meaning with use. T h e idea is to identify the m e a n i n g o f mind-sentences with something which is, unlike verificationtranscendent truth-conditions, public and knowable. Ryle's identification of the m e a n i n g o f philosophical t e r m s - - i n c l u d i n g mental-conduct t e r m s - - w i t h their use, however, is not an identification o f meaning with conventional usage. Lots of philosophers, whose dominant good resolution is to discern logico-linguistic differences, talk without qualms as if 'use' and 'usage' were synonyms. This is just a howler . . . . A usage is a custom, practice, fashion or vogue. It can be local or widespread, obsolete or current, rural or urban, vulgar or academic. There cannot be a misusage any more than there can be a miscustom or a misvogue. The methods of discovering linguistic usages are the methods of philologists. By contrast, a way of operating with [something]... is a technique, knack or method. Learning is learning how to do the thing; it is not finding out sociological generalities. . . . 64 Philology is the empirical study o f how people apply concepts or use language, while Philosophy is the (informal) logical study of how to d e t e r m i n e the "cross-bearings" o f the concepts which people apply. In the " I n t r o d u c t i o n " to The Concept of Mind, Ryle explains: "It i s . . . one thing to know how to app l y . . , concepts, quite a n o t h e r to know how to correlate them with one another and w i t h concepts o f other sorts. Many people can talk sense with concepts but cannot talk sense about them; they know by practice how to operate with concepts, anyhow inside familiar fields, but they cannot state the regulations governing their use" (CM 7). In d e n o u n c i n g "the Cartesian myth," Ryle is criticizing a certain philosophical theory about the regulations governing the use of mental-conduct concepts. He is not criticizing the ordinary person's linguistic practice, but is, rather, criticizing certain prevalent views of the practice. T h e b u r d e n o f Ryle's a r g u m e n t in The Concept of Mind is to show that there is something incoherent about the way we view o u r practice, that our explanation o f that practice o u g h t to be changed. An apt m e t h o d o f a r g u m e n t here is a particular type of reductio ad absurdum, namely, one which shows the absurdity of a prevalent theory o f mental-conduct concepts by showing its incompatibility with "what we already know in o u r bones" (ibid.; cf. D 62, CP 1:114, 154, O T 1~1), namely, how to apply those concepts. Ryle wants to show us that we are operating, in the 64Ryle, "Ordinary Language," PhilosophicalReview 6o 0953), in CP 9: 308. Cf. "Use, Usage and Meaning," Proceedingsof the Aristotelian Society, supplementary volume 35 (1961), in CP 9: 4o7-14. REINTERPRETING RYLE 289 philosophy of mind, with a wrongheaded theory of meaning. And one of the ways to convince us of this is to show us that the consequences of that theory o f meaning are things that "no one ever does or would say" (CM 161). We are talking nonsense about mental-conduct concepts, if our philosophical theory o f those concepts undermines our ability to talk sense with them. Interpreting Ryle as I have suggested also explains Ryle's impatience with epistemologists and their "mystery-mongering theories" (CM t 51). According to the linguistic Antirealist, questions pertaining to the truth of, and justification for, statements about (linguistically) the mind do not reduce to questions pertaining to the truth of, and justification for, statements about (referentially) the mind. Put another way, questions of epistemological warrant are logically prior to, and independent of, questions of ontological reference. Thus, it is no surprise that Ryle often locates the source of "the Cartesian myth" in para-mechanical theories of knowledge and the cure for it in abandoning such theories of knowledge. Para-mechanical theories of knowledge are epistemological theories which presuppose the existence of "cognitive acts," and they are bound to misfire if no such acts exist. Moreover, even if such acts did exist, they would make a poor foundation for epistemological theory, since "none of the things which we could witness John Doe doing were the required acts o f having ideas, abstracting, making judgements or passing from premisses to conclusions, [and therefore] it seemed necessary to locate these acts on the boards of a stage to which only he had access" (CM 318). In short, traditional epistemology postulated a theory of the mind which rendered our knowledge of the mind impossible. It led us to deny knowing things that we knew perfectly well how to do, namely, to distinguish between accurate and inaccurate assertions about another's mental conduct. On my interpretation of The Concept of Mind, Ryle's solution to the proliferation of theories of knowledge which implied that such knowledge was impossible is simply to abandon the notion--shared by both rationalists and empiricists-that the existence of mental acts or processes was relevant to determining either the meaning or the accuracy of sentences which ascribed mentalconduct to others. Most crucially, however, interpreting Ryle as an advocate of a nondenotational theory of meaning clearly distinguishes his position in The Concept of Mind from dualism, idealism, and materialism (including behaviorism) by characterizing it as antithetical to a principle that all three of those positions hold in common. The common mistake of dualism, idealism, and materialism is that they all adhere to a 'Fido'-Fido theory of meaning which requires ontologizing by (wrongly) presuming that philosophical sentences about the mind express existential propositions. Taking either side of the ontological Realism/Antirealism debate over the status of minds requires the assumption ~9 o JOURNAL OF T H E H I S T O R Y OF P H I L O S O P H Y 32: 2 APRIL t994 that a "Fido'-Fido theory of meaning is applicable to mind-talk, and it is this assumption that Ryle emphatically rejects. 8. CONCLUSIONS In the preceding pages, I have attempted to argue for a nonbehaviorist interpretation of The Concept of Mind which renders it internally coherent, while also placing it within the larger corpus of Rylean works and the larger intellectual issues of Ryle's time. Although many reviewers of The Concept of Mind have suggested that, despite his disavowals, Ryle only substitutes a specific form of monism for Descartes's dualism,65 Ryle neither explicidy nor implicitly accepts this, or any other, ontological conclusion. Ryle is emphatically not a psychological behaviorist. Nor is Ryle a logical behaviorist. He is a philosopherma philosopher, moreover, whose views are not so easily dismissed as the proliferation of reductio ad Rylean arguments in recent and contemporary philosophy of mind would suggest. If he is reinterpreted as I have suggested here, then the position Ryle develops in The Concept of Mind, unlike behaviorism, presents a serious and virtually unexamined challenge to the prevalent assumption of materialistic monism in contemporary philosophy of mind. In The Concept of Mind and elsewhere, Ryle claims that materialism only modifies "the Cartesian myth" and that a more radical solution is needed. Ontological dualism is not a factual mistake to be corrected by monism, elevenism, or any other such "ism." According to Ryle, "it makes no sense to speak as if there could be two or eleven worlds. Nothing but confusion is achieved by labeling worlds after particular avocations. Even the solemn phrase 'the physical world' i s . . . philosophically pointless" (CM 199). Dualism is not a mistake which is the result o f either poor science or poor math. It is not the result of either misobservation or miscalculation. It is, rather, what Ryle terms a "category-mistake," the result o f poor philosophy. And it is typical of poor philosophy to mistake itself for science, to confuse its discourse about discourse about the world (metaphysics) with discourse about the world (physics). If Ryle is right about this--something it would take more work than I have done here to demonstrate--then "naturalized epistemology," "philosophical psychology," and "cognitive science" may be unable to deliver the philosophical riches they currently promise. Indeed, despite the wealth of empirical hypotheses to be found in these research areas, they may be as fundamentally philosophically poverty-stricken as dualism. University of Central Florida Hampshire, for example, claims that TheConceptofMindcan be characterized by the slogan "not Two Worlds, but One World"; "Critical Notice," 238.