Abstract
This paper is an endeavor to discuss Gilbert Ryle’s philosophy of mind in convergence with some contemporary debates, particularly the “immediacy” debate of first-person authority. An attempt has been made to show that Ryle’s thought when analyzed through the prism of immediacy debate of first-person authority also seems to claim and endorse first-person authority.
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Notes
Mrinal Kanti Bhadra (2004) in his book A Critical Survey of Phenomenology and Existentialism, on page 29 claims that Husserl called consciousness by this name as it was for him a central mystery that a thing in the world exists as a being that is aware of its own being and other beings.
One such reading can be found in the book, The World Without, the Mind Within: An Essay on First-Person Authority by Andre Gallois (2008). In the chapter titled Scepticism about first-person authority, Gallois considers Ryle as one of the main defenders of the position which states, “that we lack first-person authority over, and non-contingent privileged access to our propositional attitudes.” (on p.37)
Descartes, Rene, (Med. 2, AT 7:25), quotation taken from “http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/descartes-epistemology/#4.1” retrieved on 2012.03.11
This type of shift in the views about self-knowledge has been held by Quassim Cassam (1994) in his book, Self-knowledge in which he talks about the epistemological distinctiveness of self-knowledge in contemporary debates.
Ibid. p. 13
Though Ryle has been dubbed as a behaviorist, contemporary philosophers hold that he was not one. For he does not subscribe to any of the main tenets associated with that doctrine as it is known today and that he does not like the radical behaviorists (e.g., Skinner) deny the existence of mental processes of this kind. Julia Taney in an essay on Ryle in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy suggests that Ryle cannot be dubbed as a radical Behaviorist. He writes that A.J. Ayer in a critical essay on Ryle’s The Concept of Mind goes against the traditional reading of Ryle as behaviorist by showing that Ryle at various places in his book “allows the existence of inner mental life.” Taney, however, comments that whether or not Ryle was a behaviorist is an ongoing debate (Source Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, retrieved on 2012.03.12). Taney repeats this position in an article titled “Rethinking Ryle: A Critical Discussion on The Concept of Mind” (see page x–xi) in the 60th anniversary edition of Ryle’s The Concept of Mind.
Ryle, G. (1955). The concept of mind (p. 155). London: Hutchinson’s University Library.
Ibid. p.166
Ibid. p.179
Ibid. p. 180
Ibid. p.191
Ryle also talks about higher order and lower order actions in his article “Courses of Action or the Uncatchableness of Mental Acts” published by Philosophy journal in July 2000. Ryle also calls lower order actions as infra-actions and higher order actions as supra-project.
Ryle, G. (1955). The concept of mind (p. 195). London: Hutchinson’s University Library.
Ibid. p.196.
I am following I. T. Ramsey while dealing with the systematic elusiveness of “I” and “self” here. He ventures to describe the systematic elusiveness of self from Ryle’s view on elusiveness of “I” and almost uses “I” and “self” synonymously. He writes, “‘I’ is elusive, but as systematically elusive the elusiveness of I is no more than the elusiveness of an infinite series to a term by term enumeration. There is no more to it than that. The elusiveness of the self is just the point that we have never completed our self-description….” For more, see Ramsey (1955). Let me mention that in response to Ryle, Ramsey argues that the elusiveness is “nothing but a temporal delay” which is problematic as Ryle is concerned with an epistemological (and not any temporal) delay. A philosophical dissection of Ramsey’s response is outside the scope of this paper.
Ryle, G. (1955). The concept of mind (p. 166). London: Hutchinson’s University Library.
Ibid. p. 155.
Apart from these concepts, Ryle offers some nuanced examples—apart from those mentioned in the main text of this paper—to pinpoint (without any further critical exploration) the superiority of self-knowledge in comparison to the knowledge of other. He offers the example of catching “myself swearing” which is not the same as catching “you swearing.” He also offers the example of a boy performing a mathematical sum and a boy checking his sum, where the boy performing the sum “differs only in degree of alertness, caution and sophistication from the boy who checks his results.” The problem is that Ryle instead of elaborating these examples remains committed to his critique of official doctrine.
References
Bhadra, M. K. (2004). A critical survey of phenomenology and existentialism. New Delhi: ICPR.
Cassam, Q. (ed.) (1994). Self-Knowledge. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Davidson, D. (1987). Knowing one’s own mind. Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association, 60(3), 441–458.
Davidson, D. (2001). Subjective, intersubjective, objective. Oxford: Clarendon.
Gallois, A. (2008). The world without, the mind within: An Essay on First-Person Authority. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Ramsey, I. T. (1955). The systematic elusiveness of ‘I’. The Philosophical Quarterly, 5(20), 193–204.
Acknowledgments
I am highly indebted to my teacher Dr. Manidipa Sen who motivated me to work on this paper when I presented it as a classroom presentation. Her valuable comments and suggestions have been of immense help in writing this paper. My thanks to the anonymous reviewer, who raised a very important point on the illusiveness of self.
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Ali, M. Ryle and the Immediacy of First-Person Authority. J. Indian Counc. Philos. Res. 32, 157–164 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40961-015-0004-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40961-015-0004-z