Gilbert Ryle’s Criticisms of the Concept of Consciousness

Abstract

In Chapter VI sec. (2) of his The Concept of Mind, (London, 1949) Gilbert Ryle criticises a concept of consciousness which in my opinion is one of the most important of all the different concepts of consciousness to be found in the different schools of philosphy. This is the concept of consciousness as self-intimating, self-revealing, self-luminous etc.. By making this supposedly distinguishing feature of consciousness his main target for criticism, Ryle has done the service of drawing attention to the right point, even if by way of criticism. For Western philosophy as yet had only one clear formulation of a positive distinguishing feature of consciousness : this is what Brentano and Husserl called ‘intentionality’. The self-luminousness theory however, implicit though in much of traditional western philosophy, has never come to the forefront except perhaps in Kant’s notion of the ‘think’ which according to Kant must necessarily be able to accompany all our representations and in Samuel Alexander’s notion of ‘enjoyment’ as distinguished from ‘contemplation’. In Indian philosophy, on the other hand, the schools of Mimamsa and Vedanta have made the notion of self-luminousness (sva- yamprakāśatva) of consciousness the cornerstone of their epistemology and metaphysics. Considering the eight pages of Ryle’s arguments from the point of view of this Indian tradition, his arguments appear to me to be a curious mixture of insight and misunderstanding to both of which this paper seeks to draw attention.

First published in The Visva Bharati Journal of Philosophy, III, 1966–67.