Gilbert Ryle, “Descartes’ myth”

In “Descartes’ myth”, i.e. excerpted from the first chapter of ‘The Concept of Mind’. Ryle begins by
describing a “doctrine about the nature and place of minds” which, he says “is so prevalent among
theorists and even among laymen that it deserves to be described as the official theory”. He argues
in “Descartes’ myth” that this doctrine is false. So, the official doctrine is that:

 The Official Doctrine

The official doctrine, which hails chiefly from Descartes, Ryle describes that as such:

With the doubtful exceptions of idiots and infants in arms every human being has both a body and a
mind. Some would prefer to say that every human being is both a body and a mind. His body and his
mind are ordinarily harnessed together, but after the death of the body his mind may continue to
exist and function.

BY describing body, Ryle says: Human bodies are in space and are subject to the mechanical laws
which govern all other bodies in space. Bodily processes and states can be inspected by external
observers. So a man’s bodily life is as much a public affair as are the lives of animals and reptiles and
even as the careers of trees, crystals and planets, Ryle says.

But minds are not in space, nor are their operations subject to mechanical laws, as Ryle describes.
The workings of one mind are not witnessable by other observers; its career is private. Only a person
can take direct cognisance of the states and processes of his own mind. Hence, a person therefore
lives through two collateral histories, one consisting of what happens in and to his body, the other
consisting of what happens in and to his mind. The first is public while the second is private one. The
events in the first history are events in the physical world while those in the second are events in the
mental world.

Ryle highlights the point that: It has been disputed whether a person does or can directly monitor all
or only some of the episodes of his own private history; but, according to the official doctrine, at
least some of these episodes he has direct and unchallengeable cognisance. In consciousness, self-
consciousness and introspection he is directly and authentically apprised of the present states and
operations of his mind. He may have great or small uncertainties about concurrent and adjacent
episodes in the physical world, but he can have none about at least part of what is momentarily
occupying his mind.

Then Ryle points out that: It is customary to express this bifurcation of his two lives and of his two
worlds by saying that the things and events which belong to the physical world, including his own
body, are external, while the workings of his own mind are internal. This antithesis of outer and
inner is of course meant to be construed as a metaphor, since minds, not being in space, could not
be described as being spatially inside anything else, or as having things going on spatially inside
themselves.

But Ryle says that, relapses from this good intention are common and theorists are found
speculating how stimuli, the physical sources of which are yards or miles outside a person’s skin, can
generate mental responses inside his skull, or how decisions framed inside his cranium can set going
movements of his extremities.

Ryle mentions the classic problem of mind-body interaction:

Even when ‘inner’ and ‘outer’ are construed as metaphors, the problem how a person’s mind and
body influence one another is notoriously charged with theoretical difficulties. What the mind wills,
the legs, arms and the tongue execute accordingly and what affects the ear and the eye has
something to do with what the mind perceives, similarly grimaces and smiles betray the mind’s
moods and it is hoped that bodily castigations lead to moral improvement. Ryle further questions
that: the actual transactions between the episodes of the private history and those of the public
history remain mysterious, since by definition they can belong to neither series. They can be
inspected neither by introspection nor by laboratory experiment, according to Ryle. They are
theoretical shuttle-cocks which are forever being bandied from the physiologist back to the
psychologist and from the psychologist back to the physiologist.

Therefore, according to Gilbert Ryle, this problem is the result of the official doctrine’s “polar
opposition of mind and matter”:

Underlying this partly metaphorical representation of the bifurcation of a person’s two lives there is
a seemingly more profound and philosophical assumption. It is assumed that there are two different
kinds of existence or status. What exists or happens may have the status of physical existence, or it
may have the status of mental existence. So, it is supposed that some existing is physical existing and
other existing is mental existing. It is a necessary feature of what has physical existence that it is in
space and time and it is a necessary feature of what has mental existence that it is in time but not in
space. What has physical existence is composed of matter, or else is a function of matter and what
has mental existence consists of consciousness, or else is a function of consciousness.

There is thus a polar opposition between mind and matter, material objects are situated in a
common field, i.e. ‘space’, and what happens to one body in one part of space is mechanically
connected with what happens to other bodies in other parts of space. But mental happenings occur
in insulated fields, known as ‘minds’, and there is, apart maybe from telepathy, no direct causal
connection between what happens in one mind and what happens in another. Only through the
medium of the public physical world can the mind of one person make a difference to the mind of
another. The mind is its own place and in his inner life each of us lives the life of a ghostly Robinson
Crusoe. People can see, hear and jolt one another’s bodies, but they are irremediably blind and deaf
to the workings of one another’s minds and inoperative upon them.

Next Ryle explains the stark contrast, on the official doctrine, between knowledge of one’s own mind
and knowledge of another’s mind.

As describing knowledge of one’s own mind, he says:

Ryle questions that: What sort of knowledge can be secured of the workings of a mind? On the one
side, according to the official theory, a person has direct knowledge of the best imaginable kind of
the workings of his own mind. Mental states and processes are conscious states and processes, and
the consciousness which irradiates them can engender no illusions and leaves the door open for no
doubts. A person’s present thinkings, feelings and willings, his perceivings, rememberings and
imaginings are intrinsically ‘phosphorescent’; their existence and their nature are inevitably betrayed
to their owner. The inner life is a stream of consciousness of such a sort that it would be absurd to
suggest that the mind whose life is that stream might be unaware of what is passing down it.

Besides being currently supplied with these alleged immediate data of consciousness, a person is
also generally supposed to be able to exercise from time to time a special kind of perception, namely
inner perception, or introspection. Not only can he view and scrutinize a flower through his sense of
sight and listen to and discriminate the notes of a bell through his sense of hearing; he 4 can also
reflectively or introspectively watch, without any bodily organ of sense, the current episodes of his
inner life. This self- observation is also commonly supposed to be immune from illusion, confusion or
doubt. A mind’s reports of its own affairs have a certainty superior to the best that is possessed by
its reports of matters in the physical world. Sense-perceptions can, but consciousness and
introspection cannot, be mistaken or confused.

Knowledge of another’s mind can hardly be more different:

On the other side, one person has no direct access of any sort to the events of the inner life of
another. He cannot do better than make problematic inferences from the observed behaviour of the
other person’s body to the states of mind which, by analogy from his own conduct, he supposes to
be signalised by that behaviour. Direct access to the workings of a mind is the privilege of that mind
itself; in default of such privileged access, the workings of one mind are inevitably occult to everyone
else. For the supposed arguments from bodily movements similar to their own to mental workings
similar to their own would lack any possibility of observational corroboration.

Not unnaturally, therefore, an adherent of the official theory finds it difficult to resist this
consequence of his premisses, that he has no good reason to believe that there do exist minds other
than his own. Even if he prefers to believe that to other human bodies there are harnessed minds
not unlike his own, he cannot claim to be able to discover their individual characteristics, or the
particular things that they undergo and do. Absolute solitude is on this showing the ineluctable
destiny of the soul. Only our bodies can meet.

Having introduced the official doctrine, the Cartesian picture of the mind, Ryle claims that is rests on
a “category mistake”: