After some opening comments on how I think one should approach the philosophy of mind, I look at what relatively little Gilbert Ryle had to say explicitly about intentionality, that occurring almost exclusively in his several papers on phenomenology. Then, I discuss the notion of intentionality with respect to the doctrines of The Concept of Mind, although neither the word nor the idea, strictly speaking, appears anywhere in the book. Following more exposition of my own views, including an argument I (...) have made for a certain specific theory of intentionality, I close with some reflections on Ryle as a modern-day Aristotelian. (shrink)

Crombie's acceptance of the deliberate commission of a category mistake in his defense of the meaningfulness of theological statements raises a pointed challenge to the philosophy of Ryle which seems not to have been specifically addressed in subsequent literature. We review the analysis which leads Crombie into it, including concepts of anomaly, deficiency, affinity, and inadequate notion, noting basic differences in method and attitude from Ryle. We express our own agreements and disagreements in keeping with an overall concern for the (...) preservation of rationality in this sphere of language, finding acceptable distinct contributions to that end from both. (shrink)

Gilbert Ryle has argued that Plato's Theory of Forms is a "logically vicious" doctrine because it's fundamental concept of exemplification leads to a vicious infinite regress. David Armstrong and Alan Donagan have agreed with Ryle. After making Ryle's argument logically explicit, I show the exemplification regress is illusory. Exemplification is a genuine universal alongside other relations; there is nothing paradoxical in its being exemplified over and over and over ... Platonism can define logical properties of this relation but not the (...) relation itself, however. (shrink)

This paper argues that Collingwood's philosophy of mind offers an interesting and compelling account of the nature of the mind and of the irreducibility of the mental, an account whose viability and relevance to contemporary debates ought to be given serious consideration. I suggest that the reason why Collingwood's contribution to the philosophy of mind has been neglected is due to the fact that his philosophy of mind is widely, even if mistakenly, regarded as the target of Ryle's attacks on (...) the dogma of the ghost in the machine and proceed to undermine the assumption that Collingwood is a twentieth century adherent of the dogma. (shrink)

Surveying the history of philosophy, the book focuses on historical texts rather than historical figures and covers the entire range of classics in a single ...

0. Introduction: the Propositional Model of Knowledge "Philosophers have not done justice to the distinction which is quite familiar to all of us between ...

We falter and stammer when trying to describe our own mental acts. Many mental acts, including thinking, are what the author calls ‘chain-undertakings’, that is, courses of action with some over-arching purpose governing the moment-by-moment sub-acts of which we are introspectively aware. Hence the intermittency and sporadicness of the passage of mental activity which constitutes thinking about something.

v. 1. Critical essays.--v. 2. Collected essays, 1929-1968.

These two puzzles were classic if academic examples of the dilemmas Professor Ryle is concerned with.

This now-classic work challenges what Ryle calls philosophy's "official theory," the Cartesians "myth" of the separation of mind and matter. Ryle's linguistic analysis remaps the conceptual geography of mind, not so much solving traditional philosophical problems as dissolving them into the mere consequences of misguided language. His plain language and esstentially simple purpose place him in the traditioin of Locke, Berkeley, Mill, and Russell.