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Exorcising the Ghost in the Machine

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 January 2009

H. P. Rickman
H. P. Rickman
Affiliation:
The City University
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Extract

The history of philosophy provides part of the history, or pre-history, of the social sciences. As they were struggling into being, or even before they existed, philosophy was hammering out some of the conceptual tools, lines of approach and basic hypotheses. One of the constantly recurring themes in the history of philosophy which has a direct bearing on the social sciences is the relationship between mind and matter.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy , Volume 63 , Issue 246 , October 1988 , pp. 487 - 499
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1988

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References

1 I have argued this in my Adventure of Reason (Westport: Greenwood, 1983).Google Scholar

2 In his Ethics. I have used Spinoza Selections (New York: Scribner's, 1930).Google Scholar

3 For example, Place, U. T., ‘Is Consciousness a Brain Process?’, British Journal of Psychology XLVII (1956), 44–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4 G. Ryle uses the phrase in his Concept of Mind (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1963).Google Scholar Meant as a criticism of dualism, including that of Descartes, it charges it with conceiving mind on the model of matter, which Ryle considers a ‘category mistake’. His famous illustrations of category mistakes—such as thinking that the University of Oxford is just another building in addition to the individual colleges—suggest that he means by it a failure to understand the proper use of a term. I do not find his explanation why dualism, particularly that of Descartes, is based on a mistake of this kind, clear and convincing. I certainly agree that it would be futile to add to the material sphere another one which is similarly constructed, and runs parallel. My criticism is that he is mistaken about his target.

5 As P. Geach put it ‘the “mind body problem” is just the same whether the body is gross or subtle’. Mental Acts (London: Routledge, Kegan Paul, 1957), Sect. 25.Google Scholar

6 Gomperz, Theodor, The Greek Thinkers (London: J. Murray, seventh impression, 1964), 215.Google Scholar

7 Descartes, R., ‘Discourse on Method’ and Other Writings, trans. Wollaston, A. (London: Penguin, 1960), 110–111.Google Scholar

8 The Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Smith, N. Kemp (London: Macmillan, 1976).Google Scholar

9 The quotation continues, ‘This I must be convinced, cannot be the action of bare, insensible matter: nor ever could be, without immaterial thinking being’. Essay Concerning Human Understanding (London: J. M. Dent, 1947)Google Scholar, Book II, Ch. 23, Sect. 15.

10 W. Dilthey makes this point when he discusses his ‘category of power’ in Drafts for a Critique of Historical Reason, Vol. VIIGoogle Scholar of his collected works, trans. in Dilthey: Selected Writings, by Rickman, H. P. (Cambridge University Press, 1976), 217–218.Google Scholar