The Concept of Mind

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In his prominent work, The Concept of Mind (1949), the philosopher Gilbert Ryle described what he saw as the "fundamental mistake" made by Descartes' dualism, and underlying much of western philosophy. Ryle's work famously coined the phrase "the dogma of the ghost in the machine" to refer to Descartes' model.

The fundmental error, according to Ryle, is a category mistake made when philosophers talk about mind and matter as if they were "... terms of the same logical type". Ryle claims that while it does make sense to talk about mental processes and events, that the "... phrase 'there occur mental process' does not mean the same sort of thing as 'there occur physical processes', and, therefore, that it makes no sense to conjoin or disjoin the two". For Ryle, Cartesian dualism makes the mistake of assuming that it is sensible to ask of a given cause, process, or event, whether it is mental or physical (with the implication that it cannot be both).

This concept is futher illustrated by some of Ryle's examples in the text. When a prospective student visits a university, he or she will see the library, the labs, the sports arena, but then may very well ask the tour guide, "but where is the university?", having been under the assumption that it is a different place altogether. According to Ryle, the mistake made by the student is a failure to realize that "university" and "library" are terms that belong to different logical categories.

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If my argument is successful, there will follow some interesting consequences. First, the hallowed contrast between Mind and Matter will be dissipated, but dissipated not by either of the equally hallowed absorptions of Mind by Matter or Matter by Mind, but in quite a different way.... It will also follow that both Idealism and Materialism are answers to an improper question. The "reduction" of the material world to mental states and processes, as well as the "reduction" of the mental states and processes to physical states and processes, presuppose the legitimacy of the disjuntion "either there exist minds or there exist bodies (but not both)". It would be like saying, "either she bought a left-hand and a right-hand glove or she bought a pair of gloves (but not both)".

—Gilbert Ryle, The Concept of Mind