Gilbert Ryle 1900 – 1976
Gilbert Ryle was a British analytic philosopher and one of the architects of post-war Oxford ordinary-language philosophy. As Waynflete Professor of Metaphysical Philosophy and editor of Mind, he shaped a generation of British thought. His Concept of Mind argued that the Cartesian dualism of mind and body rests on a category mistake and that mental concepts are best analyzed in terms of dispositions to behave and the abilities exercised in skillful action. He coined the influential distinction between knowing-how and knowing-that.
Key facts
- Nationality
- British
- Era
- Contemporary
- Movements
- Analytic
Selected quotes
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Attributed to Gilbert Ryle:
“The dogma of the ghost in the machine.”
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Attributed to Gilbert Ryle:
“Knowing how is not reducible to knowing that.”
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Attributed to Gilbert Ryle:
“It is not a contingent fact about thinking that it is bound up with language.”
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Attributed to Gilbert Ryle:
“We can know how to play chess without knowing the propositional rules.”
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Attributed to Gilbert Ryle:
“The official doctrine, which hails chiefly from Descartes, is something like this: with the doubtful exceptions of idiots and infants in arms, every human being has both a body and a mind.”