Gilbert Ryle Quotes
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. The quotes below are attributed to Gilbert Ryle, organized by topic.
Browse Gilbert Ryle by topic
Gilbert Ryle on Knowledge
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Attributed to Gilbert Ryle:
“Knowing how is not reducible to knowing that.”
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Attributed to Gilbert Ryle:
“We can know how to play chess without knowing the propositional rules.”
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“A myth is, of course, not a fairy story. It is the presentation of facts belonging to one category in the idioms appropriate to another. To explode a myth is accordingly not to deny the facts but to re-allocate them.”
Introduction -
“Ch. I: Descartes' Myth, (1) The Official Doctrine”
There is a doctrine about the nature and place of the mind which is prevalent among theorists , to which most philosophers , psychologists and religious teachers subscribe with minor reservations. Although they admit certain theoretical difficulties in it, they tend to assume that these can be overcome without serious modifications being made to the architecture of the theory.... The official doct -
“Ch. I: Descartes' Myth, (1) The Official Doctrine”
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. -
“Ch. I: Descartes' Myth, (2) The Absurdity of the Official Doctrine”
Such in outline is the official theory. I shall often speak of it, with deliberate abusiveness, as " the dogma of the Ghost in the Machine ." I hope to prove that it is entirely false, and false not in detail but in principle. It is not merely an assemblage of particular mistakes. It is one big mistake and a mistake of a special kind. It is, namely, a category mistake. It represents the facts of m -
“Ch. I: Descartes' Myth, (4) Historical Note”
Myths often do a lot of theoretical good, while they are still new. -
“It is of first-rate importance to notice from the start that stupidity is not the same thing, or the same sort of thing, as ignorance. There is no incompatibility between being well-informed and being silly, and a person who has a good nose for arguments or jokes may have a bad head for facts.”
Ch. II: Knowing How and Knowing That, (2) Intelligence and Intellect -
“Ch. II: Knowing How and Knowing That, (10) Solipsism”
Contemporary philosophers have exercised themselves with the problem of our knowledge of other minds. Enmeshed in the dogma of the ghost in the machine, they have found it impossible to discover any logically satisfactory evidence warranting one person in believing that there exist minds other than his own. I can witness what your body does, but I cannot witness what your mind does, and my pretens
Gilbert Ryle on Life
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“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.”
Ch. I: Descartes' Myth, (1) The Official Doctrine
Gilbert Ryle on Mind
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“The dogma of the ghost in the machine.”
Ch. I: Descartes' Myth, (2) The Absurdity of the Official Doctrine -
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:
“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.”
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“Ch. II: Knowing How and Knowing That, (2) Intelligence and Intellect”
It is of first-rate importance to notice from the start that stupidity is not the same thing, or the same sort of thing, as ignorance. There is no incompatibility between being well-informed and being silly, and a person who has a good nose for arguments or jokes may have a bad head for facts. -
“To see is one thing; to picture or visualise is another. A person can see things, only when his eyes are open, and when his surroundings are illuminated; but he can have pictures in his mind’s eye, when his eyes are shut and when the world is dark.”
The Concept of Mind(1949) | Ch. VIII: Imagination, (2) Picturing and Seeing
Gilbert Ryle on Virtue
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“Myths often do a lot of theoretical good, while they are still new.”
Ch. I: Descartes' Myth, (4) Historical Note