1001Philosophers

Gilbert Ryle Quotes on Mind

Gilbert Ryle was a British analytic philosopher and one of the architects of post-war Oxford ordinary-language philosophy. This page collects quotes attributed to Gilbert Ryle on the topic of mind, drawn from across the philosopher's works.

Quotes

  • Attributed to Gilbert Ryle:

    “The dogma of the ghost in the machine.”

  • Attributed to Gilbert Ryle:

    “Knowing how is not reducible to knowing that.”

  • Attributed to Gilbert Ryle:

    “It is not a contingent fact about thinking that it is bound up with language.”

  • Attributed to Gilbert Ryle:

    “We can know how to play chess without knowing the propositional rules.”

  • 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.”