Philosophy Complete Dissertation CVR I Jen

THE PHILOSOPHICAL DEVELOPMENT OF
GILBERT RYLE
A Study of His Published and Unpublished Writings

© Charlotte Vrijen 2007
Illustrations front cover:

1) Ryle’s annotations to Wittgenstein’s Tractatus
2) Notes (miscellaneous) from ‘the red box’, Linacre College Library
Illustration back cover: Rodin’s Le Penseur
RIJKSUNIVERSITEIT GRONINGEN
The Philosophical Development of Gilbert Ryle

A Study of His Published and Unpublished Writings
Proefschrift
ter verkrijging van het doctoraat in de

Wijsbegeerte
aan de Rijksuniversiteit Groningen
op gezag van de
Rector Magnificus, dr. F. Zwarts,
in het openbaar te verdedigen op
donderdag 14 juni 2007
om 16.15 uur
door
Charlotte Vrijen
geboren op 11 maart 1978
te Rolde
Promotor: Prof. Dr. L.W. Nauta
Copromotor: Prof. Dr. M.R.M. ter Hark
Beoordelingscommissie: Prof. Dr. D.H.K. Pätzold

Prof. Dr. B.F. McGuinness
Prof. Dr. J.M. Connelly
ISBN: 978-90-367-3049-5
Preface
I am indebted to many people for being able to finish this dissertation. First of all I would
like to thank my supervisor and promotor Lodi Nauta for his comments on an enormous
variety of drafts and for the many stimulating discussions we had throughout the project.
He did not limit himself to deeply theoretical discussions but also saved me from
grammatical and stylish sloppiness. (He would, for example, have suggested to leave out
the ‘enormous’ and ‘many’ above, as well as by far most of the ‘very’’s and ‘greatly’’s in
the sentences to come.) After I had already started my new job outside the academic world,
Lodi regularly – but always in a pleasant way – reminded me of this other job that still had
to be finished.
I owe debt to my copromotor Michel ter Hark for his valuable comments on my
writings. Brian McGuinness, James Connelly and Detlev Pätzold kindly agreed to be on my
reading committee, and gave their approval to this dissertation. I would like to thank them
for both. I am also grateful to Brian McGuinness for showing me an early unpublished
letter from Ryle to his former tutor H. J. Paton (later published as McGuinness and Vrijen
2006). James Connelly greatly helped me to acquire some knowledge of Collingwood’s
philosophical work and stimulated me to get in touch with other experts on the subject. Our
discussions about the correspondence between Ryle and Collingwood were very useful as
well.
One of the things that made working on this dissertation a varied and stimulating
experience was the fact that it involved doing research at Linacre College Library and the
Bodleian in Oxford, as well as talking to some of Gilbert Ryle’s former colleagues, friends
and relatives. Except for my conversations with Brian McGuinness I also benefited from
personal stories and anecdotes by Rom Harré, John Rogers, David Pears, Peter Hacker,
John North, Jerry Cohen and Tony Palmer. Ryle’s twin-sister’s stepdaughter Janet Beckley
and his nephew Michael Ryle and his wife Bridget Ryle kindly invited me into their houses
in respectively Dyffed (Wales) and Exmoor. Their anecdotes greatly helped me to get a
better image of Ryle as a person. Louise Trevelyan and her fellow librarians at Linacre
College Library enabled me to make use of the ‘Gilbert Ryle Collection’ to its full extent.
My AIO-colleagues at the Department of Philosophy in Groningen who made
working there a pleasant experience, not only focused on thinking and writing but also on
talking, discussions, drinks and fun, are Kim van Gennip, Martine Prange, Casper Zijlstra,
Jan-Willem Romeyn, Arend Jagersma, Barteld Kooi, Jan Albert van Laar, Katherine
Gardiner, Alice Stollmeyer, Daan Franken, Menno Rol, Marc van Duijn and Constanze
Binder. Other members of the department whom I would like to thank for their stimulating
discussions and for creating a pleasant environment for doing research are Job van Eck,
Pieter Sjoerd Hasper, Karin de Boer, Eddo Evink, Lodi Nauta, Michel ter Hark, Detlev
Pätzold, Jeanne Peijnenburg, Jeroen Bartels, Jos Lensink, Theo Kuipers, Erik Krabbe,
Martin van Hees, René Boomkens, Hans Harbers, Allard Tamminga, Gyan Otto, Gerda
Bosma, Trijnie Hekman, Jorine Janssen, Marga Hids, Kirsten van der Ploeg, Janny
Moesker, Miran Huizenga, Benno Ticheler, Eva-Anne le Coultre and Hauke de Vries.
The board members of the GAIOO/GRASP! and my former badminton friends at
Amor helped me to set my mind to other things than philosophy. My dear friends Barbara
van der Pol, Reinier Michiels, Janien Kamps, Monique Heringa, Marco Visser and Liesbeth
Schipper I thank for their support and friendship (and for not always asking when this
dissertation was going to be finished).
Finally I would like to thank my father and Bas, and my mother and Henk for
always supporting me and giving me the opportunity to make my own mistakes. My
brother Wouter and his girlfriend Gabie for their support, friendship and, occasionally,
talking postcards. And, last but definitely not least, Wouter van Alst for being a great friend
and boyfriend at the same time.
Contents
INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................ 5
CHAPTER 1 GILBERT RYLE – A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH ..................................... 9

Family Background and Childhood............................................................................... 9
Life as a Student......................................................................................................... 10
Christ Church College ................................................................................................ 11
Ayer and the Vienna Circle......................................................................................... 16
Second World War ..................................................................................................... 17
Magdalen College....................................................................................................... 18
Ryle as a Teacher ....................................................................................................... 23
Ryle as a Person ......................................................................................................... 25
CHAPTER 2 RYLE’S EARLY WRITINGS ................................................................... 29

Position 1: Denotationalism and the Reformulation of Systematically
Misleading Expressions .............................................................................................. 31
Influences and Philosophical Context...................................................................... 31
Ryle’s Realism and Russell’s Influence Illustrated by Two Papers........................... 35
‘Systematically Misleading Expressions’ ................................................................ 40
Position 2: Rejecting Denotationalism......................................................................... 44
Category-Mistakes: the Essence of Philosophical Problems..................................... 46
Philosophy as a Method and the Reductio ad Absurdum as the Ultimate
Philosophical Argument ......................................................................................... 50
Conclusion ................................................................................................................. 53
CHAPTER 3 THE CONCEPT OF MIND: MAIN AIMS, METHOD AND RECEPTION 55

Ryle’s Method: Starting With What We Already Know............................................... 56
Ryle’s Primary Target................................................................................................. 59
Theorizing as the Primary and Silent Activity of the Mind........................................... 62
One Action: Not Two ................................................................................................. 64
The Issues Under Discussion ...................................................................................... 66
Case-study: Self-Knowledge....................................................................................... 67
A More Accurate Account of the Category-mistake of Cartesian dualism .................... 70
The Reception of The Concept of Mind ....................................................................... 71
Ryle’s Contemporaries ........................................................................................... 72
The Concept of Mind as a Non-Behaviourist Attack on Dualism .................................. 82
Ryle’s Behaviourism According to Modern Handbooks .......................................... 82
Suggestions of Behaviourism in The Concept of Mind............................................. 83
Ryle’s Rejection of a Behaviouristic Interpretation.................................................. 85
Two Interpretations: Shelley M. Park and Rowland Stout........................................ 86
Concluding Remarks .................................................................................................. 91
CHAPTER 4 GILBERT RYLE’S LATER WRITINGS................................................... 93

Ryle’s Meta-Philosophical Papers............................................................................... 94
Continuity in Ryle’s Ideas on Philosophical Method ............................................... 95
The Ordinary Use of Language............................................................................... 96
Language versus Speech and Words versus Sentences............................................. 97
Philosophy as an Inter-Level Activity ..................................................................... 99
Dilemmas: The Tarner Lectures .................................................................................. 99
Philosophical Dilemmas ....................................................................................... 100
Discussions of Concrete Dilemmas....................................................................... 102
‘It Was To Be’ ..................................................................................................... 103
An Adverbial Account of Thinking........................................................................... 105
The Broader Notion of Thinking and the Problems with the Thinking of
‘Le Penseur’......................................................................................................... 107
The Thinking of ‘Le Penseur’ ............................................................................... 110
Criticisms............................................................................................................. 116
Concluding Remarks ................................................................................................ 118
CHAPTER 5 RYLE AND COLLINGWOOD: THEIR CORRESPONDENCE AND ITS

PHILOSOPHICAL CONTEXT .................................................................................... 121
Part 1: The Ryle-Collingwood Correspondence: Misinterpretation and
Structural Disagreements .......................................................................................... 123
Historical Background.......................................................................................... 124
Definitions, the Ontological Argument and Self-reflexivity ................................... 126
The Essence of the Matter..................................................................................... 130
Part 2: Ryle and Collingwood: Similarities Revisited................................................. 138
Refuting Cartesian Dualism .................................................................................. 138
Intelligence and ‘Knowing How’ versus ‘Knowing That’...................................... 142
Logic of Question and Answer.............................................................................. 143
Conclusion ............................................................................................................... 145
CHAPTER 6 RYLE AND WITTGENSTEIN................................................................ 147

Historical context ..................................................................................................... 147
Ryle’s Interpretation of Wittgenstein......................................................................... 149
Wittgenstein’s ‘Overriding Worry’ ....................................................................... 150
The Tractatus ....................................................................................................... 151
From the Tractatus to the Philosophical Investigations ......................................... 154
Ryle’s Critical remarks......................................................................................... 157
Ryle’s attempt at tracing the origins of Wittgenstein’s thoughts............................. 160
The English Translation of the Tractatus............................................................... 167
Ryle in Relation to Contemporary Wittgenstein Scholarship.................................. 169
A Comparison Between Ryle and Wittgenstein ......................................................... 170
Peter Hacker: the Main difference Between Ryle and Wittgenstein is Depth .......... 170
O. K. Bouwsma: Ryle used Arguments whereas Wittgenstein did not.................... 171
An Evaluation of Their Differences and Similarities.............................................. 173
Concluding Remarks ................................................................................................ 175
CHAPTER 7 SUMMARY AND CONCLUDING REMARKS...................................... 177
APPENDIX 1: RYLE’S WRITINGS – THE COMPLETE LIST ................................... 185

Christ Church....................................................................................................... 185
Magdalen College ................................................................................................ 186
After Ryle’s Retirement........................................................................................ 189
Posthumous Publications ...................................................................................... 190
APPENDIX 2: GILBERT RYLE COLLECTIONS IN OXFORD .................................. 193

Minor Ryle Collections Outside Linacre College....................................................... 193
The New Bodleian, Oxford................................................................................... 193
The Philosophy Library, Oxford ........................................................................... 193
Nuffield College, Oxford...................................................................................... 194
Queen’s College, Oxford ...................................................................................... 194
Collections outside Oxford ................................................................................... 194
Ryle’s books and papers at Linacre College .............................................................. 195
APPENDIX 3: RYLE’S LECTURE NOTES ON THE STRUCTURE OF

WITTGENSTEIN’S TRACTATUS................................................................................ 199
DUTCH SUMMARY ................................................................................................... 201
REFERENCES............................................................................................................. 207
Introduction
This dissertation is the first comprehensive study of the writings, both published and
unpublished, of Gilbert Ryle (1900-1976), one of the most well-known and influential
philosophers of the twentieth century.1 His The Concept of Mind became a classic almost as
soon as it was published in 1949, and remained essential reading for generations of British
philosophers. Ryle was also highly influential as editor of Mind and played an important
role in the development of a new curriculum in Oxford and the discipline of philosophy in
England.
Even though he exercised an immense influence on post-war British philosophy,
his work is not much studied today. If he is mentioned at all, it is for his alleged
behaviourism and for some basic ideas and notions such as the category mistake and his
distinction between ‘knowing how’ and ‘knowing that’. Thus, in modern handbooks his
position is usually labelled as ‘behaviouristic’, since Ryle wanted to show that most of our
psychological or mental concepts are dispositional rather than descriptions of processes or
things occurring in a mysterious entity called the mind.
However, Ryle’s philosophical career spans more than 50 years, and he wrote
much more than The Concept of Mind. My first aim in this book, therefore, is to trace his
philosophical development from the early 1930s till the time of his death in 1976. A second
aim follows from this first one: in discussing not only The Concept of Mind but also his
work predating and postdating this work, it will become clear that the label ‘behaviourist’ is
highly infelicitous. Ryle was not a behaviourist, not even a logical behaviourist (we shall
come to these descriptions later). The qualification is important, since it is this label which
has done great harm to Ryle’s reputation at a time when behaviourism fell into discredit. By
correcting this dominant interpretation of Ryle as a behaviourist I hope to show that his
philosophical position and methods still have a lot to say to us. His analysis of what makes
sense and nonsense in philosophy and how philosophical problems arise out of linguistic
confusion has not lost anything of its topicality.
In order to trace the philosophical views of Ryle I shall not only study his
published writings but shall also use – for the first time – unpublished sources. This may
come as a surprise, for it is commonly believed that Ryle had destroyed early drafts, papers
and anything that could be used as a kind of Nachlass by later historians. It was a collection
of papers written by Ryle and posthumously edited by René Meyer (1993) that first made it
clear to me that at least some material had escaped Ryle’s destructive hand. Soon after I had
started my PhD-work in 2001, I found out that there does exist a sort of ‘Ryle Collection’ at
Linacre College, virtually unknown to the scholarly world, which consists of a substantial
part of what was once his own philosophical library and several unpublished documents. I
also found several minor collections of Ryle material – letters, notes, typescripts of
conversations, correspondences and papers – at various other places in Oxford, e.g. the
New Bodleian, the Philosophy Library and Nuffield College. The correspondences include
an important exchange between Ryle and Collingwood. These collections will be described
1
To my knowledge, only three book-length studies of Ryle have appeared: Lucie Antoniol’s book Lire Ryle
Aujourd’hui (1993) which does not provide much historical and philosophical background information; Ramoino-
Melilli’s Filosofia analisi in Gilbert Ryle (1983); and William Lyons, Gilbert Ryle. An Introduction to his
Philosophy (1980) – a useful but typically introductory book. The first two appeared in, respectively, French and
Italian, have not been translated into English and have been – probably at least partly for this reason – generally
neglected by British and American commentators.
in Appendix 2, and I shall draw at times extensively on it. It is to be expected that more
material will turn up. Recently, Brian McGuinness, for example, drew my attention to an
early letter written by Ryle in 1926 to his former tutor, H. J. Paton. It reveals Ryle’s early
interests and readings. Influenced by Windelband, Ryle tried to transcend the opposition
between realism and idealism, an attempt which prefigures his famous attack on Cartesian
dualism which was also motivated by a wish to transcend this opposition between realism
and idealism or, to put it roughly, the reduction of mind to matter and the reduction of
matter to mind. Since the publication-cum-study of this letter has been a co-production of
McGuinness and me (McGuinness and Vrijen 2006), I shall leave it out of my dissertation.
While this book is, I believe, the first study on this scale of Ryle’s philosophical
development, I have not attempted to discuss each and every piece he wrote. I have omitted
from consideration his reviews of other philosophers. Ryle is believed to have held a low
opinion of historical scholarship: The Concept of Mind, for instance, does not display
scholarly erudition and there are hardly any footnotes. Nonetheless, his reviews reveal a
deep knowledge of such diverse philosophers as Plato (on whom he wrote a book as well),
Aristotle, Kant, Heidegger, Frege, Russell, Wittgenstein and others. It would, however,
require a book of its own to discuss his interpretations of all these philosophers and to
examine all possible cross-connections between his and their works. I have made two
notable exceptions: Wittgenstein, who was a good friend and colleague of Ryle, and
Collingwood, with whom Ryle had an interesting and only recently published exchange of
opinions.
This dissertation starts with a biographical chapter on Ryle, based on written
sources (both published and unpublished) as well as on interviews which I held with several
of Ryle’s former friends, students, colleagues and relatives. Chapter 2, 3 and 4 follow a
chronological order. They tell the story of Ryle’s earliest philosophical papers, The Concept
of Mind and his later writings which focus mainly on thinking and related notions. We will
see that Ryle’s position changes significantly in the 1930s but from around 1938 remains
largely the same, even though the focus and tone could of course change from time to time,
dependent on the problems at stake.
Chapter 2 offers an analysis of Ryle’s earliest philosophical writings. Some of
these early papers must be read against the background of the discussion between Idealists
and Realists, which then dominated the philosophical scene. The chapter describes the
development from his early denotational theory of meaning – largely influenced by Russell
– to a non-denotational and – as will be explained in this chapter – a ‘non-homogeneous’
theory of meaning. This went hand in hand with a change of focus from a search for an
ideal language to a position more similar to that of the later Wittgenstein.
The third chapter discusses The Concept of Mind, focusing on Ryle’s method, his
main target (i.e. Cartesian dualism), and his attempt to provide what he called the ‘logical
geography’ of mental concepts (Ryle 1949a, 10). I shall then discuss in some detail the
category-mistake which Ryle attributes to Cartesian dualism. This is followed by an
examination of some main responses to The Concept of Mind, particularly the reviews by
Hampshire (1950), Austin (1950) and Ayer (1970), in order to illustrate how the work was
received then. This will also help us to understand Ryle’s later development. Finally, I shall
argue that the label ‘behaviourist’, which was put on Ryle both then and now, is
misleading.
Chapter 4 deals with Ryle’s philosophical work after The Concept of Mind when
he feels the need to clarify some of his positions. The theoretical claims which he had
presented in his earlier papers such as ‘Categories’ (1938) and ‘Philosophical Arguments’
(1945) were apparently not a sufficient justification for the method employed in The
6
Concept of Mind, which itself hardly made its theoretical framework explicit. Hence, Ryle
expanded on his ‘old’ theoretical account of how to do philosophy, which resulted in
several theoretical papers in the late fifties and early sixties. Additionally, in 1953 he gave
the Tarner Lectures in Cambridge, published as Dilemmas (1954a). The purpose of these
lectures was largely similar to that of The Concept of Mind, namely to show what ‘good
philosophy’ is by providing examples. The great majority of his later writings, however, is
dedicated to the notion of thinking, which kept fascinating and troubling him until the time
of his death. In these later papers Ryle sharpens, and sometimes changes, his earlier
thoughts from The Concept of Mind.
Chapters 5 and 6 offer two case-studies of Ryle’s relationship with two eminent
philosophers of the twentieth century: Robin Collingwood and Ludwig Wittgenstein. A
discussion of the relationship between Ryle and Wittgenstein (Chapter 6) will, hopefully,
shed light on the writings of both. Although resemblances between them have been noticed
(e.g. by Peter Hacker, Rom Harré, O. K. Bouwsma and Waismann), this chapter aims at
further illuminating similarities and dissimilarities between the two philosophers, using for
the first time material from the Ryle archives. The ‘Ryle Collection’ contains three copies
of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus, each of them heavily annotated by Ryle, as well as a less
heavily annotated copy of Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations. Another ‘new’
source of information, also found in the ‘Ryle Collection’, is an unpublished discussion of
Wittgenstein’s early ‘Notes on Logic’ (1913). Obviously, this is a huge theme, and I have
limited myself to some general lines of thought and interpretations without pretending in
any way to give a complete and detailed account of Wittgenstein’s views and different
Wittgenstein interpretations.
The choice for Collingwood needs more explanation, since his name is not
commonly associated with Ryle. Indeed, they never paid any particular attention to each
other’s philosophical writings, except on one occasion in 1935. However, a few striking
similarities between them (e.g. their rejection of Cartesian dualism and their idea of
intelligence as ‘knowing how’) have been brought to our attention by Collingwood scholars
such as Alan Donagan, David Boucher and W. J. van der Dussen. When first reading the
correspondence between Ryle and Collingwood in 2002, still unpublished then, I was
struck by their mutual misunderstandings and misinterpretations, which – as I shall argue in
Chapter 5 – are the result of their different views on the nature of philosophy. At the same
time there was the need to qualify the similarities between Ryle and Collingwood as they
were presented by Donagan, Boucher and Van der Dussen. An analysis of the
correspondence and the differences and similarities between Ryle and Collingwood will be
offered in Chapter 5.
Ryle put an important stamp on British philosophy in the twentieth century, but the
reverse is true as well: his own philosophical career was shaped by the historical and
philosophical developments of his time. In this book these developments will be taken into
account, though it would be out of the question, given the nature of my project, to let the
background become the foreground. I shall be pleased if my study helps to make Ryle a
respectable philosopher again, whose views are still worth studying, once we have
recognized that the label of behaviourism is misleading. An exposition of Ryle’s
philosophical development, based on published and unpublished sources, is the central task
I have set myself in this dissertation.
7
8
Gilbert Ryle – A Biographical Sketch
Chapter 1
Gilbert Ryle – A Biographical

Sketch
Family Background and Childhood

The roots of Gilbert Ryle’s family lie in Lancashire (in a place called Ruyhal or Ryehill).
His ancestors moved to Cheshire in the 16th Century and became prominent in the spinning
and silk industry in Macclesfield (one ancestor married a daughter of Sir Richard
Arkwright, who invented the Spinning Jenny). Gilbert’s great-grandfather became a big
man in the silk business, owned a private bank and was knighted as Sir John Ryle. He was a
Member of Parliament for a short time. His eldest son, John Charles Ryle, was destined to
follow his father into the business and politics, but unfortunately the latter lost nearly all his
money through the actions of an untrustworthy partner. As a result, John Charles was sent
into the Church. Here he was a great success, and eventually became the first Bishop of
Liverpool and a leader of the Evangelical movement in the Church.
Bishop Ryle’s eldest son Reginald (Gilbert’s father) became a general practitioner.
Influenced by Darwin and the Huxleys he abandoned religion and was a declared agnostic.
He married Catherine Scott (herself one of 14 children) and they had ten children; Gilbert
and his twin-sister Mary were the eighth and ninth. A legend runs through the Ryle family
that Gilbert was born first, but did not look too good and the midwife said: ‘leave him and
concentrate on saving the second baby’, but the doctor father was not so pessimistic and,
applying simple medical principles, picked young Gilbert up and swung him round his head
to get the blood flowing through the brain – as Gilbert Ryle’s nephew Michael Ryle
expressed it – ‘an early application of the concept of mind!’2 Forced upon them by their
father, young Gilbert and his siblings always had an ice-cold bath in the morning. Gilbert
kept faithful to this habit for a long time. His twin-sister Mary’s adopted daughter Janet
would later also be introduced into this ritual by him.
Besides being a general practitioner, Gilbert Ryle’s father was an amateur
astronomer and a philosopher. This greatly influenced Ryle, who literally read everything
he came across. He read many of the chiefly philosophical and semi-philosophical books in
his father’s large and diverse library. Another thing that influenced Ryle was his parents’
agnosticism, which stimulated him and his siblings to have critical thoughts about the
orthodoxies of Christianity, orthodoxies which naturally prevailed at school. Perhaps partly
influenced by this departure from official thought, Ryle had a tendency to deviate from the
official lines throughout the rest of his life.
When Ryle was a schoolboy at Brighton College, the First World War naturally
played a large role in his life, as in everyone else’s life. In his autobiographical essay Ryle
2
Personal communication with Michael Ryle, 2002.
9
further mentions his early recognized and never overcome disability to study and remember
facts.
I remember another master saying, “Ryle, you are very good on theories, but you are very bad on
facts.” My attempts to repair this latter weakness were short-lived and unsuccessful. (Ryle 1970,
1)
Life as a Student
In 1919 Ryle went to Oxford with a classical scholarship from Queen’s College. He started
working for Classical Honours Moderations, but after a few terms he knew that this was not
really his type of study.
I lacked the ear, the nostrils, the palate, and the toes that are needed for excellence in linguistic
and literary studies. (Ryle 1970, 2)
His main problem with the Classics taught in Oxford at that time was that it did not provide
students with unsolved problems to think about. To Ryle, Classics felt too much like an
exercise, an exercise that could be done in preparation for the real job. Logic was such a
real job. Ryle called it ‘a grown-up subject, in which there were still unsolved problems’
(Ryle 1970, 2). Unfortunately, at the time logic was as good as dead in Oxford.
Logic, save for Aristotelian scholarship, was in the doldrums. Little was heard now even of the
semi-psychological topics discussed in Bradley’s mis-titled Principles of Logic. Russell’s
Principles of Mathematics had been published when I [Ryle] was three; twenty-five years later it
and Principia Mathematica were still only the objects of Oxonian pleasantries. The names of
Boole, De Morgan, Venn, Jevons, McColl, Frege, Peano, Johnson, and J. M. Keynes did not yet
crop up in lectures or discussions. In the bibliography of the Kneales’ The Development of Logic
no Oxford entries, save contributions to scholarship, belonged to the half century from Lewis
Caroll (1896). (Ryle 1970, 4)
Despite his problems with the classics taught in Oxford, in 1921 Ryle gained first class
honours in classical honours moderations. After that, he worked for Greats in ancient and
modern philosophy, and in Greek and Roman history, and in his fifth year he worked for
the new school of Modern Greats, the honour school of Philosophy, Politics and Economics
(PPE). This school was primarily designed for undergraduates without a Greek-education
and was meant to give them a study comparable with Greats, and to qualify them for a
diversity of careers. In 1923 Ryle gained first class honours in Greats and in 1924 in
Modern Greats. He was invited to sit the Modern Greats finals in order to set a standard for
first class performance.
The founding of PPE greatly influenced Oxford philosophy. The number of
undergraduates reading honours philosophy expanded rapidly, and more teachers in
philosophy were appointed. Because of the larger number of teachers per college it became
quite common that one of them would be exempt from teaching Plato, and so could
specialize, for example, in Kant, something which had been inconceivable before the
founding of PPE. And because the demand for teachers grew fast whereas the number of
available teachers only grew steadily, teachers often had the liberty to teach whatever
subject they wanted. This led to a great variety of subjects taught in Oxford.
From the very start of his studies in Oxford, Ryle had a great philosophical
curiosity. He became a member of the undergraduate’s Jowett Society and, while not
10
appreciating Plato’s Republic, which was at the time the ‘bible’ in Oxford, he read a lot of
philosophical writings neglected at Oxford. Ryle’s tutor was H. J. Paton, a Crocean who
knew how to motivate the young Ryle in doing philosophy.
(…) but for me his [Paton’s] untiring “Now, Ryle, what exactly do you mean by …?” was an
admirable spur. (Ryle 1970, 2)
In 1924, probably influenced by his tutor, Ryle started acquiring some reading knowledge
of Italian and read some works by Benedetto Croce and even more by Giovanni Gentile. At
the end of his philosophical career he did not think that these Italian Idealists influenced his
later thinking much, and wrote that the only thing he could remember having learned from
Croce was that philosophical thinking, which in Croce’s work is the highest floor of the
theoretical part of the Spirit, is Good. This led Ryle into believing that Bertrand Russell’s
philosophy, which was after all philosophical thinking, could not be Bad, and that he
should read it despite the fact that at the time most Oxford philosophers despised Russell’s
philosophy.
Then, since philosophical thinking is a Good Thing, Bertrand Russell’s thinking, in so far as it is
philosophical, cannot be a Bad Thing, yet that is what Oxford philosophers ostracise it for being.
So, despite them, I ought to look at it, lest I miss something that ought not to be missed. (Ryle,
1970, 3)
Ryle studied Russell and was in fact influenced by him in several ways, as will be
discussed later in this dissertation.
During his time as a student, Ryle was not only interested in reading books and
studying, but he also participated in many other academic activities. He was, for example,
captain of the Queen’s College Boat Club in 1923.
Christ Church College

In October 1924, Ryle became junior lecturer in philosophy at Christ Church. At the time,
the senior philosophy tutor was H. W. Blunt, who soon retired and made place for M. B.
Foster. In 1925 Ryle was elected a Student and tutor in philosophy at Christ Church. From
1937 to 1938 he was junior proctor of the university.
In 1924 the situation in Oxford was pretty much the same as during Ryle’s time as
a student, except for the changes PPE had initiated. Still nothing of great philosophical
interest was going on. The atmosphere in philosophical Oxford was stuffy, philosophers
generally stuck to their own ideas, and publications were not encouraged or even really
appreciated. Part of the reason for this attitude was the long Oxford tradition of studying
classics.
Whereas the majority of the Cambridge philosophers were trained mathematicians or scientists,
the Oxford realists had read classics, a training which, it seemed to Ayer, had given them a
stubborn disapproval of new ideas. (Rogers 2000, 67)
After Harold Joachim had replaced the only Realist professor, John Cook Wilson, in 1915
as Wykeham Professor of Logic, all three professors were British Idealists. Harold Joachim
was Wykeham Professor of Logic from 1919-1935. The other Idealist professors were John
Alexander Stewart, who was White’s Professor of Moral Philosophy 1897-1927, and the
11
second was John Alexander Smith, who was Waynflete Professor of Metaphysical
Philosophy 1910-1935. Both were influenced by the Italian Idealists Gentile and Croce.
Other important Idealists were J. L. Stocks and H. J. Paton. The early predecessors of the
Oxford Idealists were philosophers such as Green, author of the influential Prolegomena to
Ethics, Edward Caird, Francis Herbert Bradley, Bernard Bosanquet, William Wallace and
Robert Lewis Nettleship. Important Realists were Cook Wilson, H. A. Prichard and H. W.
B. Joseph.
After a long and glorious reign of Idealism under the presence of T. H. Green
(1836-1882) and F. H. Bradley (1846-1924), Oxford philosophy had been turned into a
parochial matter. The basic issue discussed was between Idealists, who thought that our
reality was determined by mind, and Realists, who held that reality was independent of
mind. Unlike their colleague Realists in Cambridge, Oxford Realists rejected
epistemological ‘intermediaries’ in perception, such as sense-data.
The historical approach which Oxford philosophy had adopted from humanities
did not help to make Oxford an exciting place for philosophers. In 1914, T. S. Eliot, an
American graduate student at Merton College, wrote:
I do not think that anyone would come to Oxford to seek for anything very original or subtle in
philosophy. (Prest 1993, 218)
The fact that logic was a totally off-side subject which no one took seriously, did not make
things better. The Oxford philosophers, such as Collingwood and Joachim, were totally
isolated from the much more exciting developments that took place in Cambridge, with
philosophers like G. E. Moore and Bertrand Russell, and elsewhere.
Henry Price was the first link between Oxford and Cambridge. He went to
Cambridge and soon tried to convince the philosophical society in Oxford that it could and
should learn from Cambridge. Ryle realised that Price was right:
Soon Oxford’s hermetically conserved atmosphere began to smell stuffy even to ourselves. (Ryle
1970, 5)
In his autobiographical essay Ryle mentions two developments in the second half of the
1920s that helped to change its insulated situation. The first was that Ryle and some other
junior philosophy tutors began to attend the annual Joint Sessions of the Mind Association
and the Aristotelian Society, which enabled them to exchange ideas with their colleagues.
At one of these Joint Sessions Ryle met Ludwig Wittgenstein, and the two men became
friends.3 During the 1930s they occasionally went on walking holidays together. In his
autobiographical essay Ryle describes his occasional visits to the Moral Sciences Club at
Cambridge as exclusively devoted to Wittgenstein. The visitors of the Club only talked
about him and references to other philosophers were jeered away. Although Ryle and
Wittgenstein were friends, Ryle considered this attitude unhealthy for the students and for
Wittgenstein himself.
It made me resolve, not indeed to be a philosophical polyglot, but to avoid being a monoglot; and
most of all to avoid being one Monoglot’s echo, even though he was a genius and a friend. (Ryle
1970, 11)
3
After World War II, the friendship was not as close as before after Ryle had written a very positive article on one
of Karl Popper’s essays, in which Popper had been very negative about Wittgenstein. Wittgenstein could not
appreciate this. Furthermore, Wittgenstein accused Ryle of borrowing other men’s thoughts, a type of accusation
which was not untypical of Wittgenstein. Cf. Chapter 6.
12
It was not difficult for Ryle to avoid being a monoglot and study more thinkers than only
Wittgenstein. Both as a student and as a teacher he had to study and teach other
philosophers, such as Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Hume, Kant and Husserl, thoroughly.
Ryle considered it fruitful to compare some of the thoughts of these philosophers to
Wittgenstein’s, because he thought that these comparisons could often be elucidatory of
both. In Chapter 6 the philosophical relation between Ryle and Wittgenstein will be
discussed.
The second development that made philosophical life in Oxford less closed-off,
and more exciting for Ryle, was the establishment of the ‘Wee Teas’ at the end of the
1920s. ‘Wee Teas’ was an informal dinner club with as its members Ryle and five other
junior philosophers. Its name was a parody on a famous Scots sect, and also on ‘the
Thursday Teas’, which was a weekly tea gathering of teachers of philosophy dominated by
the much older senior lecturers. The members of ‘Wee Teas’ met once a fortnight (during
term) and during these meetings the host of the evening provided a discussion-opening
paper after dinner. The original members were Ryle, Price, W. F. R. Hardie, C. S. Lewis, T.
D. Weldon and J. D. Mabbott. At various times, other members were H. H. Cox, O. S.
Franks, William C. Kneale, W. G. Maclagan and M. B. Foster. The members of ‘Wee Teas’
tried out new ideas on one another until the middle of the 1960s. During the meetings there
was a friendly and stimulating atmosphere.
We never aimed at unanimity or achieved it; but we could try out anything on one another
without anyone being shocked or rude or polite. Each of us had five friends and no allies. (Ryle
1970, 6)
Ryle and some of his contemporaries also tried to free themselves from the isolation of
Oxford by attending lectures at other universities and teaching off-centre subjects. Kneale
attended Husserl’s lectures in Freiburg and was interested in Brentano, and Ryle taught a
course on ‘Logical Objectivism: Bolzano, Brentano, Husserl, and Meinong’. Together with
Oliver Shewell Franks (1905-1992) he also visited Husserl in 1927 in order to hear more
about his ‘system’.4 After this meeting Husserl started sending them notes on his lectures –
as shown by a postcard from Husserl in the ‘Ryle Collection’.
At the time, British philosophers who were interested in continental philosophy
were extremely rare. As Anthony Quinton expressed it:
British and American philosophers showed hardly any interest in what was going on in
continental Europe. (…) A solitary and surprising exception is to be found in the earliest
interests of that most British of modern British philosophers, Gilbert Ryle. He made a close and
sympathetic study of Brentano, Husserl and the phenomenological movement and his first
substantial publication was a long review of Heidegger’s Being and Time (…). (Quinton 1998,
61-62)
When Ryle was in his mid-twenties he and many of his contemporaries started to worry
about what philosophy really was.
I must have been near my middle twenties when good-humoured fraternal scepticisms about the
existence of my subject showed me that it really was part of my business to be able to tell
people, including myself, what philosophy is. (Ryle 1970, 6)
4
The story is that when Ryle and Franks visited Husserl Frau Husserl wanted them to admit that her husband was
as great as Plato, but the two men were only willing to admit that he might be as great as Kant.
13
Philosophy had only become a separate academic subject (separated from theology,
economics, psychology and the other sciences) a relatively short time ago. Philosophy
itself, as well as the other sciences, was asking for a clear description of what philosophy,
as distinct from the other sciences, was. First, over-influenced by ‘Socrates’ fruitless hunts
for definitions’, as Ryle himself declares in his autobiographical essay, he was only
prepared to declare vaguely that what philosophers examine is the meaning of expressions.
Only much later was Ryle prepared to state that the relevant questions to philosophy are
‘Why does this or that expression make nonsense?’ and ‘What sort of nonsense does it
make?’ instead of ‘What does this or that expression mean?’. Ryle thought that
philosophising essentially incorporates argumentation. Therefore, he became interested in
the theory of reasoning, primarily in the theory of Meanings (and Nonsense):
I laboured upon the doublets: – Sense and Reference, Intension and Extension, Concept and
Object, Propositions and Constituents, Objectives and Objects, Facts and Things, Formal
Concepts and Real Concepts, Proper Names and Descriptions, and Subjects and Predicates.
(Ryle 1970, 7)
When Ryle became a don, he started to teach himself German and started thoroughly to
study Edmund Husserl’s Logische Untersuchungen, and later also Alexius Meinong, Franz
Brentano, Bernard Bolzano and Gottlob Frege. Husserl interested Ryle because of the fact
that he took seriously the opposition between Sense and Nonsense, but he was not happy
with Husserl’s way of dealing with this opposition. Ryle was primarily interested in
Husserl’s intentionalist, anti-psychologist theory of Meaning. He also read and discussed
Martin Heidegger’s Sein und Zeit.
In the 1930s Ryle was influenced by the Vienna Circle, which was formed around
1924 and was led by Schlick. Other members were Otto Neurath, Friedrich Waismann,
Edgar Zilsel, Béla von Juhos, Felix Kaufmann, Herbert Feigl, Victor Kraft, Philipp Frank,
Karl Menger, Kurt Gödel, Hans Hahn, and from 1926 Rudolf Carnap. According to the
Circle, the task of philosophy was logical analysis. Traditional philosophy and metaphysics
were to be replaced by the investigation of the logical syntax of the language of science. By
clarifying meaningful concepts and propositions, the Circle wanted to lay the foundations
for science and mathematics. The principle of verification, the principle that the meaning of
a proposition is its method of verification, played a large role in the Circle’s work.
Ryle and his colleagues were not really troubled by the Circle’s demolition of
Metaphysics – after all they were not doing metaphysics. They were interested in the
Principles of Verifiability and Falsifiability, although they did not start using them as
criteria. Because the Vienna Circle equated Metaphysics with Nonsense and Sense with
Science, the question arose where Ryle and the other ‘anti-nonsense’ philosophers
belonged. What were they doing? Were they dealing with metaphysical sentences?
Ryle and others soon began to think that the Circle’s dichotomy ‘Either Science or
Nonsense’ did not leave enough room for nuances. Why could it not be the case that the
writings of philosophers in the past which did not meet the Circle’s qualifications for
Science, contained a few significant things after all? They started to look in the history of
philosophy for possible interesting ideas and notions.
Naturally we began, in a patronising mood, by looking for and finding in the Stoics, say, or
Locke, primitive adumbrations of our own most prized thoughts. But before long some of them
seemed to move more like pioneers than like toddlers, and to talk to us across the ages more like
colleagues than like pupils; and then we forgot our pails of whitewash. (Ryle 1970, 11)
14
In 1933 their common interest in the development of analytic philosophy led John Wisdom,
his cousin J. O. Wisdom, Margaret MacDonald, Karl Britton, Max Black, Austin Duncan-
Jones, A. J. Ayer and the seniors Richard Braithwaite, Susan Stebbing and C. A. Mace to
approach Blackwell’s to publish a new journal: Analysis. The first number appeared in
November 1933. Austin Duncan-Jones became the journal’s editor and the editorial board
consisted of Gilbert Ryle, Susan Stebbing and C. A. Mace. Regularly, competitions were
organized in Analysis for the best solutions to philosophical problems. In ‘Fifty Years of
Philosophy and Philosophers’ (Ryle 1976c, 382-383), Ryle mentioned these competitions
to show that, to his great pleasure, contributions to Analysis were often ‘trial-runs’ and not
‘didactic Messages’5.
In 1938-1939 Ryle helped to move the Brentano Society from Prague to Oxford. In
1931 the Society was established by the Czech president T. G. Masaryk for the purpose of
investigating, securing and further developing the work of his teacher and friend, Franz
Brentano. He used part of a donation given to him by the Czecho-Slovakian nation on the
occasion of the 1930 jubilee, to provide the financial means for the Brentano Society. In a
letter dated 30 December 1938, Georgij Katkov, the Society’s archivist, wrote that sudden
political changes threatened the future existence of the Society in Prague. Professor O.
Kraus, the Society’s chairman, had been dismissed from his university chair and prevented
from any other activity by the cultural policy of the government, which was inspired by the
Nazis. And, suddenly the late president’s donation had become a source of danger to the
Society’s existence. It was considered to transfer their activities to another country. Oxford
University was not unwilling to offer a home for the continuance of the work. Ryle and
David Ross were appointed to negotiate with the Brentano Society, and on 31 January 1939
invited the Society to move to Oxford, to be incorporated in the University. But first several
problems needed to be conquered; the Czech government was strongly against any transfer
of funds to Oxford. Finally they did agree with some sort of co-operation with the Oxford
University, and the Brentano Society could then move to Oxford. The originals of the
Brentano Archives of Prague were saved and transported by one of the last civilian
aeroplanes which left for England, just before the war started. For a while the papers were
kept at the Bodleian Library in Oxford. From there they were transferred to Northwestern
University, Illinois, where at that time John Brentano (son of Franz Brentano) was teaching
physics. Finally they were deposited at the Houghton Library in Cambridge, Mass.6
Ryle’s most important and influential essay published during the time he lectured
at Christ Church was probably ‘Systematically Misleading Expressions’ (1932b), followed
by ‘Categories’ (1938). On the former he wrote much later:
5
An example of such a competition was the one in which the question contestants had to try to solve was: ‘If a
distraction makes me forget my headache, does it make my head stop aching, or does it only stop me feeling it
aching?’ As Ryle reported in Analysis 14, 1954: ‘The selection of my short list was not easy. Some competitors
helped me by spending a lot of their short space in pronouncing generalities about the Nature of a Philosophical
Puzzle, or about the Deficiencies of Ordinary Usage and the like. I excluded them without hesitation. They were
asked not to talk about doing philosophy, but to do a bit of it.’ (Ryle 1954c, 51) The ones that were short-listed
‘saw that the concepts of attending, heeding, noticing and concentrating are cardinal to the puzzle. But though
they operated efficiently with these concepts, they did not operate enough upon them. Much more, indeed
everything, remains to be said, and a good deal requires to be unsaid about this family of concepts. I had hoped to
steal an idea or two on this matter from the entries, but have not been lucky.’ (Ryle 1954c, 51-52)
6
In the New Bodleian Library in Oxford there is an unpublished letter on the transfer (Top Oxon. C. 870, fol. 18-
34). Wilhelm Baumgartner, co-founder of the Internationale Franz Brentano Gesellschaft was so kind as to give
me some additional information.
15
It is certain that when I wrote “Systematically Misleading Expressions” I was still under the
direct influence of the notion of an “ideal language”—a doctrine according to which there were a
certain number of logical forms which one could somehow dig up by scratching away at the
earth which covered them. (Ryle 1961b, 305)
When he wrote ‘Systematically Misleading Expressions’ Ryle clearly believed in objective

logical forms of facts. Therefore, his early position is often referred to as logical atomism7.
As early as in his ‘Categories’ (1938), Ryle abandoned the idea of objective logical forms
of facts, as well as that of an ideal language. However, in the line of thought of
‘Systematically Misleading Expressions’ he still focused on syntactical and grammatical
differences between expressions and viewed philosophy as trying to apprehend category
differences between expressions. According to Ryle, to know to what category an
expression belongs is to answer the questions, ‘In what sorts of non-absurd sentences and in
what positions in them can the expression ‘so and so’ enter?’ (Ryle 1938, 180) and ‘What
sorts of sentences would be rendered absurd by the substitution for one of their sentence-
factors of the expression ‘so and so’?’ (Ibid.). We shall discuss these and other early papers
in Chapter 2.
The style and method Ryle first developed in this period, which is most clearly
present in ‘Systematically Misleading Expressions’, became characteristic of his
philosophy. Ryle uses a lot of everyday examples to make his point, in deliberate contrast
to the abstract and technical style of earlier generations of philosophers (Idealists and
Realists) in Oxford. This background should be kept in kind when people later criticize him
for using metaphors, analogies and examples too often.
Ayer and the Vienna Circle

In 1929 Ayer first met Ryle, who would become his tutor in philosophy at Christ Church.
Ryle soon started to appreciate Ayer’s qualities.
(…) I must have shown some critical acumen, since it was not long before Ryle gave me to
understand that he thought I had the makings of a philosopher. (Ayer 1977, 80)
For Austin Ryle was an important example of someone who knew more of philosophy than
what was taught in Oxford only:
It was through Gilbert Ryle that I first learned the work of Ludwig Wittgenstein. Though the
English translation of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus had been published in
1922, and he himself had been working in Cambridge since 1929, his ideas had hardly penetrated
to Oxford. I think it likely that many of the college tutors had not even heard of him. Here too
Gilbert was one of the exceptions and he put me on to the Tractatus early in my final year. (Ayer
1977, 115)
In Ayer’s last term as an undergraduate (probably Spring term 1932) he read a paper on
Wittgenstein’s Tractatus to the Jowett Society:
I believe, however, that I am right in thinking that this was the first occasion in Oxford on which
there had been any public discussion of Wittgenstein’s work. (Ayer 1977, 119)
7
Ryle himself in fact never described his early position in terms of ‘logical atomism’.
16
After Ayer’s examination for Greats he became a lecturer at Christ Church. Ryle took him
to Cambridge to introduce him to Wittgenstein.
There were enough lecturers at the time, and Ayer was given permission to have
two lecture-free terms. He would have liked to spend these terms in Cambridge to learn
from Wittgenstein. Ryle suggested, however, that Ayer went to Vienna in order to learn as
much as possible about the Vienna Circle, since hardly anything was known about it in
England. Ryle had met Schlick at an international congress in Oxford in 1930 and had been
enormously impressed by the leader of the Vienna Circle. Ayer gave in and went to Vienna
in December 1932, only after Ryle had assured him that his deficient knowledge of German
would not be a real problem. Schlick spoke English well and Ayer would have time enough
to learn some German. He was immediately introduced into the Circle and regularly
reported to Ryle.8
Ayer attended Schlick’s lectures at the University of Vienna, which were on the
philosophy of science. He also attended the Vienna Circle meetings, held once a fortnight
on Thursday. Another visitor of the Circle at that time was the American philosopher W. V.
O. Quine. Wittgenstein was also in Vienna at that time and Ayer was interested in learning
from him too. However, Wittgenstein refused to attend the Circle’s meetings and only
communicated with the Circle through Schlick and Waismann, and this was how Ayer was
informed of Witgensteinian developments. Waismann and Wittgenstein even planned to
write a book together in which Waismann would write down Wittgenstein’s ideas in a
systematic way, but because of many disagreements Wittgenstein ended their contact after
Schlick’s death in 1936. In 1937 Waismann left for Cambridge with the manuscript and
kept reworking the material, here and there including his own ideas. He did not succeed in
publishing it during his life.
Many years later Ryle would play an important role in preventing this manuscript
from being lost forever. Ryle visited Waismann’s appartment only a few days after his
death in Oxford in 1959 when he saw Waismann’s landlady throw away large amounts of
paper into the trash. He decided to have a look and found papers, note cards and other
material written by Waismann. He hailed a passing postman’s van and obtained two large
mailbags in which he stuffed Waismann’s writings and stored them in Magdalen Tower.
Later, Rom Harré worked on the Waismann legacy and in 1965 he published Friedrich
Waismann’s, The Principles of Linguistic Philosophy.
Second World War

From the very beginning of the Second World War men were recruited to the armed forces.
But university teaching was on the list of reserved occupations. When university teachers
were over twenty-five they were not conscripted. Later this age was raised to thirty. So, at
8
One of the letters Ayer wrote to Ryle during his stay in Vienna has been published in the Linacre Journal (1999).
Something that becomes clear from this letter is the Circle’s adoration of Wittgenstein. ‘Of Weisman’s [sic]
philosophy I have learned very little except that he thinks Ramsey solved the problem of Universals. He is the
expert on Wittgenstein, about whom he has been writing a book for the last five or ten years. Wittgenstein is
treated here as a second Pythagoras and Weismann [sic] is the high priest of the cult. If one praises Ramsey they
say ‘of course he got it all from Wittgenstein’ or Moore ‘we hear he attends all of Wittgenstein’s lectures but
doesn’t always understand them’ or Braithwaite ‘Wittgenstein does not speak well of his philosophy’. They say
here that Wittgenstein has changed his views a great deal since the publication of the Tractatus. It has only been
divulged to a few what these changes are, and they are as secretive about it all as the initiates of a mystery
religion.’ (Ayer 1933, 31)
17
first nothing really changed in Oxford because all teachers were over twenty-five and most
by far over thirty.
The Brigade of Guards did not participate in the normal process of recruitment, but
had the privilege to choose its own officers. Jock Lewis, a former student of Ryle’s who
had become an officer in the Welsh Guards, introduced Ryle to the colonel of his regiment.
Ryle was offered a commission, despite the fact that his ancestors were not Welsh. He
joined the Welsh Guards together with Ayer and Eric Gray, who was at the time a tutor in
Roman History at Christ Church. Ryle, who was the oldest, joined his regiment directly as
an officer, but Ayer and Gray had to go through a two-month training first.
Many of Ryle’s fellow officers were artists and writers, e.g. Richard Llewellyn
Lloyd, who was a novelist, and the painters Rex Whistler and Simon Elwes. The officers
did not have to occupy themselves with taking care of their equipment or their uniforms.
They had so-called ‘batmen’ (soldier-servants) to take care of these jobs. Later, Ryle used
to say that he had had a ‘good’ war. He seemed to have liked his time as an officer.
Gilbert was naturally at home in the officer’s mess, where he was called the Professor and very
much liked and respected. (Ayer, 1977, 236)
First, Ryle stayed in the training battalion. Later, he joined the historian Hugh Trevor-
Roper in a counter-espionage unit. Stuart Hampshire also worked within this unit. Ayer
once claimed that perhaps the refreshing break from teaching philosophy positively
contributed to Ryle’s later philosophical productivity.
He [Ryle] found intellectual refreshment in these breaks in the routine of academic life and it
was almost immediately after the war that he began to write his masterpiece, The Concept of
Mind. (Ayer 1977, 236-237)
When Ryle finally went home in 1945, he had the rank of major.
Magdalen College
After the war, the centre of analytic philosophy was moving from Cambridge towards
Oxford. Undoubtedly, this had something to do with the unexpectedly high number of
graduate students who came to study in Oxford9 and with one of Ryle’s greatest
contributions to Oxford philosophy, namely his role in the invention of the B.Phil. This
new degree was introduced in 1946 and first examined in 1948.
Ryle and some of his colleagues, especially Mabbott, thought that both the D.Phil.
and the B.Litt. had many weaknesses. The B.Litt. encouraged no discussions with other
philosophers besides one’s supervisor. There were no relevant lectures either. All the
students working on their B.Litt. were writing a thesis on a specialized subject in total
isolation. And the statute of the D.Phil. first required that the thesis written was ‘fit for
publication’, but this appeared to be too demanding, e.g. Collingwood failed every
candidate he examined (cf. Mabbott 1986, 145). Then the requirement was altered in such a
way that a thesis should be ‘in a form fit for publication’, which was a very vague criterion,
leading to an enormous variation in the examination. Furthermore, both the B.Litt. and the
D.Phil. were too narrow in order to be a proper preparation for teaching philosophy.
9
In pre-war Oxford (post)graduate studies in philosophy had been rare. Usually, undergraduates who did very well
in their bachelor examinations were directly appointed to lectureships or even fellowships. (Rée 1993, 6)
18
Besides, these degrees were seen as superfluous for Oxford graduates because the Final
Honour Schools offered them a proper preparation for teaching philosophy. The many
disadvantages of the B.Litt. and the D.Phil. to philosophy made Mabbott and Ryle decide to
try to found a new degree, the B.Phil.
Mabbott’s task was primarily to lay out the main aims of the degree, whereas Ryle
took great efforts in getting the degree accepted by the conservative establishment. The
B.Phil. became a two-year course. Students had to choose one or two items from a given
list of ‘Chosen Authorities’, such as Plato, Aristotle, etc. They further had to pick one or
two (wide) fields of philosophy they were particularly interested in, e.g. moral philosophy,
the theory of knowledge, optional periods in the history of science, or logic. This was to
widen the students’ reading and to give them the opportunity to discuss problems with other
graduates. The finals consisted of three examination papers and a thesis. The B.Phil.
became a great success. It attracted many overseas students and enormously stimulated the
philosophical activity of the tutors at Oxford University.
Philosophy finally came to evolve into, what Ryle later called, ‘a full-scale
academic profession’:
It now has its separate academic departments, with its own offices, secretaries, seminar-rooms,
blackboards and library-facilities; it is managed by specially qualified and duly appointed
Professors, Readers, Lecturers and Instructors; it has its proprietary manuals, journals,
encyclopaedias and dictionaries; it has its conferences, colloquia, symposia, teach-ins, broadcasts
and even quizzes; it is a field for examinations, degrees, higher degrees, scholarships and prizes;
it distributes fees, stipends, pensions, royalties and honours; and so on and so on. From the point
of view of a Vice-Chancellor or Registrar it is just one academic subject among others (…).
(Ryle 1976c, 387)
From 1945 until his retirement in 1968, Ryle was Waynflete Professor of Metaphysical
Philosophy and fellow of Magdalen College. From 1948 to 1971 he also edited Mind.
During his time at Magdalen Ryle made a lot of effort to encourage young and unknown
philosophers. This was also expressed in his editorship of Mind. Warnock, when discussing
Ryle’s editorship, noticed the following development.
Two things, I think, strike one here. In 1948 the contributors of articles were, with only one or
two exceptions, inhabitants of the British Isles. In 1971, two-thirds of them were not. Further, the
contributors of 1948 were, on the whole, ‘well-known’, the bearers of names already respectedly
familiar; those of 1971 were on the whole – and I hope they will forgive me for saying this – not.
(Warnock 1976, 54)
Warnock thinks that these developments were partly ‘just because of the way things have
gone’, but also to a large extent a deliberate policy of Ryle. Ryle tried to convince his
colleagues from early on that they could and should learn from philosophers outside
Oxford, and he was not the kind of person who would prefer essays of the elderly and
respected over those of young and unknown philosophers. This can be illustrated by letters
Ryle wrote to Russell and Popper. On February 24th, 1965 Ryle wrote to Popper:
The April MIND went to bed before I got your letter, but I am afraid I couldn’t have done
anything about it as I have a very long string of accepted discussion notes ahead of yours in the
queue. I don’t mind going [sic] minor shuffles with the queue but, except in very special
circumstances, I have scruples about doing major ones.10
10
Hoover Institution Archives, Collection title: K. Popper; Box number: 89; Folder ID: 4
19
He tended to accept the essays of those who needed it most, namely the not yet well-known
philosophers whose essays were not automatically accepted by journals. Some people
criticised Ryle for this attitude, but it is a fact that the number of members of the Mind
Association more than trebled in the period he edited Mind.
Another characteristic of Mind during Ryle’s editorship was the lack of footnotes.
Ryle thought that philosophers should have the ability to write essays without the extensive
use of footnotes. Ryle continuously strove for readable texts without technical language. In
a letter dated April 15th 1964 Ryle wrote to Popper:
May I editorially beg you to eliminate all footnotes other than references from your reply? I am
always having to tell young contributors that footnotes containing additions to the argument are
sheer bad writings as well as being a nuisance to editors and compositors, and it’s embarrassing
if they can come back and say “Well, Professor Popper does”. 11
In 1976, five years after Ryle’s editorship had come to an end, Warnock remarked:
And I have even observed that, in some very recent issues, some articles have actually appeared
with footnotes. As Vosper used to remark to Bradbury Fisher, ‘it would not have done for the
duke’. (Warnock 1976, 56)
Ryle did not want the editorship of Mind to remain the relatively ponderous administrative
machinery it had been under Moore. Therefore, he reduced the staff of Mind to the Editor
and a secretary. Under Ryle’s editorship, Mind did not have committees, review editors or
referees, simply because he thought that they would unnecessarily increase Mind’s
administrative process, and Ryle’s ways of direct communication worked just fine without
them.
I cannot easily believe that Mind will ever be edited again with such economy of administrative
machinery, so incredibly little fuss. I should be glad to be proved wrong. (Warnock 1976, 56)
A consequence of Ryle running Mind almost entirely on his own was that he had to read an
enormous number of books and articles in a short period of time. He became very good at
this and invented the expression ‘Ryling a book’, which meant reading it very fast, only in
order to get an idea of what it was about, what its main themes were, and, most importantly,
whether it was worth a review or should be published in Mind. Michael Ryle remembers
seeing his uncle with piles of letters and articles which he had to deal with at home during
holidays or over the weekend.
During Ryle’s editorship there was an incident which attracted the attention of
almost the entire Oxford and Cambridge academic community. Ryle refused to have the
book Words and Things, written by Ernest Gellner in 1959, reviewed in Mind. Russell had
written an introduction to the book and was infuriated when he heard that Ryle had written
a letter to the publisher, Victor Gollancz Ltd., in which he stated his refusal to have the
book reviewed. Ryle found the book abusive and claimed that it could therefore not be
considered a contribution to academic philosophy. Russell wrote a letter to The Times in
which he claimed that Gellner simply disagreed with the opinions which he discussed, but
that the book was not abusive. He accused Ryle of refusing to review the book, simply
because he did not like Gellner’s ideas.
11
Hoover Institution Archives, Collection title: K. Popper; Box number: 345; Folder ID: 20
20
If all books that do not endorse Professor Ryle’s opinions are to be boycotted in the pages of
Mind, that hitherto respected periodical will sink to the level of the mutual-admiration organ of a
coterie. All who care for the repute of British philosophy will regret this.12
Ryle responded in The Times only four days after Russell’s letter had appeared, claiming
that:
In the book referred to by Earl Russell (…) about 100 imputations of disingenuousness are made
against a number of identifiable teachers of philosophy; about half of these occur on pages 159-
92 and 237-65.13
The letters by Russell and Ryle in The Times provoked letters by others, such as Gellner
himself; John Wisdom, a Cambridge Professor of philosophy; Brian McGuinness, a fellow
of Queen’s College, Oxford; and Conrad Dehn, a correspondent. By far most of the
correspondents agreed with Russell and thought that Ryle should have had Gellner’s book
reviewed in Mind, but Ryle refused to do so.
In 1945, Ryle’s former tutor, Paton, who was then editor of a new series called
Hutchinson’s Philosophical Library, invited him to contribute to it. Ryle agreed without
knowing what exactly he was going to write about. He did know that he wanted to give an
answer to the question ‘What constitutes a philosophical problem; and what is the way to
resolve it?’, a question which had preoccupied him in the 1920s and the 1930s, by giving an
application of it. Ryle thought it was time to apply the answer to that question to a real,
current problem, in order to give an example of the method at work. First Ryle thought he
would choose the problem of the Freedom of the Will, but finally he picked the Concept of
Mind as the most suitable philosophical crux.14 Thus, The Concept of Mind was written
with a meta-philosophical purpose. The Tarner Lectures, published as Dilemmas, which
Ryle wrote five years later were meant to provide more, and especially more diverse,
examples of his method at work. In analytic philosophy, The Concept of Mind became one
of the most influential philosophical works for decades, and definitely Ryle’s best-known
and most influential work. The German analytic philosopher Eike Von Savigny even
claimed in 1974:
Das einfluβreichste Buch in der Philosophie der normalen Sprache haben nicht Wittgenstein und
nicht Austin geschrieben, sondern Ryle; das äuβert sich unter anderem darin, daβ man seit dem
Erscheinen des Concept of Mind jeder Arbeit, die zur Philosophie des Geistes von einem
Philosophen dieser Richtung – und nicht nur dieser Richtung – geschrieben worden ist, anmerkt,
daβ es dieses Buch gibt. (Von Savigny 1974, 123)15
According to Ayer, in the first years after the war Ryle was the strongest philosophical
influence in Oxford, even before the publication of The Concept of Mind in 1949 (Ayer
1977, 295-296). He mentioned that Ryle had written an unpublished paper called ‘The
12
Russell, as quoted in Mehta 1963 (p. 12).
13
Ryle, as quoted in Mehta 1963 (p. 13).
14
This title only occurred to Ryle after writing the book.
15
‘The most influential book in ordinary language philosophy was not written by Wittgenstein or Austin, but by
Ryle; this can be shown, among other things, by the fact that since the appearance of The Concept of Mind every
work about the philosophy of mind, written by a philosopher of this direction, and not only this direction, notices
its existence.’ (free translation by C. V.)
21
Mind is its own Place’16 in which he had already formulated the central issues that later
appeared in The Concept of Mind. He had sent this paper to Ayer in 1946.
After The Concept of Mind and till his death, Ryle primarily focused on the notion
of Thinking. In the second volume of his Collected Papers, he provides the reason for this
choice.
But I have latterly been concentrating heavily on this particular theme for the simple reason that
it has turned out to be at once a still intractable and a progressively ramifying maze. Only a short
confrontation with the theme suffices to make it clear that and why no account of Thinking of a
Behaviourist coloration will do, and also why no account of a Cartesian coloration will do either.
(Ryle 1971b, viii)
Because of his editorship of Mind, and partly also because of the success of The Concept of
Mind, Ryle became a dominant and powerful figure in English philosophy. He had a great
number of graduate students in Oxford and was almost always asked for his opinion when
academic staff had to be appointed.
And for years he [Ryle] had the reputation of being the chief king-maker when it came to
academic appointments in philosophy, not just at Oxford but in universities all over the country.
(Magee 1971, 100)
According to John Rogers, at the time, an extremely large percentage of the staff at English
universities had been pupils of Ryle. Although Ryle did not have real ‘Ryleans’, real
followers, it is clear that whole generations were influenced by him.
Ryle’s enormous influence and high reputation is testified by the many academic
honours he received. He was a foreign honorary member of the American Academy of Arts
and Sciences (1968), an honorary Student of Christ Church, and an honorary fellow of
Queen’s and Magdalen Colleges. He was awarded honorary doctorates by the universities
of Birmingham, Warwick, Sussex, Hull, Keele, Trent (Ontario), and Trinity College
(Dublin).
Ryle retired in 1968 and from then on lived in Islip, near Oxford, with his twin-
sister Mary. They had to move to a bungalow because Mary had arthritis. By that time,
Ryle had cataracts and could not drive, but Islip was well-situated on bus routes to Oxford.
His best friend Mabbott also lived in Islip and they did their morning walks together,
several times a week. After their walks they would drink a ‘Prof’s. Special’, a secret
between Ryle and the landlord, in an inn called the Swan. Upon his retirement Ryle
donated his books and papers to the Linacre College Library17. They are currently still kept
there as part of the ‘Gilbert Ryle Collection’.
Ryle did not stop doing philosophy after his retirement and remained
philosophically active until his death. He rendered his last service to Oxford philosophy by
fighting for the founding of the Philosophical Centre. In his tribute to Ryle, J. D. Mabbott
reminded of this great contribution to philosophy in Oxford.
His services to Oxford philosophers were crowned by his fight for a building as their centre with
a library, seminar rooms, a meeting room and so on. It is sad that he did not see its complete
16
Unfortunately this paper is missing. It is not in the ‘Ryle Collection’ at Linacre College and not in the Ayer
estate either.
17
Ryle was one of the Founding Delegates of Linacre College, and honorary fellow. He was also a close friend of
Rom Harré, who was at the time Linacre College’s librarian. Moreover, Linacre urgently needed books. All of this
may have prompted Ryle to donating his books and papers to Linacre College.
22
installation in its fine new home at 10 Merton Street; but it is most appropriate that a room there
has been designated ‘Ryle Room’. (Mabbott 1976)
Ryle had his first stroke in 1975. He suddenly lost his speech and the use of his left arm and
leg. After ten minutes the symptoms disappeared. From that moment on, one of Ryle’s
biggest fears was to be perfectly conscious without being able to talk, move, or express
himself in any other way. A year later he suffered a second and third stroke and died on 6
October 1976 on one of many walking holidays with Mabbott, who described Ryle’s last
days in his Oxford Memories (Mabbott 1986). Ryle left his library, that is, what remained
after his first donation upon his retirement in 1968, to, once more, Linacre College and he
left a considerable amount of money to Hertford College, which was at the time relatively
poor compared with the other colleges. ‘The Gilbert Ryle Collection’ is still part of Linacre
College Library.18
Ryle was a philosopher with his own unique method of doing philosophy and – as
is not often mentioned – a great interest in the works of other philosophers, from ancient
philosophers to his own contemporaries. During his philosophical career Ryle taught and
wrote about Plato, Aristotle, Russell, Frege, Husserl, Brentano, Wittgenstein and many
other philosophers. His interest was not in the first place of a historical nature; it was rather
placing the ideas of other philosophers in the perspective of theories and discussions of
Ryle’s own time that fascinated him. As a result, this gave rise to accusations of
anachronism, but it can be doubted whether Ryle would have been bothered by this, since
he was primarily interested in other philosophers’ value for today’s problems. This,
however, did not mean that his interpretations could not be (sometimes surprisingly)
accurate and clear. In his book From Frege to Wittgenstein (2002) Erich H. Reck for
example mentions that Ryle ‘offered a rather eloquent summary of Wittgenstein’s
criticisms of an atomistic theory of meaning (…)’ in Ryle 1962d and that ‘Aside from a few
notable exceptions, hardly anyone writing on the Tractatus over the subsequent several
decades seems to have noticed early Wittgenstein’s repudiation of an atomist theory of
meaning or noticed that Ryle noticed it.’ (Reck 2002, 447) In the same book Reck notes
that it is surprising that Ryle ‘should have (at least occasionally) had such a firm grip on
“Frege’s difficult but crucial point”’. (Reck 2002, 433)
Ryle’s substantial knowledge of other philosophers is not only clear from his
‘historical’ papers, books and lectures, but is also reflected in the ‘Ryle Collection’. Some
of its books are heavily annotated, which makes them an interesting object of study. Ryle’s
annotations largely consist of attempts to trace influences of other philosophers. His
annotations show his knowledge of the history of philosophy and give away thorough
scholarship of numerous philosophers, from Aristotle and Plato to Heidegger, Husserl,
Russell and Wittgenstein. Since his annotations are not seldom explanations of the writings
of a philosopher in terms of examples or discussions that only became relevant long after
they were written, again the term ‘anachronism’ comes up.19
Ryle as a Teacher
Ryle was a remarkable teacher. The method used in his lectures closely resembled that of
his writings. He used many everyday life examples and was patient with his audience.
18
Cf. Appendix 2.
19
Cf. Appendix 2.
23
When he noticed that something was not clear to his students he would reformulate his
argument and rephrase his examples, or try to find others. He developed his thoughts
throughout the lecture. To others, it sometimes seemed as if he was repeating himself over
and over. In a way this was true, but Ryle refined and sharpened his thoughts continuously
and adapted them, and his examples, to the public.
During seminars, however, he would not say much. Ryle was not nearly as good in
discussions as he was at recognizing conceptual differences. When counterexamples were
presented during a seminar he would often say that he did not quite know how to answer
them and then come up with some half-way house which looked like the counterexample
but had a fault somewhere. Ryle would then reject the half-way house, ignoring the original
counterexample, often not to the satisfaction of the student who had presented it, as his
former student Rom Harré recalled.20
He did not want to teach his students a theory, and certainly did not want
followers, but tried to teach his audience an activity. He taught them how to do philosophy,
i.e. what methods they had to use in order to reach sound and sharp arguments.
He did not want philosophers to be looking forward to erecting intellectual edifices that would
stand for decades, or even – God forbid – for centuries. (Moravcsik 1977, 3)
Ryle usually himself selected the PhD students who wanted to do philosophy in Oxford, in
which he largely relied on his intuition. Intelligence and a feeling for philosophy were more
important than scholarship.
In 1960 in a letter to Professor Julius Moravcsik (at the time one of his students)
Ryle responded to a manuscript of Moravcsik’s in a way that was in the spirit of his
teachings and his approach to students in general.
(…) In particular, the B.Phil. Thesis frame of mind – “must keep both examiners from thinking
up things that I ought to have known or considered” inevitably infects the first things that one
writes with the intention of airing an idea or discovery which, one hopes, may make a difference
to the progress of the subject. (and not to the award of the degree!)
Go through the thing, asking yourself over each paragraph “is this meant to silence
Cherniss, or is it part of what I want Mr. Snooks to lap up and digest?” (Mr. Snooks being a
youngish man who is inquisitive about Plato, say.)
This may mean not merely heavy excisions but actual re-writing. If so, then a) go through
the piece, with a card in your hand, jotting down perhaps 5, perhaps 8 moves, that have got to be
in. b) Then hide the MS, and write a third Programme talk bringing in those moves. c) Then, and
then only, look at your MS and “add”? the indispensable citations, references, crucial arguments
and points! And: THERE YOU ARE! (Ryle, quoted in Moravcsik 1977, 4)
Ryle used high standards and expected his students to be extremely precise in formulating
their thoughts and arguments. He tried to teach them to be critical of their own formulations
and to make sure that they actually stated what they meant. His exam questions were
always a challenge and hardly ever what his students expected. They were usually aimed at
making students philosophise themselves, instead of making them repeat arguments of
authorities in philosophy. In his paper, Moravcsik quotes as Ryle’s most famous B.Phil.
exam question: ‘If existence is not a predicate, what is it?’ (Moravcsik 1977, 5) A famous
exam question Michael Ryle remembers is: ‘Q.5 Is Question 5 a fair question?’.
Ryle always encouraged his students to have many philosophical interests, and to
avoid being a monoglot. He himself taught – as one of the few – philosophers who were not
20
Interview with Rom Harré in June 2002.
24
normally taught in Oxford, such as Husserl, Brentano and Wittgenstein. For a long time he
was the only Oxford lecturer, and with respect to Husserl even one of the few English
lecturers, who offered such courses.
The most distinguished English philosopher to take it seriously was Gilbert Ryle, who thought
highly of Husserl’s Logical Investigations, first published at the turn of the century, but became
critical of his later work, so much so that he did not think it worth recommending to me when I
became his pupil in 1929. Otherwise Husserl’s name was hardly known in England (…). (Ayer
1984, 26)
Even when Ryle was preoccupied with both the editorship of Mind and the development of
graduate programs, he did not neglect the level of practical teaching, and remained one of
the best and most extraordinary Oxford teachers in philosophy.
For him [Ryle] philosophy did not become an “administrative activity”. He led the whole
operation of “Mind”, graduate program, etc. from his “command post” at Magdalen College; but
those same rooms were also the scene for some of the most stimulating tutorials that one could
hope for. (Moravcsik 1977, 3)
Ryle as a Person
Enough about Ryle’s contributions to philosophy, but what about Ryle as a person? People
who met him for the first time would not characterize him as a typical philosopher. He was
strong, slim, athletic and his appearance was almost military. He had penetrating eyes, a
high forehead, and a typically British look. He always smoked his pipe and had the
characteristic cough between every two sentences. His loud voice and commanding
presence made people always take notice of him when he entered a room. He made up his
mind very quickly about things and issues. Ryle’s directness, friendliness,
unconventionality and strong sense of justice were his most distinguished qualities. His
negative traits of character were that he could be rather brusque and uncompromising.
Moreover, Ryle was sometimes believed to have no ‘inner life’, presumably a joke about
his supposed denial of an inner life in The Concept of Mind (1949).21
Ryle remained unmarried, but in a way he had his own family with his twin-sister
Mary and her adopted daughter Janet. He much enjoyed walking and often went on walking
holidays, e.g. with Wittgenstein and with Mabbott. In earlier years he had made his tours in
the Alps and elsewhere with his favourite brother, Peter. They were very close when
Gilbert was a boy and Peter wrote to him from the trenches in the First World War. This
continued when Peter returned from the trenches and Gilbert was entering into adult life.
Peter was an electrical engineer, and although their professional lives were very different,
theirs was a life-long and deep friendship, with many shared values and a shared sense of
humour. Gilbert and his twin-sister Mary were also particularly kind to Peter’s widow,
Rebecca, when she came to live near them after Peter died in 1961.
Gardening and rowing were two of Ryle’s favourite pastimes. He particularly liked
the digging and ordering of his garden but was not particularly interested in the plants
themselves. In Oxford there have always been the ‘wetbobs’ and the ‘drybobs’ and Ryle
21
Bryan Magee once remarked: ‘Gilbert Ryle was a person of life-enhancing intellectual brilliance, but he had no
inner life worth speaking of.’ (Magee 1997, 87) According to Magee this was a standing joke among Ryle’s
friends.
25
was without doubt a ‘wetbob’ and much preferred rowing over cricket. He did enjoy
playing golf – again with his brother Peter – not in a special sports outfit, but in his normal
shoes and tweed jacket, and often with his pipe in his mouth. And for a while he also tried –
and enjoyed – gliding.
Ryle was a sociable person. He liked to go to conferences and enjoyed hugely
talking about philosophy over a beer.
The Senior Common Room atmosphere – any Common Room – fitted him [Ryle] like a glove.
(Mehta 1963, 67)
Being quite a consumer, when he was in the army Ryle was famous for going into the
sergeants mess and challenging anyone to drink him under the table. The story is that he
never lost. He even gave his name to a measure of beer, roughly three-quarters of a pint.
Christ Church had special glasses made for these ‘Ryle’s of beer’. He used to say that
sometimes half a pint was too small a measure and a pint too large. Once he stated that he
would prefer to be remembered for having invented a measure of beer than for having
written The Concept of Mind.
He had a great love for Jane Austen and P. G. Wodehouse. But he also, like his
twin-sister Mary, liked doing The Times Crossword every day (usually in less than half an
hour). On holiday he was also an avid reader of detective stories; it is said that he could
devour an ordinary paper-back in less than an hour – and identify the criminal. Sometimes
Ryle pretended to dislike intellectual matters and reading. He certainly did not like people
who tried to look like intellectuals and boasted about the many books they had read. Art
and music were two subjects he was not at all interested in. There is an anecdote that he
once saw Isaiah Berlin coming out of the Sheldonian Theatre after a performance of Bach,
and shouted to him across the street, ‘Isaiah, have you been listening to some tunes again?’
(Mehta 1963, 67).
He always wore a suit for his role of Professor in philosophy, and generally liked
dressing up – he could boast about a new cap he had bought. Only at the weekends did he
wear a sports-jacket.
There is a story about Ryle inviting Wittgenstein to his club in London, in order to
persuade him to give some lectures in Oxford. When he was about to catch the train to
London, Ryle suddenly realised that, whereas at his club people were expected to wear suits
and ties, Wittgenstein did not own a suit, probably not even a tie, and that he would feel
really uncomfortable in his leather jacket. He did not want Wittgenstein to feel embarrassed
and decided to put on his old sports-jacket and ordinary trousers. Not looking smart at all,
he then waited in the club for Wittgenstein, who arrived wearing a perfectly nice suit which
he had hired especially for the occasion. Naturally, Wittgenstein thought this was quite
funny.
Ryle was always a bit of a rebel and did not like the establishment much. He was
offered a knighthood once, but turned it down. He did not want to have a title. For him
philosopher would do.
He was always kind to vulnerable people and was very good with children. He
took care of people, such as his twin-sister Mary, never philosophically insulted those who
were not intellectually well-established and sometimes even tried to keep others from doing
so. For example, he once tried to convince Russell to rewrite his reply to a Mr. Emmet’s
discussion of infinity and leave out some sharp remarks.
26
I am not very happy about your scolding of Mr. Emmet. He is a schoolmaster, and doubtless is as
innocent as you say, but I don’t shut the door against amateur’s difficulties, even if they are
amateurish, and I certainly don’t restrict MIND to things that I myself agree with (May 1st, 1957)
My qualms, as I hoped my first letter indicated, were due to the fact that it seemed to me that you
spread yourself too much in the castigation of a young amateur. Very likely he merited being
told shortly and sharply that he had not done his prep, or else was unequipped to benefit from it,
but from a person like you one short sharp reproof of this sort would be enough. The length of
your scolding of him will be bound to seem like an expression of pique. The lion may squash the
mouse, but it’s embarrassing for his friends if he seems to be savaging it for the pleasure of it.
It’s for you to choose; I’ll publish it if you want it published, but I think you would tarnish your
name, not as a philosopher, but as a sage, if you appeared in print doing everything you could to
try to make a young amateur feel small. So I ask you, non-editorially, to cut down the punitive
remarks to one short sharp rebuke, and have the bulk of the reply devoted to explaining the point
which experts doubtless would not need to have explained. (May 8th 1957)22
As I mentioned before, Ryle donated his books to a college that desperately needed them
and left part of his estate to the poorest college. It is also said that he used his own money
to arrange grants for at least two of his students. He called the grant ‘the Oxford and
Cambridge philosophy fellowship’ and made sure that the students did not know that the
money came from him.
If I wanted to describe Ryle in only a limited amount of words I would say that he
was a typical British philosopher, that he was kind to others, eager to help young and
talented philosophers and had a strong sense of justice. On the other hand, that he could be
brusque and uncompromising and was sometimes believed to have no ‘inner life’. He
disliked footnotes, unnecessary technical language, bureaucracy, dogmas and uncritical
followers/fans; he liked Jane Austen, P. G. Wodehouse, rowing, gardening, crosswords,
detectives, walking and drinking beers in a social environment. He regarded philosophy as
an activity rather than a theory and always tried to think beyond conventional solutions. In
the following chapters many of these characteristics can be recognized.
22
Both letters are kept in the Russell Archive at McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario. Russell’s reply was
published in July 1958 (Russell 1958b) and although its tone is still very sharp, Ryle’s suggestions seem to have
been taken seriously.
27
28
Ryle’s Early Writings
Chapter 2
This chapter is devoted to Ryle’s early work, ‘early’ in the sense that it predates his most
famous work, The Concept of Mind (1949a). The label ‘early’ however should not be taken
to mean that these papers solely prepare the way for and culminate in the latter work. While
prefiguring themes, arguments and methods which became prominent in The Concept of
Mind, these papers should primarily be seen in the philosophical context of the time.
Written in the 1930s and 40s they take up themes which were being debated at that time,
showing traces of the influence of Russell, Husserl, Moore, Wittgenstein and others, as will
be clear from what follows. Like other philosophers at that time Ryle was sparing in giving
references to other works and other philosophers, so that I shall have to pay some attention
to their historical-philosophical context in order to bring out the force of Ryle’s views.
Without aiming at a full exhaustive discussion of all these papers, I shall limit myself to
some of the themes which recur time and again. My aim in particular is to describe the
methods he used and to trace the most important influences on his own philosophy. I shall
discuss his ideas on meaning, negation, the existence of propositions, philosophical
methodology, categories and category-mistakes. Ryle’s excursions into the history of
philosophy – as was already mentioned in the introduction – constitute a genre on its own
and will be ignored here, as well as ‘Knowing How and Knowing That’ (1946a), which
shall be discussed in Chapter 3, since the main ideas of The Concept of Mind (1949a) have
their roots in this paper.
When Ryle began to write his first philosophical papers, Oxford philosophy was
still under the spell of the realism of John Cook Wilson (1849-1915), H. A. Prichard (1871-
1947) and H. W. B. Joseph (1867-1943). It will become clear that for Ryle, after these
earliest Realist influences – and other early influences for which Ryle’s tutor H. J. Paton
was at least partly responsible, e.g. Lotze, Windelband, Rickert, Croce and Gentile – other
philosophers such as the early Wittgenstein, Brentano, Meinong, Husserl and Russell soon
started to get the upper hand. Next to Wittgenstein, whose influence shall be discussed in
Chapter 6, Russell seems to have influenced Ryle most directly. In order to understand
Ryle’s early and later views as well as their connections to Russell and Wittgenstein, we
may distinguish two different positions, and two corresponding types of philosophical
analysis, which he seems to have held during his philosophical career.
Ryle’s method of philosophical analysis, roughly, started as a means to fix the
imperfections of language, followed by analysis as a more conceptual and more positive
enterprise. In his early papers he was still under the spell of an ideal language and a
denotational theory of meaning, that is a theory of meaning according to which all
statements have meaning in the same way, in the way ‘Fido’ means Fido (the dog).
According to this theory words and sentences are treated as names. But in the years that
followed Ryle’s focus changed from a homogeneous theory of meaning towards a
heterogeneous theory of use, which is most clearly at work in The Concept of Mind (1949a)
and later writings, but is in its essence already present much earlier. Ryle’s aim was no
longer to reformulate misleading expressions and achieve an ideal – or more ideal –
language, but rather to expose flawed theories and doctrines by showing that category-
29
mistakes have been made. The philosopher becomes a cartographer whose more positive
task is to map the logical geography of our concepts.
An understanding of Ryle’s development from a homogeneous, denotational theory
of meaning to a heterogeneous theory of use is essential if we want to grasp Ryle’s position
and the type of philosophical analysis he aimed at. In an article from 1994 Shelley M. Park
showed, for example, that the misinterpretation of The Concept of Mind as a behaviouristic
tract, can be exposed by pointing at Ryle’s anti-denotationalism. I think she is right about
the importance of Ryle’s rejection of this type of theory of meaning – it should also be
noted that anti-denotationalism is a recurrent theme in Ryle’s later discussions. He
considered it to be essential for progress in philosophy (e.g. in his review of Carnap’s
Meaning and necessity from 1949 and his discussion of the historical development of the
notion of meaning in ‘The Theory of Meaning’ from 1957). Ryle’s early adherence to a
denotational theory of meaning and his later position of anti-denotationalism have received
scant attention – probably partly because Ryle’s main work, The Concept of Mind, has
often been interpreted as a new theory of mind, and not as the meta-philosophical project it
in fact was. And also because Ryle himself hardly mentions denotationalism with respect to
his own position, but only in discussing other philosophers.
Russell, who greatly influenced the early Ryle, also defended a denotational theory
of meaning. His aim was to reformulate those expressions that were exceptions to the
denotationalist rule in such a way that they would ‘fit’ the rule. As John G. Slater argues,
Russellian analysis ‘continues until the variables employed in the symbolic transformations
of the original proposition denote actual entities’ (Slater 1994). We shall see that the early
Ryle of ‘Systematically Misleading Expressions’ (1932b) held a similar view,
reformulating the misleading sentences that seem to refer to an object x in reality into non-
misleading ones that, in fact, refer to quite another object in reality, say y, and not into
expressions that do not refer to any entity in reality. For example, expressions that seem to
refer to a Mr Pickwick in reality are not formulated into ones that just do not refer to
anything in this way, but into ones that refer to Dickens or The Pickwick Papers.
Ryle soon abandoned his early denotationalist position (which from now on will be
referred to as position (1)) and exchanged it for a non-homogeneous and non-
denotationalist one (which from now on will be referred to as position (2)). This
development was completed at the time when ‘Categories’ appeared in 1938. In it Ryle no
longer aims at reformulating systematically misleading expressions but characterizes
philosophy in terms of categories and philosophical method in terms of the discovery and
analysis of category-mistakes. A uniform denotationalist relation between language and
reality is no longer implied. The heterogeneity of the different ways in which our
expressions have meaning requires a different approach. Philosophy is no longer considered
to be a mere negative enterprise and is no longer merely assigned the ungrateful task of
detecting ‘the sources in linguistic idioms of recurrent misconstructions and absurd
theories’ (Ryle 1932b, 61). It is no longer oriented on pressing linguistic expressions into
the straightjacket of denotationalism. It is rather a conceptual task to determine whether two
expressions have meaning in the same way.
One of the reasons why it is important to see what exactly Ryle tried to achieve in
his early writings, besides of its historical value, is that – as we will see in the following
chapter – an accurate interpretation can help us to avoid certain misunderstandings and
misinterpretations of what is commonly regarded as his main work, The Concept of Mind
(1949a). And his later, relatively neglected, papers on thinking could also benefit from an
understanding of the early origins of some of its problems – by which of course I by no
30
means intend to imply that Ryle was a ‘static’ philosopher and never changed his mind or
altered his approach.
Position 1: Denotationalism and the Reformulation of

Systematically Misleading Expressions
Ryle’s point of view at the time of his earliest papers (roughly, until ‘Categories’ from
1938) can be defined as position (1) but with already signs of a development towards
position (2). It is relevant here to consider the most important influences on his
philosophical thought. In the first part of this section I shall discuss these influences in
general, followed by a more detailed discussion of Russell’s influence on Ryle’s papers
‘Negation’ (1929) and ‘Are there Propositions?’ (1930). Finally, I shall have a look at
‘Systematically Misleading Expressions’ (1932b), which, of his earliest papers, most
clearly shows his ideas on the nature of philosophy and philosophical analysis.
Influences and Philosophical Context

Given the fact that the Realism-Idealism debate dominated Oxford philosophy at the time
Ryle started his philosophical career, it is to be expected that philosophers such as Cook
Wilson (considering the fact that Ryle is usually thought to be more of a Realist than an
Idealist) at least partly influenced him. And in later years, Ryle indeed acknowledges the
influence of Cook Wilson’s realism on his early philosophical views:
What was wanted was (a) Realism without additional entities to apprehend or (b) Realism
without fabricated apprehendings. (…) So far my motivation was that of a would-be antibiotic
epistemologist. ‘Fidgetty Cook-Wilsonian’ would, so far, have been a fair title for me. (Ryle
1968b, 114)
Furthermore, some of Cook Wilson’s claims – such as that knowing makes no difference to
what is known – bear close similarity to Ryle’s ideas, as well as his typically Oxonian
brand of logic, that is an informal logic as a philosophical investigation into thinking, rather
23
than an attempt to construct a logical calculus. Moreover, Cook Wilson had great respect
for ordinary usage and sharply distinguished between grammar and logic. He tried, for
example, to show that ordinary usage tells against the Idealist theory of judgement, and
distinguished between the logical and the grammatical subject and predicate. However,
soon – as early as ‘Systematically Misleading Expressions’ (1932b) – Cook Wilson’s
influence disappeared in the background, making way for Russell, the early Wittgenstein,
Brentano, Meinong and Husserl. Perhaps Cook Wilson and the other Oxford Realists would
have exercised a stronger influence on Ryle, if Ryle’s tutor, H. J. Paton, had been a Realist
too, rather than an Idealist who introduced Croce and Gentile to Ryle; or if Cook Wilson
had not – rather successfully, with the exception of Ryle – tried to keep Oxford far from
24
any Russellian influence.
23
This tradition can partly be explained by the classical education of philosophers in Oxford, focusing on Aristotle
and having a strong linguistic interest; partly also by the fact that they lacked a scientific or mathematical
background – contrary to their Cambridge colleagues. Cf. Passmore 1957 (p. 240); Hacker 1996 (p. 88).
24
In a letter to Bosanquet, Cook Wilson once wrote about Russell’s paradox: ‘I am afraid I am obliged to say that
a man is conceited as well as silly to think such puerilities are worthy to be put in print: and it’s simply
exasperating to think that he finds a publisher (where was the publisher’s reader?), and that in this way such
31
An early letter from 1926 from Ryle to Paton – Ryle’s former tutor – shows that
Ryle studied Croce and Gentile, and also Lotze, Windelband and Rickert.25 As he mentions
in this letter, Ryle considered the Neo-Kantians’ idea of philosophy as the science of
validity and value very attractive. His rejection of the existence of two levels of reality
could well have been inspired by Windelband. His interest in Windelband and Rickert may
also have led him to study Husserl. The ‘Ryle Collection’ at Linacre College reveals his
26
thorough study of Husserl. In Ryle’s copy of Husserl’s Logische Untersuchungen he
noted in the margin that Windelband and Rickert had anticipated an important remark of
Husserl (but they would have made the unfortunate mistake of looking for a psychological
foundation of logic). Ryle’s interest in Husserl – and also in Frege – may perhaps also be
said to be, at least partly, inspired by an offprint of an article written in 1926 by Paul F.
Linke. It is entitled ‘The Present State of Logic and Epistemology in German’ and draws
attention to the fundamental importance of the work of Frege in showing that logic could
not be a psychological feature of man, but had to be the laws of truth itself. According to
Linke, Frege’s work was relatively unknown and he considered Husserl to be the one who
first developed this thought of Frege in the first volume of Logische Untersuchungen. This
passage was side-lined in Ryle’s copy of the offprint.
At the end of the 1920s and the beginning of the 1930s the questions in which Ryle
becomes interested are primarily the logical ones raised by Frege, Meinong, Russell and the
early Wittgenstein. Phenomenology remains influential, but mainly on the points it
coincides with Cambridge ideas; therefore my focus will be on the influence of Russell and
Wittgenstein.27 Ryle also follows in the footsteps of Russell and Wittgenstein in displaying
an interest in the nature of philosophy, characterizing it as a logical versus a psychological
28
enterprise , and, like Wittgenstein but unlike Russell, points at the differences between
philosophy and the other sciences. Something Ryle does not share with Frege, Russell and
Wittgenstein was their interest in the problem of the foundations of mathematics.29 In this
respect he is more a ‘pure philosopher’, like Moore.
From his early writings it is clear that Ryle was not so much interested in
epistemology, but rather in meaning and logic; especially the cases where logic seems to
break down caught his attention. As he himself later puts it, ‘I found the pack-ice of logical
theory cracking’ (Ryle 1970, 7). He thought that Wittgenstein’s Tractatus had started from
the same cracks of logical theory. It was not formal logic that interested Ryle, but informal
logic, the logic of our use of words, concepts, sentences and expressions. He did not – in
the way of formal logicians – abstract from all differences in subject-matter, but, on the
contrary, tried to lay bare the logic of different types of subject-matter. In terms of purely
formal logic, there is no difference between ‘The king of France is bald’ and ‘The king of
England is bald’, but, according to Ryle, there is an essential difference in informal logic.
Ryle’s early papers are firmly rooted in Russell’s Principles of Mathematics (1903)
and ‘On Denoting’ (1905). He was vexed by Russell’s paradoxes – such as that the set of
contemptible stuff can even find its way into examinations.’ (Cook Wilson 1926, 739) See also Marion 2000a (p.
304).
25
Cf. McGuinness and Vrijen 2006
26
See also Appendix 2.
27
For more on the phenomenological influences on Ryle see Thomasson 2002.
28
The Oxford Realists had argued for a view not unlike what was later called anti-psychologism – Prichard in ‘A
Criticism of the Psychologists’ Treatment of Knowledge’ (1907, 27-53) and Joseph in his series of papers on ‘The
Psychological Explanation of the Development of the Perception of External Objects’ (1910/1911). See Marion
2000b (p. 501).
29
He was interested in parts of Russell’s Principles of Mathematics, but not in his more formally mathematical
Principia Mathematica.
32
sets which are not members of themselves is neither a member of itself, nor not a member
of itself (both alternatives being absurd). And he was also interested in problems of
reference in cases such as ‘The present king of France is bald’. The phrase cannot refer to
an entity called ‘the present king of France’, because no such entity exists. These are the
kinds of problems Russell attempted to solve, trying to avoid the need to create a Fregean
or Meinongean third realm of entities that neither exist in the mind, nor in reality, but
merely subsist. Ryle, too, refutes the idea of a third realm and tries to solve the apparent
paradoxes or puzzles by showing ‘what it really means to say so and so’ (Ryle 1932b, 61).
What do negative expressions or expressions about imaginary objects such as Mr Pickwick
really mean?
We shall see that in Ryle’s earliest papers a denotational theory of meaning is
present. But how did this denotationalism start to dominate the philosophical theories of
Frege and Russell in the first place, putting a spell on philosophy for many generations? It
can be understood best by seeing it as a response to logical idealism and psychologistic
theories that were unable to rescue the objectivity of logic and truth. Logical realism – the
view that logical entities exist independently of the mind – and anti-psychologism – the
rejection of the view that the laws of logic are ultimately psychological laws – were used to
safeguard this objectivity. Meanings had to be objective too, since otherwise two people
would be unable to mean the same thing and therefore unable to agree or disagree. From
this perspective, denotationalism and the belief in the existence of objective propositions
and negative facts seem to be necessary in order to avoid subjectivism and psychologism.
In order to safeguard denotationalism and explain the existence of objective
propositions, negative facts, numbers, etc., Frege and Meinong created a Third Realm of
entities which are real and subsist but do not exist as objects in reality. Russell proceeded
differently, claiming that ordinary language misleadingly suggests that our expressions,
which ostensibly designate entities such as Mr Pickwick, numbers or golden mountains, are
in fact referring terms. According to Russell these seemingly referring expressions are
merely ‘incomplete symbols’ that have meaning within appropriate contexts but are
meaningless on their own. He argues that while logically proper names do have ‘real’
referents30, descriptive phrases – such as ‘The present king of France is bald’ – are merely
collections of quantifiers and propositional functions. As such they do not denote. This
enables Russell to explain the truth of a negative existential without being committed to the
belief that the subject term has reference. He is able to rescue the law of excluded middle
and the law of identity without being committed to create Meinongean modes of being.31
Ryle would later show that denotationalism and the creation of an extra realm of entities
cause antinomies, and moreover, that in the end they are not necessary – the objectivity of
logic and truth and sameness of meaning can be guaranteed without them. Upon realizing
that meaning and language are much richer and cannot – and need not – be captured in a
denotationalist relation between language and reality, the need of a third realm disappears.
Denotationalism is also an important target of The Concept of Mind (1949a) and
remains a central theme in several of his later writings. In addition, Ryle’s discussions of
30
At least this was Russell’s position at the time of ‘On Denoting’. Later he argues that proper names such as
‘Moses’ and ‘Socrates’ (since there is no object in reality for them to refer to) had to be regarded as uniquely
determining descriptions, a position Wittgenstein would later criticise in his Philosophical Investigations.
31
Claiming that ‘the author of Waverley’ by itself does not mean anything – it only has a meaning in an
appropriate context – Russell is able to escape the problematic statement that ‘The author of Waverley’ means the
same thing as ‘Scott’, without being forced to give up the law of identity (the idea that when a and b are identical
everything that is true with respect to a is true with respect to b, and the other way around). And because ‘The
present King of France is bald’ as such does not denote, the law of the excluded middle is no longer endangered.
33
other philosophers often focus on their attitude towards denotationalism. Early traces of
Ryle’s later rejection of denotationalism can be found in his discussion of Husserl’s
phenomenology:
And as Husserl seems, anyhow latterly, to reject Platonic or Meinongian subsistence theories, it
becomes very hard to see in what sense he holds that ‘intentional objects’ really are genuine
objects or subjects of attributes at all. He should hold (I believe) that what we miscall ‘the object
or content of an act of consciousness’ is really the specific character or nature of that act, so that
the intentionality of an act is not a relation between it and something else, but merely a property
of it so specific as to be a differentia or in some cases an individualizing description of it. He
does in fact, however, continue to speak as if every intentional act is related, though related by
an internal relation, to a genuine subject of attributes. (Ryle 1932b, 175) 32
And in his discussion of Wittgenstein Ryle describes that at the time of the Tractatus,
although ‘one foot was already free’, ‘Wittgenstein still had one foot in the denotationist
camp’ (Ryle 1957, 363). He already realized that logical constants do not stand for objects
and do not have the meanings they have qua designating objects, and that sentences are not
names and should not be treated as if they are. Only after the Tractatus did Wittgenstein
remove his other foot from the denotationist camp – when he started to define ‘meaning’ in
terms of use. The use of an expression became ‘the role it is employed to perform, not any
thing or person or event for which it might be supposed to stand’ (Ryle 1957, 364).
Aside from Russell, Wittgenstein and the other philosophers mentioned above, we
should also make mention of the Vienna Circle, which Ryle himself in 1970 recognized as
33
an important early source of inspiration in the 1930s. The Circle’s ideas confirmed and
perhaps strengthened Ryle’s suspicions of metaphysics. Moritz Schlick’s ideas on
philosophy in 1930, e.g. seem to be close to Ryle’s views.
Philosophy is not a system of statements; it is not a science. (…) The great contemporary turning
point is characterized by the fact that we see in philosophy not a system of cognitions, but a
system of acts; philosophy is that activity through which the meaning of statements is revealed
or determined. By means of philosophy statements are explained, by means of science they are
verified. The latter is concerned with the truth of statements, the former with what they actually
mean; the philosophical activity of giving meaning is therefore the Alpha and Omega of all
scientific knowledge. This was indeed correctly surmised when it was said that philosophy
supplied both the foundation and the apex of the edifice of science. It was a mistake, however, to
suppose that the foundation was made up of “philosophical” statements (the statements of theory
of knowledge), and crowned by a dome of philosophical statements (called metaphysics).
(Schlick 1930/31, 56-57)
As we shall see, however, the influence of the Vienna Circle on Ryle should be qualified a
bit. First of all, there were crucial differences of opinion between the different members of
the Circle. Schlick, for example, was close to Wittgenstein and clearly distinguished
between science and philosophy, whereas Carnap and Neurath aspired to a Russellian
scientific philosophy. In this respect, Ryle sided with the former group. Secondly, Ryle did
indeed display an interest in verification and falsification, but he never actually started to
use the Circle’s methods, and – although sympathetic towards the general idea of
verificationism – in a paper from 1936 Ryle attacks, on several grounds, the form in which
32
Ryle does not stand alone in this interpretation of Husserl. In his paper from 1993 António Zilhão claims:
‘Husserl still accepts uncritically the empiricist semantics, namely, the idea that the meaning of an expression lies
in the relation of designation it has with the object or phenomenon of experience to which it refers.’ (António
Zilhão 1993, 957)
33
See also Chapter 1.
34
the verifiability-principle was stated. Moreover, later in 1951 he is far more critical,
claiming that, although it is important to determine what does or might verify or falsify
certain hypotheses, this does not justify the verification principle, i.e. that the meaning of a
proposition is identical with its method of verification. There is more to the meaning of a
proposition than the way to test it.
We test a recipe by seeing whether cakes made in accordance with it are good or bad, but this is
not the whole point of the recipe. The normal reason for following a recipe is that we want to
have cakes to eat. Not all cooking is experimenting. We could say that understanding a recipe is
knowing how to make cakes of a certain sort; we could not say that understanding a recipe is
knowing how to tell from the cakes made according to it whether it is a good or bad recipe –
though this is, of course, the way to find out whether it is a good or bad recipe. Similarly we
could say that understanding a law-statement is knowing what concrete inferences to draw from
certain concrete premises, but not that it is knowing how to tell from the fates of such inferences
whether the statement is true or false – though, again, this is, of course, the way to test the
statement. (Ryle 1951b, 291-292)
Ryle’s basic idea is that although verification is the right way to test propositions, the
meaning of a proposition is not identical with its method of verification. Just as
understanding a recipe is knowing how to make cakes and understanding a recipe is not
identical with knowing how to test whether it is a good or a bad recipe, understanding a
proposition is not identical with knowing how to verify it. Identification of meaning with
verification is unsatisfactory since this would just be a variant of the paradox of ‘The Liar’
– what a recipe tells us would be ‘the way to find out whether what it tells us is acceptable
or unacceptable’ (Ryle 1951b, 292). Thus, whereas Ryle still considers verification to be of
great importance, he no longer thinks (that is, if he ever fully believed it) that the meaning
of a proposition is its method of verification. At the most, the method of verification of a
proposition provides a clue to its meaning.
Therefore, we should be wary to associate Ryle too strongly with logical
positivism. As we will see in Chapter 3, such a close association has been partly
responsible for the later misinterpretation of Ryle as a behaviourist.
Ryle’s Realism and Russell’s Influence Illustrated by Two Papers

As an illustration of Ryle’s early realism and his creative use of Russellian ideas, let us now
look at two early papers: ‘Negation’ (1929) and ‘Are there Propositions?’ (1930).
‘Negation’
‘Negation’ was presented at a symposium on this subject, organized by the Aristotelian
34
Society in 1929. Ryle’s contribution is partly a response to Mabbott’s idealist claim that
all negative judgments are subjective and inferior to knowledge. Ryle’s realism, and his
dislike of Mabbott’s idealist terminology, is expressed in his claim: ‘We are not excluding
B-ness from A – the nature of A does that – we are only coming to know or believe that A’s
nature does so, i.e. that A is not B.’ (Ryle 1929, 2) Whereas Ryle and Mabbott would both
agree that a negative proposition can never be the complete answer to the question ‘What is
A?’, their ideas diverge on what the negative proposition can do in this case. Mabbott
claims negative propositions to be merely expressions of doubt or ignorance, whereas Ryle
argues that ‘what a negative sentence states may be a real fact and one which is both
knowable and worth knowing’ (Ryle 1929, 2). His realism forces him to show that ‘the
34
The other speakers were J. D. Mabbott and H. H. Price.
35
negative element in negative sentences does denote, or may denote, some objective
character of known facts and not merely some subjective limitations in our intellectual
powers and equipment’. (Ryle 1929, 6)
Ryle claims that the sentence ‘Mrs Smith’s hat is not green’ expresses a genuine
proposition, since it is an answer to the question ‘What colour is Mrs Smith’s hat not?’.
Although it is not a statement of what is the colour of the hat, it would be incorrect to say
that nothing is asserted of the hat. What is asserted is ‘Mrs Smith’s hat is not green but
some other colour’. Ryle argues that this ‘but some other…’ is always present, either
explicitly or implicitly, in negative propositions. He proposes to call negative facts
‘abstract’ – such as ‘Mrs Smith’s hat is not green’ – and knowledge of such facts can be
‘instrumental to us in getting to know some further and less “abstract” fact’ (Ryle 1929, 2).
It is abstract in the sense that it is a fact about a fact about a thing and not directly a fact
about a thing. ‘Mrs Smith’s hat is not green’ positively characterises the determinate colour
of the hat as being one of the colours other than green – ‘being coloured’ positively
characterizes the hat. The ‘but some other…’-clause is part of what is meant by a negative
sentence.
Ryle further criticises Mabbott for not having clear criteria for distinguishing
between judgements which are genuine and those which are not. The criterion Ryle himself
employs is whether a particular proposition is an answer to a real question – a real question
being one ‘which can be known necessarily to have an answer, though the answer may not
be known.’ (Ryle 1929, 3) ‘Virtue is not square’ is according to Ryle not nonsensical
because of its being negative, but because it is not an answer to a real question, since virtue
does not have a shape. Ryle thinks that Mabbott would agree with him so far, but that the
latter would claim that it is precisely because all negative sentences are not answers to real
questions that all negative sentences are nonsensical. Mabbott would probably argue:
‘Mrs Smith’s hat is not green’ is nonsense unless it is true that the hat is either red or blue or
green or yellow… But that is just the point. It is not true. A particular hat can not have a
disjunctive colouring or hover between alternatives. If it is, e.g., blue, then it isn’t any other
colour, and so there is no ‘either-or’ about it at all.’ (Ryle 1929, 8)
Ryle’s reply is that, contrary to what Mabbott suggests, there is no question of a particular
hat with a disjunctive colouring. ‘Not green’ ascribes a character to a character (namely its
being coloured) of Mrs Smith’s hat and only indirectly ascribes a character to Mrs Smith’s
hat itself. Negation and disjunction are of a higher level than concrete statements such as
‘this hat is yellow’. The basic idea of different levels – different types – was already
formulated by Russell in order to avoid logical paradoxes, but Ryle applies it here in his
own original manner. According to Ryle, negations and disjunctions are ‘abstract’; they are
not directly about facts of objects such as hats or trains, but about facts about a particular
character (e.g. being coloured) of objects such as hats (or trains). Genuine negative and
disjunctive propositions presuppose and express knowledge, independent of whether we do
in fact know the ‘fact of’ – e.g. what the actual colour of the hat is.
In 1914 Russell already proclaimed the existence of negative facts, which almost
started a riot at Harvard (he also claimed that atomic and general facts existed).35 His idea
35
In 1918, during a course of eight lectures delivered in London, Russell again plead for the existence of negative
facts, taking into account Mr. Demos’ attempt to explain why there are no negative facts – Demos was someone
among Russell’s audience in Harvard (Mind, april 1917). Russell claimed: ‘I really only ask that you should not
dogmatise. I do not say positively that there are [negative facts], but there may be.’ (1918, 67) Russell’s main
objection against Demos’ view is that it makes incompatibility fundamental. Demos adheres to the Bradleyan view
that when we assert ‘not-p’ we are really asserting that there is some proposition q which is true and is an opposite
36
of negative facts must be seen against the background of his logical atomism and his idea of
analysis as a means to discover the simple and ultimate constituents of the world. He took
negative facts to be among these ultimates. He either had to admit negative facts or
abandon the correspondence theory. The Russellian idea of negative facts as ultimates
seems to imply the problematic existence of non-linguistic negative things in reality, such
as ‘not-triangles’, ‘not-green’ or ‘not-square’, in order to be able to make negative
propositions such as ‘This is not a triangle’ true.
Mabbott and Ryle would both argue against this acceptance of negative facts. But
whereas Mabbott denies the existence of negative facts altogether, Ryle wishes to defend
‘the position that a sentence involving a negative may be the expression of something that I
know – in other words, that there are real negative facts.’ (Ryle 1929, 1) Ryle’s talk of the
existence of negative facts is indebted to Russell, and so does his idea that these negative
facts are second order facts, which reminds us of Russell’s Theory of Types. However
Ryle’s application of this Russellian idea to negative statements is innovative and does not
occur in Russell or – to my knowledge – in other contemporary philosophers.36
‘Are there Propositions?’

In his paper on the existence of propositions (1930) Ryle pays attention to the question
whether there are propositions, not because he believes that there are philosophers who still
adhere to the view that propositions are genuine entities (the so-called ‘proposition
theory’), but because the ambiguities and errors of the psychological theory (e.g. that our
knowledge is merely subjective) which was refuted by the proposition theory, seem to crop
up again. If there are no such things as objective propositions for us to believe in, what are
the objects of our beliefs? And what do we know? Must the conclusion be that we have to
return to the undesirable position that knowledge is merely subjective? Ryle’s aim is to
offer a theory which avoids the ambiguities and errors of the psychological theory as well
as the defective proposition theory.
In A Hundred Years of Philosophy (1957) John Passmore claims that the problem
whether there are propositions is ‘one of the most controverted points in recent philosophy’
(p. 559, f. 7). The arguments of Moore and Russell against the proposition theory are
similar to Ryle’s. According to the proposition theory, our false beliefs – as do our true
ones – require the existence of objective propositions for us to believe in. Otherwise, how
can we retain the objectivity of our knowledge, and of logic and truth? Both Moore and
Russell argue against this theory that the very essence of a false belief is that what we
believe is not; that there is no such object as the one we believe to be there. Otherwise, so
Russell claims in The Problems of Philosophy (1912), if there were such a genuine object
as the proposition ‘Desdemona loves Cassio’, Othello’s false belief that ‘Desdemona loves
of p – which Russell interprets as being incompatible with p. Incompatibilities rather than negative facts become
objective facts. Russell does not consider this solution simpler or less problematic than allowing negative facts.
One of Russell’s objections is that incompatibilities hold between propositions, which are not ‘real’; not between
facts. Therefore it needs a lot of ‘dressing up’ (Russell 1918, 70) before it can be taken as ‘an ultimate fact of the
real world’ (ibid.). Russell thinks that it would be better to take negative facts as ultimates, rather than
incompatibilities.
36
Many years later Ryle discussed the idea that negative facts exist as things in reality in Meinong (Ryle 1973,
13). While Ryle then still rejects the existence of ‘un-things’ (ibid.) in reality, he does appreciate Meinong’s many
discriminations, that is his discussions of different types of ‘negative objects’, and believes that there is still a lot
of work to do for philosophers. As he says: ‘We cannot cry off the task of providing our own antiseptic analyses of
such varieties on the score that Meinong had housed them all together in a single box, and that was a wrong one.
His variegated object-differences have to be equally methodically re-cast as equally variegated predicate-
differences and, behind these, as equally variegated syntax-differences.’ (Ryle 1973, 13)
37
Cassio’ would be true instead of false. The very reason why his belief is false is that there is
no such object as ‘Desdemona loves Cassio’. And if false beliefs are not beliefs in objective
propositions, it seems likely that true beliefs are not beliefs in propositions either. As
Moore argues:
(…) the theory as to the analysis of belief which I wish to recommend (…) may be expressed by
saying that there simply are no such things as propositions. That belief does not consist, as the
former theory held, in a relation between the believer, on the one hand, and another thing which
may be called the proposition believed. (Moore 1910-11, 265)
However, this does not mean that every statement we make about propositions is nonsense.
Moore thinks that we should ‘continue to talk as if there were such things as propositions’
(Ibid., 265).
All that our theory compels us to say is that one part of this expression, namely the words ‘The
proposition that 2 plus 2 equals 4’, though it seems to be the name of something, is not really a
name for anything at all, whereas the whole expression, ‘The proposition that 2 plus 2 equals 4 is
true’ is a name for a fact and a most important fact; and (…) that (…) we must not suppose that
this fact can be analysed into a fact called ‘the proposition that twice two are four’ and a relation
between this fact on the one hand and truth on the other. (Ibid., 266)
Moore claims that these kinds of sentences are not in general, as a rule, misleading, but
only if we wrongly analyse the fact which they express, or regard every seemingly naming
37
expression necessarily as a name of something.
While reaching the same conclusions as Russell and Moore, Ryle uses a different
strategy. Rather than merely showing that the existence of objective propositions is
implausible because of the absurdities of the existence of objective negative propositions,
he focuses on the idea that we do not need the existence of objective propositions. He
discusses different kinds of arguments in favour of the existence of objective propositions,
e.g. the argument from the intentionality of acts of thinking (‘‘accusatives’ of acts of
thinking have come to be called ‘propositions’’ (Ryle 1930, 14)) and arguments for the
independence of propositions from thinking (since otherwise there would merely be
subjective and no objective knowledge). All these arguments lead to the same conclusion,
namely that there are two main kinds of being, namely existing and subsisting being (the
latter constitutes the so-called Third realm, consisting of universals, relations, numbers, and
objective truths and falsehoods or objective propositions). Ryle expresses his fear that
antinomies necessarily arise from treating propositions as substances. He does not want to
admit a Third realm, showing that his own alternative theory renders objective propositions
neither plausible nor necessary. In this way he tries to solve the problems which the
proposition theory had tackled, e.g. that knowledge is necessarily subjective and in this
respect does not differ from belief.
Ryle’s theory is that when we know something what we know is a fact, ‘fact’ not
denoting any new entity. There is no intermediating something (e.g. an objective
proposition) between my knowing and the fact. And the fact that I know this fact, and the
meaning of my statement what I know are one and the same thing. According to Ryle,
statements of what I merely think (all varieties of apprehension other than knowing, e.g.
believing, supposing) belong to a different category; they are not statements of known
facts. This, however, does not make them meaningless. What I believe is ‘still something
37
In this respect, from ‘Categories’ (1938) onwards, Ryle seems to resemble Moore. He no longer aims at
reformulating misleading expressions but focuses on a more conceptual type of analysis.
38
“accusative” to my thinking, and in its identity thinkable, too, to any other persons or to me
on any other occasions’ (Ryle 1930, 27), or by ‘one or many persons in many sorts of
attitude’ (Ibid., 28). Ryle regards Meinong to be right that there is a neutral common
‘thinking that’ (Annahmen) present in all of our thinking attitudes, namely ‘thinking of
…as’. To think ‘x is y’ is to think x as if it is/were y.
If I am right, the air is now cleared to this extent. We have only two states of mind to deal with.
At the top we have knowing, the ‘accusative’ of which is a fact. At the bottom we have ‘thinking
of …as’ or ‘entertaining’, the ‘accusative’ of which is still sub judice. (Ibid., 29)
Ryle asks himself of what a statement (say ‘x is y’) is presentative, or what it symbolizes,
in the case of ‘thinking of …as’. The statement cannot present or symbolize a fact known to
me, because this would make it knowledge instead of merely ‘thinking of …as’, and
presumably it is not the statement of a fact at all. When I think (and not know) the
statement ‘Smith is taller than Jones’, the statement is not presentative of anything but
functions as if it does.
The image does not present the fact that Smith is taller than Jones – there may be no such fact –
but it is as if it did. It [the image or, in other cases, the statement] is therefore a constituent of the
hypothetical fact that the image depicts their relative heights if and only if Smith is taller than
Jones. (Ibid., 36)
Knowledge differs from mere thinking in that the first means thinking in a symbol and the
second in a quasi-symbol.
The symbol proper – i.e. the statement of a known fact – symbolizes a fact in which it itself is
not a constituent. The quasi-symbol exhibits but does not symbolize a fact which is in part about
itself, namely, that it has such grammatical properties that it may state a fact and does so if there
is such and such a fact. (Ibid., 36)
Symbols and quasi-symbols have the same grammatical structure but not the same
symbolizing or presentative function.38 According to Ryle, propositions are not what we
think, but what we think in. There are no propositions, but there are facts, symbols and
quasi-symbols by means of which the undesirable consequences of psychologism can be
avoided. Without assuming the existence of propositions Ryle thus finds a way to rescue
the essential difference between knowing and thinking, while still being able to explain the
possibility that several persons, or one person at several different occasions or in different
attitudes may ‘think the same thing’.
Because of the fact that at the time he wrote ‘Are there Propositions?’ Ryle still
adhered to a denotational theory of meaning, and did not want to accept the existence of
propositions in reality, he was forced into the position that false sentences do not have a
meaning. He writes: ‘In the strict sense, only those statements mean something which state
a fact to some one who knows the fact.’ (Ryle 1930, 34) And false sentences do not state
facts. Ryle does distinguish between the meaninglessness of false sentences and
meaningless ‘in the way in which a haphazard collocation of words is meaningless’ (Ibid.).
A false statement is a quasi-symbol, not genuinely symbolizing a reality. In his book
Outlines of a Nominalist Theory of Propositions (1972) Paul Gochet refutes Ryle’s theory
38
As will be clear from Ryle’s description of Wittgenstein’s views on how a sentence has a meaning (see Chapter
6, p. 155), the view he attributes to Wittgenstein closely resembles his own view. He may well have been
influenced by Wittgenstein on this point.
39
because he considers it to be a mistake to let truth-value determine meaning. (Gochet 1972,

125-6) Later, after he had rejected his rigid denotational theory of meaning, Ryle would
also be able to set aside his earlier idea that false sentences do not have a meaning.
Thus, both these early two papers, ‘Are there Propositions?’ and ‘Negation’, show
clear traces of a Russellian way of thinking, such as a Theory of Types, Theory of
Descriptions, and the idea that there is no such thing as an intermediary proposition
between knowledge and the known fact. But Ryle operates with these instruments in his
own way, claiming that negative facts are of a higher order – that is, they are of a higher
level of abstraction – than positive ones. And as Russell avoids absurdities by introducing
the idea of incomplete symbols, Ryle’s quasi-symbols perform a similar task.
‘Systematically Misleading Expressions’

Ryle’s ‘Systematically Misleading Expressions’ (1932b) is without doubt one of his most
well-known contributions to philosophical method. The central idea of the paper, that there
are expressions that are systematically misleading, and that these expressions should be
reformulated, was certainly not new. Ryle was influenced by the Russellian idea that a
philosopher’s job is to construct a logically ideal language which lacks the misleading
39
structure of ordinary language. Such an ideal language would exhibit the true nature of
the world, containing only those expressions which unambiguously and correctly reflect
this ontological structure. There was supposed to be just one word for every simple object;
‘there will always be a certain fundamental identity of structure between a fact and the
symbol for it’ (Russell 1918, 52).
In the early 1930s – following in Russell’s footsteps – Ryle thought that many
expressions, though they are clearly understood by their everyday users, are nevertheless
couched in grammatical or syntactical forms which are in a demonstrable way improper to
the states of affairs which they record. When an expression is of such a syntactical form
that it is improper to the fact recorded, it is systematically misleading in that it naturally
suggests to some people – though not to ordinary people – that the state of affairs recorded
is of quite a different sort from that which it in fact is. Such systematically misleading
expressions can be reformulated and – for philosophy – must be reformulated into
expressions of which the syntactical form is proper to the facts recorded (or the alleged
facts recorded). Systematically misleading expressions are not false or senseless. For them
to be false (or true) they would have to be proper to the states of affairs recorded. And for
them to be senseless they would not record any state of affairs, for example ‘virtue is
square’. According to Ryle, philosophers cannot help treating grammatical forms as clues
to the logical structures for which they are looking. And these clues are often misleading. If
a statement cannot be really about x when it is either true or false it is systematically
misleading. E.g. ‘God does not exist’ cannot be really about God because if it were true
there would be no God for the statement to be about.
Ryle roughly distinguishes between three different types of systematically
misleading expressions:
1) quasi-ontological statements (e.g. ‘God does not exist’, ‘Mr Pickwick is a

fiction’); whereas the grammatical form of ‘x exists’ and ‘x does not exist’
suggests that a given subject of attributes x does or does not have the attribute of
39
The general idea that the grammatical and the logical form of an expression sometimes differ was already put
forward by Husserl, Bradley, Cook Wilson and others.
40
existing, in fact these statements assert or deny the attribute of being x-ish or being
an x of something not named in the statement. ‘Mr Pickwick is a fiction’ seems to
be about a Mr Pickwick who does not have the attribute of existing, but the
statement is really about Dickens (or about his Pickwick Papers). The
systematically misleading statement should be reformulated into one which does
not even appear to refer to a subject ‘Mr Pickwick’, but unambiguously refers to
Dickens or the Pickwick Papers.
2) statements seemingly about universals and quasi-platonic statements (e.g.
‘unpunctuality is reprehensible’ and ‘equality is, or is not, a real entity’); whereas
‘unpunctuality’ seems to denote the subject of which an attribute is being asserted,
in fact ‘is unpunctual’ signifies the having of an attribute. Universals are not
objects in the way in which the Mt Everest is one. We cannot speak of ‘equality’
and ‘justice’ as if they were objects, since general nouns, adjectives, etc., are not
proper names. But because of the grammatical form of these quasi-platonic
statements we tend to treat them as if the universals – such as ‘unpunctuality’ –
denote objects, although in reality they signify the having of attributes.
3) descriptive expressions and quasi-descriptions (e.g. ‘the eldest son of Jones was
married to-day’ and ‘Poincaré is not the King of France’); genuine unique
descriptions – such as ‘the eldest son of Jones was married to-day’ are not
intrinsically misleading but philosophers often do mistakenly assume that (1)
descriptive phrases – such as ‘the eldest son of Jones’ – are proper names and
therefore denote in virtue of being called ‘the so and so’, and (2) that a description
means what it describes – e.g. that ‘the eldest son of Jones’ means Tommy since
Tommy is the one that is described. But descriptive phrases are not proper names.
They denote in virtue of possessing and being the sole possessor of the attribute
signified by the descriptive phrase. And they mean what is meant by the
predicative expression – being a son of Jones and being older than Jones’ other
sons. Whereas (1) and (2) are errors with respect to descriptive expressions and are
not caused by misleading grammatical clues, more interesting mistakes are made
with respect to quasi-descriptions, that is ‘the’-phrases which behave
grammatically as if they were unique descriptions referring to individuals, when in
fact they are not denotational phrases at all. Examples are ‘Poincaré is not the
King of France’, ‘the top of that tree’, ‘Jones hates the thought of going to
hospital’, ‘the defeat of the Labour Party has surprised me’ and ‘the whale is not a
fish but a mammal’.
All three types of systematically misleading expressions are misleading in roughly the same
way. They suggest the existence of new sorts of objects. Expressions are misconstrued as
denoting when in fact they do not denote, but only look grammatically like denoting
expressions. Perhaps at first sight Ryle’s account seems to amount to a rejection of
denotationalism. However, a closer look at his examples shows that it does not. He
reformulates ‘Mr Pickwick is a fiction’, which seems to refer to a Mr Pickwick in reality,
into a statement that refers to a Dickens, or The Pickwick Papers. So the expression does
refer, but not to what it seems to refer to at first sight. It therefore should be reformulated
into an expression that does not disguise this ‘real’ reference. Ryle also reformulates
expressions of type (2) and (3) in this way. They refer to some object in reality, but not to
the one they seemed to refer to at first sight.
According to Ryle, systematically misleading expressions play a central role in the
forming of mistaken philosophical doctrines:
41
I suspect that all the mistaken doctrines of concepts, ideas, terms, judgements, objective
propositions, contents, objectives and the like derive from the same fallacy, namely, that there
must be something referred to by such expressions as ‘the meaning of the word (phrase or
sentence) x’ on all fours with the policeman who is really referred to by the descriptive phrase
‘our village policeman is fond of football’. And the way out of this confusion is to see that some
‘the’-phrases are only similar in grammar and not similar in function to referentially used
descriptive phrases, e.g., in the case in point, ‘the meaning of “x”’ is like ‘the King of France’ in
‘Poincaré is not the King of France’, a predicative expression used non-referentially. (Ryle
1932b, 56)
The reformulation of systematically misleading expressions is what philosophy for Ryle is.
However, this does not make philosophers into philologists. The task of philosophy is not
to substitute nouns for nouns or verbs for other verbs, but to make clear ‘what it really
means to say so and so’ (Ryle 1932b, 61). ‘Its restatements are transmutations of syntax.’
(Ryle 1932b, 61)
Russell’s influence is clearly present, both in the idea of reformulating misleading
expressions into ones that are not, and in the choice of examples. In ‘On Denoting’ (1905)
Russell introduced ‘the King of France’, which became a stock example in the literature.
Ryle, too, uses it in ‘Systematically Misleading Expressions’. According to Russell, ‘the
present King of France’ seems to be a denoting phrase – by virtue of its form – but it does
not denote anything (since France is not a monarchy). He was in fact the first to recognize
that denoting phrases containing ‘the’ do not automatically refer to entities. Some of Ryle’s
other examples are of the same kind as Russell’s, e.g. Ryle’s ‘God does not exist’ and
40
Russell’s ‘The golden mountain does not exist’. But their discussions show, besides
similarities, also important differences.
First of all, there is a difference in focus; whereas Russell uses the language of
logic and talks about avoiding a breach of the law of contradiction and the law of identity,
and about ‘incomplete symbols’, Ryle neither mentions laws of logic, nor other technical
41
terms, using everyday language to make his point.
In this paper I have deliberately refrained from describing expressions as ‘incomplete symbols’
or quasi-things as ‘logical constructions’. Partly I have abstained because I am fairly ignorant of
the doctrines in which these are technical terms, though in so far as I do understand them, I think
that I could re-state them in words which I like better without modifying the doctrines. But
partly, also, I think that the terms themselves are rather ill-chosen and are apt to cause
unnecessary perplexities. But I do think that I have been talking about what is talked about by
those who use these terms, when they use them. (Ryle 1932b, 62)
Secondly, Ryle dissociates himself from the early Wittgensteinian and Russellian thought
that there is a real and unconventional one-to-one relation between the composition of the
expression and that of fact. According to Ryle, a fact is not a collection: ‘I do not see how a
fact or state of affairs can be deemed like or even unlike in structure a sentence, gesture or
diagram.’ (Ryle 1932b, 59) But the alternative is not easy for him to accept either. It cannot
be just by convention that a given grammatical form fits facts of a given logical form,
because customary usage obviously tolerates systematically misleading expressions. Ryle is
not sure which alternative to choose, but he claims that the relation between the
40
Ryle does not use examples similar to ‘The author of Waverley is Scott’, whereby Russell attempts to show that
this definite description is more informative than ‘Scott is Scott’ and that ‘the author of Waverley’ by itself does
not mean anything. It only means something in an appropriate context.
41
As we have seen, in ‘Are there Propositions?’ (1930) Ryle used technical language, e.g. ‘quasi-symbols’. From
‘Systematically Misleading Expressions’ (1932b) onwards, this type of language was almost entirely absent from
his writings.
42
grammatical form of expressions and the logical form of the facts they record is ‘more
nearly conventional than natural’ (Ryle 1932b, 60).
Another way in which Ryle distances himself from Russell is his refusal to adopt
the latter’s idea of positively determining an ideal language – that is a language that
exhibits the true nature of the world. Ryle’s method is a negative and more modest one
which starts with absurdities and antinomies indicating that certain expressions are
systematically misleading, and results into a reformulation of these expressions into those
that are proper to the facts recorded, without inferring ontological claims. Ryle does aim at
an ideal language, though not ideal in the sense of a formal logical language. He uses a
negative method and deals with the misleading expressions one by one.
I conclude, then, that there is, after all, a sense in which we can properly enquire and even say
‘what it really means to say so and so’. For we can ask what is the real form of the fact recorded
when this is concealed or disguised and not duly exhibited by the expression in question. And we
can often succeed in stating this fact in a new form of words which does exhibit what the other
failed to exhibit. And I am for the present inclined to believe that this is what philosophical
analysis is and that this is the sole and whole function of philosophy. (…) But, as confession is
good for the soul, I must admit that I do not very much relish the conclusions towards which
these conclusions point. I would rather allot to philosophy a sublimer task than the detection of
the sources in linguistic idioms of recurrent misconstructions and absurd theories. But that it is at
least this I cannot feel any serious doubt. (Ryle 1932b, 61)
Ryle does not attempt to provide an exhaustive list of all possible types of systematically
misleading expressions – ‘I fancy that the number is in principle unlimited, but that the
number of prevalent and obsessing types is fairly small’ (Ryle 1932b, 61). We can only
look at specific expressions or types of expressions and free them of their systematically
misleading character.
After ‘Systematically Misleading Expressions’ (1932b) the differences between the
two philosophers enlarged. As I mentioned before, Russell thought that meaning was
usually determined referentially – in the sense that ‘Fido’ (the name) means Fido (the dog)
– but that there were exceptions which are misleading in the sense that grammatically they
were similar to the ‘regular’ cases. This is why he called expressions such as ‘the king of
France’ incomplete symbols which are meaningless by themselves and only get a meaning
in an appropriate context. Meaning is symbolizing, it is referring to atomic facts in reality,
and Russell tries to account for those cases which are exceptions to the rule. One may say
that Russell’s question (and also Ryle’s in 1932) was: given a general account of how
expressions mean (e.g. a denotational account of meaning), is there a fundamental identity
of structure between a certain expression and the fact described? (Russell), or, is the
syntactical form of a certain expression proper to the facts recorded? (Ryle) If not, how
should the expression be reformulated?
As Ryle himself claimed many years later at the Royaumont Colloquium of 1961,
his later views on philosophical method were different from the ones he had developed in
‘Systematically Misleading Expressions’.
It is certain that when I wrote “Systematically Misleading Expressions” I was still under the
direct influence of the notion of an “ideal language” – a doctrine according to which there were a
certain number of logical forms which one could somehow dig up by scratching away at the
earth which covered them. I no longer think, especially not today, that this is a good method. I do
not regret having travelled that road, but I am happy to have left it behind me. (Ryle 1961b, 305)
43
Soon after 1932 Ryle was moving towards his later position of rejecting the denotational
theory of meaning altogether – instead of merely showing that there is a minority of cases
in which the denotationalist theory leads to absurdities and thereby in fact confirming that
denotationalism constitutes the rule.
It is difficult to determine exactly when this change of position occurred, but it
must have been rather early; perhaps it started as early as ‘Imaginary Objects’ (1933a). In
this paper Ryle uses the example of Mr Pickwick again, but no longer reformulates
expressions about Mr Pickwick into ones that refer to Dickens or The Pickwick Papers. The
paper ‘About’ (1933b) also shows traces of position (2). In this paper Ryle distinguishes
between three different sorts of ‘about’ of which two are relevant here: ‘about-referential’
(about (r)) and ‘about-linguistic’ (about (l)), the first being about an object in reality in the
sense of referring to it, while the second is a mere linguistic ‘about’. ‘Charlotte is writing
her thesis’ is both ‘about (r)’ me and ‘about (l)’ me, whereas a sentence cannot be ‘about
(r)’ Mr Pickwick, but can only be ‘about (l)’ him (since there is no object in reality to
which ‘Mr Pickwick’ refers). In this paper, as well as in all his other early papers –
especially ‘Negation’ (1929), ‘Are there propositions?’ (1930) and ‘Imaginary Objects’
(1933a) – the relation between language and reality is fundamental. If all language were
‘about (r)’ objects, the existence of negative facts and even of negative nonlinguistic
entities would be required, and imaginary objects would have to be objects in reality, that is
if we want to talk about them in any meaningful way. Likewise, for our statements to be
‘about (r)’ propositions, propositions would have to be objects in reality. The consequence
of treating all our expressions as if they are ‘about (r)’ is that we have to create more
objects than seems to be desirable. And doing so leads to paradoxes or antinomies.
Although his approach changed, this general problem remained a central theme throughout
Ryle’s career.
Ryle’s later question (around 1938) became: are expressions that seem to have the
same meaning (for example because they have the same grammatical structure) of the same
category? That is, do they mean what they mean in the same way? At the time he wrote
‘Categories’ Ryle held the view that there is no general account of how expressions mean
and therefore no (uniform) connection with the level of reality. He now went so far as to
reject the whole idea of a homogeneous theory of meaning.
Position 2: Rejecting Denotationalism

Russell’s influence gradually seems to make way for a more (late) Wittgensteinian
influence. This becomes apparent in ‘Taking Sides in Philosophy’ (1937) and ‘Categories’
(1938) when Ryle abandons Russell’s idea of the need and the possibility to seek for an
ideal language which is logically perfect – and therefore not misleading – in that it exhibits
the true nature of the world. Ryle changed his mind about an ideal language and seems to
think at the time of ‘Categories’ that our everyday language is fine the way it is, as long as
we realise that grammar does not provide a reliable tool for establishing meaning and
sameness or difference of category; the word ‘misleading’ disappears from his vocabulary.
He no longer focuses on reformulating expressions like ‘The present King of France is
bald’, but insists that philosophers should realise that ‘the present King of France’ and ‘the
present King (or, nowadays better, Queen) of England’ belong to different categories.
Reformulation is no longer required or even desirable. This position, to which he was to
44
adhere throughout the rest of his career, constitutes an important difference between him,
and Russell.
The later Wittgenstein also moved away from an ideal formal language, but kept
rejecting the application of ‘true’ and ‘false’ to philosophical propositions, restricting their
use to scientific propositions. At a Royaumont Colloquium in 1961, when asked what was
the fundamental difference between himself and the later Wittgenstein, part of Ryle’s reply
was:
Wittgenstein did not like using words such as “true” or “false” because he wanted to avoid
blurring the line of demarcation between philosophy and science, as had been done in the past.
For reasons which seemed to him sufficient, he thought the word “true” belonged, or at least
should belong, to the scientist. For myself, I do not see any good reason why the use of the word
should be restricted in this way. I think that to say that a philosophical proposition is true, and to
say that a scientific proposition is true, does not entail that the two propositions are of the same
order. And I see no reason for not using the word “true” – or, more often, the word “false” – in
both cases. (Ryle 1961b, 305)
Ryle clearly let go of his earlier wish for an ideal language – focusing on recognizing
category differences rather than on reformulating.
Ryle’s change of method after ‘Systematically Misleading Expressions’ was based
on his rejection of denotationalism, or hypostatization, that is ‘treating as names or other
sorts of mentions expressions which are not names or other sorts of mentions’ (Ryle 1949b,
234). Denotationalism was a popular position which Ryle considered to be responsible for
many misunderstandings and paradoxes. He appreciated Frege, e.g. for pointing at the
difference in meaning of ‘morning star’ and ‘evening star’, as well as Russell for his theory
of descriptions, which solved problems concerning expressions such as ‘The present King
of France is bald’. However, he criticised them – Frege more than Russell – for not having
realized that these examples had much greater consequences than they had ever imagined:
in fact they proved the denotationalist view to be mistaken. Russell and Frege conceded
that there were some exceptions to the referentialist rule, but they did not question
denotationalism as such. And Carnap, while claiming to reject denotationalism, in fact
made the same kind of mistake. He, too, was guilty of ‘hypostatization’.
So though in fact only a minority of sentence-fragments, namely mentioningly used substantival

expressions, can be said to have extensions, Carnap has to assimilate the jobs even of sentences
to this special job of a species of sentence-fragments. And this is precisely parallel to the Frege-
Meinong mistake of treating sentences as names. These theorists assimilated saying to calling;
Carnap assimilates saying to mentioning. Yet both mentions and names (which are a species of
mention) are ordinarily used only as fragments of42 sentences. They enable us to say certain sorts
of things, but when we have uttered them by themselves we have not yet said anything. (…)
Now by ‘hypostatization’ we mean treating as names or other sorts of mentions expressions
which are not names or other sorts of mentions. And just this is the tenor of the whole of
Carnap’s meaning-analysis. (Ryle 1949b, 233-234)
Perhaps all theories of meaning in some way or another make this mistake of
hypostatization, or more in general, of treating all expressions alike. This may also have
been the reason why Ryle later moved from a theory of meaning to a theory of use, thereby
stressing the heterogeneity of our sayings.
In what follows we shall look at the shift from a Russellian type of analysis to that
of categories and category-mistakes, which became the core of Ryle’s later views, e.g. in
42
The printed text reads ‘fragments or sentences’, but Ryle presumably meant ‘fragments of sentences’.
45
The Concept of Mind (1949a).43 An important paper here is ‘Categories’ from 1938, and we
shall therefore discuss it in some detail. To complete our picture of the period before The
Concept of Mind, we shall look at the development of these ideas in the 1940s.
Category-Mistakes: the Essence of Philosophical Problems

In his early paper ‘Categories’ (1938) Ryle defines the essence of what he thinks
philosophy is by means of categories or types.
The matter is of some importance, for not only is it the case that category-propositions (namely
assertions that terms belong to certain categories or types) are always philosopher’s propositions,
but, I believe, the converse is also true. So we are in the dark about the nature of philosophical
problems and methods if we are in the dark about types or categories. (Ryle 1938, 170)
We need to pursue category-mistakes because it is the only way we can get rid of the
antinomies we are confronted with, both in our everyday life (e.g. I see a bent stick and the
stick is straight) and with respect to technical concepts (e.g. the problem of the internality
44
of relations ).
But what kinds of categories does Ryle have in mind? What are his categories
categories of? Some philosophers, e.g. Bernard Williams, interpreted them as ontological
categories and in doing so associated Ryle with a rather Russellian approach. Williams
claimed at a Royaumont Colloquium in 1961 that Ryle’s point of view was one according
to which ‘there are ontological categories which can be discovered by looking at linguistic
expressions’ (Williams 1961, 304). This however may be questioned. Rather than
ontological categories, they are semantical, as I will suggest in what follows. Ryle himself
gives us important clues as to what his categories are categories of:
We try, then, to say that absurdities result from the improper coupling not of expressions but of
what the expressions signify, though the coupling and mis-coupling of them is effected by
operating upon their expression. But there is not and cannot be any univocal title for all the
significata of expressions, since if there was such a title, all these significata would be of one and
the same type. And just this is what was at bottom wrong with the Lockean terminology of
‘ideas’ and the Meinongian terminology of ‘objects’, words which were employed to perform
exactly this impossible task. (…) So I use ‘proposition-factor’ (intending it to have all possible
type-ambiguities), to collect whatever is signified by any expression, simple or complex, which
can be a complement to a gap-sign in some propositional factor or other (or which can be a
variable is some propositional function or other). And, if asked such questions as Do
proposition-factors exist? How many of them are there? Are they mental? What are they like?,
my answer is, ‘All such questions are ridiculous, since “factor” is and is meant to be the meeting-
place of all type-ambiguities.’ (Ryle 1938, 180-181)
Ryle’s terminology of significata and signification may suggest that he accepts some sort of
denotationalism after all, but this is not the case. His point is that the significata of
expressions are multifarious and cannot be reduced to one type. In order to show this
multifarious character he chooses to use the very general term ‘proposition-factor’, by
which it becomes immediately clear that Ryle’s categories are linguistical or semantical
43
Whether, and in what way, Ryle later changed his attitude towards categories and their importance for
philosophy, which at least seems to be implied by Dilemmas (Ryle 1954a), will be dealt with in Chapter 4.
44
As Ryle tries to show in his paper ‘Internal Relations’ (Ryle 1935c), antinomies resulting from the technical
concept of relation caused the problem of the internality of relations. He thinks that arguments from the internality
of relations to monism or the coherence theory of truth are caused by a wrong categorization of the technical
concept of relation.
46
ones. Ryle wants to emphasise that what is signified by various expressions does not belong
to one single category, but to several. He uses the word ‘proposition-factor’ for whatever is
signified by any expression. This view expresses Ryle’s idea of the heterogeneity of our
statements – the endless variety of different categories of ‘meaning’ – and his rejection of a
theory of meaning according to which the meaning of all statements is determined alike,
viz. denotationalism. Precisely because expressions mean what they mean in many different
ways it is not possible to limit category differences to ontological ones. Category
differences between two expressions are differences in how these expressions mean what
they mean. Not all the significata of expressions are of the same category – and therefore
cannot have a univocal title – and insufficient acknowledgement of this is exactly where
philosophy goes wrong.
How can we know whether two expressions belong to different categories of
meaning?
To ask the question To what type or category does so-and-so belong? Is to ask In what sorts of
true or false propositions can so-and-so enter? Or, to put it semantically, it is to ask In what sorts
of non-absurd sentences and in what positions in them can the expression ‘so and so’ enter? And,
conversely, What sorts of sentences would be rendered absurd by the substitution for one of their
sentence-factors of the expression ‘so and so’? (Ryle 1938, 180)
We can determine to which category a proposition belongs by looking at its relations or

‘liaisons’, i.e. what the proposition ‘implies, what is implied by it, what it is compatible
with and what it is incompatible with’ (Ryle 1938, 183). And this is precisely what
philosophical analysis is – the activity of argumentation and not merely that of
paraphrasing.
Now the operation of formulating the liaisons of a proposition just is the activity of ratiocination
or argumentation (…). And this is why philosophising is arguing, and it is just this element of
ratiocination which, as a rule, is left out of the latter-day definitions of philosophy as ‘analysis’.
For these generally suggest that analysing is some sort of paraphrasing. But some sorts of
paraphrase throw no philosophical light, for they fail to exhibit just those features of propositions
and their factors, obscurity about which involves us in antinomies, namely their liaisons which
flow from or constitute their logical types and forms. Mere increase of prolixity is not enough.
(Ryle 1938, 183-184)
Ryle claims that in a way the formal structure of a proposition and its liaisons are the same
thing. It is essential that Ryle does not mean ‘formal structure’ and ‘logical type’ in the
sense of formal logic. Whereas formal logic abstracts from all differences in subject-matter,
45
to Ryle these differences are essential. From a purely formal point of view there is no
difference between ‘all virtues are square’ and ‘all tables are square’.46 Therefore, Ryle’s
kind of absurdity cannot be captured in purely formal logic. Logical form for Ryle is logic
by virtue of meaning (or, perhaps, already this early, logic by virtue of use) and not a logic
that is merely based on content-neutral logical constants. In this respect Ryle clearly stands
47
in the long tradition of the Oxford use of informal logic , as opposed to the Cambridge
tradition of formal logic.
More specifically, the way to test whether two proposition-factors are of different
categories is to check whether:
45
Cf. Strawson 1970 (p. 185).
46
It is important to realize that both ‘allvirtues are square’ and its denial are equally absurd.
47
Bosanquet, Cook Wilson, etc. Cf. p. 31 of this dissertation.
47
(…) there are sentence-frames such that when the expressions for those factors are imported as
alternative complements to the same gap-signs, the resultant sentences are significant in the one
case and absurd in the other. (Ryle 1938, 181)
For example, ‘I’ and ‘the writer of this paper’ belong to different categories, since the
sentence-frame ‘… never wrote a paper’ is significant if we import ‘I’, but absurd in the
other case – viz. ‘the writer of this paper never wrote a paper’. (Ryle 1938, 181)
Now that we have seen what Ryle has to say about ‘categories’ and ‘category-
mistakes’, it is time to ask the question whether his descriptions suffice to show what
exactly are ‘category’ and ‘category-mistake’. Has he been successful in convincing us that
they are useful concepts? In an excellent paper on Ryle’s categories, P. F. Strawson claims
that it is plausible that Ryle’s early works need some kind of general theoretical account of
the notions of category, category-difference and category-mistake, but that, unfortunately,
Ryle himself does not provide it. Ryle’s explanations, descriptions and examples of what a
category is, and what a category-mistake is, lack the precision that is required for the
concept to be of real use. If Ryle’s notion of category-mistake turns out to be a mere
garbage-bin for all kinds of mistakes which are not or cannot be further identified, it is hard
to see how the notion can be of much use. Ryle’s frequent use of reductio ad absurdum
arguments does not seem to help, but only adds to the problem. As Strawson notes, there
are different kinds of absurdities and only some of them are the result of category-mistakes.
In order to see whether Strawson is justified in his claim that Ryle needs a general theory
we should first address the following questions: (1) By virtue of what do different Rylean
categories differ? And (2) what kind of absurdities are category-mistakes?
As Strawson argues, the descriptions above do not suffice to show that ‘category’
and ‘category-mistake’ are useful concepts, at least not without further explanation, since
there are cases in which Ryle’s descriptions allow us to infer that two proposition-factors
belong to different categories, whereas Ryle must have considered them to belong to the
same category. For example, following Ryle’s instructions we are justified in claiming that
’27’ and ‘37’ belong to different categories. If we import them in the sentence-frame ‘She
was over … and under 33’, in the first case the resulting sentence is significant, in the
second absurd. But surely, Ryle did not mean to claim that ‘27’ and ‘37’ belong to different
48
categories. As a matter of fact, Ryle’s description seems to force us to say that all
proposition-factors belong to different categories, since for two proposition-factors we can
always find a sentence which is significant if the one is imported to the gap-sign and absurd
when the other is imported.
Let us infer from the examples Ryle uses what kinds of category-differences and
absurdities he had in mind. He does not aim at purely formal absurdities such as ‘A and not
A’ or ‘there is a number over 37 which is under 33’. The absurdities he has in mind are
‘virtue is square’, ‘the writer of this paper never wrote a paper’ (Ryle 1938, 181) and ‘time
began a million years ago’ (Ryle 1945, 204), concluding that ‘virtue’ does not belong to the
same category as, for example, ‘table’; ‘the writer of this paper’ not to the same category as
‘I’ and ‘time’ not to the same category as ‘human life’. Only certain sorts of differences in
logical form imply category-differences. The question then is: what sort of differences?
According to Strawson, a category-mistake is a specific kind of mistake, an
absurdity that takes the form of :
48
This is the example Strawson uses in Strawson 1970 (p. 187).
48
the inappropriateness of some range of predicates to some class of subjects (…). “Xs are not the
sort of thing that can be ф”; “xs neither ф nor fail to ф”; “‘фing’ (or ‘being ф’) cannot be
significantly predicated of xs.” (Strawson 1970, 193)
‘Square’, for instance, cannot be predicated of ‘virtue’, and ‘never having written a paper’
cannot be predicated of ‘the writer of this paper’. In my opinion, Strawson’s example of
‘27’ and ‘37’ belonging to different categories is perhaps a bit unfair to Ryle, because the
complex sentence ‘She was over … and under 33’ contains a predicate which belongs to the
same category as both ‘27’ and ‘37’. The question should obviously not be whether ‘27’
and ‘37’ can be predicated of a subject of which another predicate is already predicated
(namely being under 33), but simply whether they can be predicated of the subject. And I
cannot think of any simple sentence that is significant if ‘27’ is imported into the gap-sign
and absurd if ‘37’ is imported. However, Strawson’s example does work well for
discovering Ryle’s implicit criteria of category differences.
So far, defining characteristics of sameness or difference of categories have been
mentioned. It is by virtue of meaning (and not by virtue of content-independent formal
logic) that some range of predicates is (in)appropriate to some class of subjects. An
important question that remains to be answered is whether Ryle’s view on categories and
category-mistakes can be seen as a general theory in the sense that they explain exactly
which kinds of categories and category-mistakes Ryle is after and distinguish them from
philosophically irrelevant ones, such as ‘someone blind neither spots nor overlooks the fly
in the ointment’ (Strawson 1970, 205). According to Strawson, without such a theory it
could be argued that:
The particular interest excited by some cases of these correlations and not by others reflects
nothing but a depth or strikingness or, sometimes, of philosophical importance, as attaching to
some cases and not to others; and this is why theories of categories tend to move in circles. For
this is the result that inevitably ensues when an attempt is made to present as resting on a clear
and general distinction a habit of classification which in fact rests on nothing but differences in
degree of impressiveness. (Strawson 1970, 206)
It may be questioned, however, whether Ryle holds a theory of categories in this sense. He
does distinguish between philosophically important and philosophically less important
category-mistakes, e.g. he thinks that abstractness causes philosophically interesting
category-mistakes, but he does not see the need to exclude those that are not, or less,
interesting to philosophy. They are only less interesting because they do not tempt us into
making mistakes. Concepts or abstractions that are not concrete but are of a higher level of
abstraction, such as ‘the common man’ or ‘the average tax-payer’, constitute the more
interesting cases. Why are they more interesting? Simply because such abstract concepts
are more likely to cause antinomies or absurdities in philosophy – these absurdities being
less obvious. But in principle ‘any uncharted concept is liable to generate antinomies, for
ignorance of its chart is ignorance of some of the implications and compatibilities of the
propositions containing it.’ (Ryle 1938, 182) ‘Someone blind neither spots nor overlooks
the fly in the ointment’ is as philosophical as ‘In saying “I am now lying” I am neither lying
nor telling the truth’, but not as interesting. According to Ryle the latter sort is interesting
since ‘their absurdities are not obvious but manifest themselves in the generation of
contradictions or vicious circles, whereas ‘Saturday is in bed’ is obviously absurd before
any contradictions are seen to result from the hypothesis that it is true’ (Ryle 1938, 179).
Clues to interesting cases are therefore abstractness and that the absurdity is not recognized
as such beforehand but only after contradictions and absurdities have presented themselves.
49
If Strawson means to show that Ryle does not have an independent, external rod to
measure whether a category-mistake is philosophically relevant, he is right. However, such
a claim would suggest that Ryle needs one. Strawson hopes to find some clues in grammar.
If we know why an expression that mixes up different categories makes grammatical sense,
perhaps we will be able to understand more about the nature of categories and category-
mistakes. Why is it that ‘Saturday is in bed’ makes grammatical sense even though in virtue
of its meaning, Saturday is not the kind of thing to be in (or out) bed?
But does this help? How does insight into why an expression is grammatical help
us to understand why it is absurd? Does ‘Saturday is in bed’ even make grammatical sense?
(And does ‘yellow is in bed?) Does any singular term make sense when imported into ‘… is
in bed’? It seems to me that we either interpret grammatical rules in a very weak sense,
which means that ‘yellow is in bed’ and ‘Saturday is in bed’ are grammatically correct, or
in a stronger sense, thereby smuggling in semantics. In the first case grammar is not likely
to give clues to semantics; in the second any clue would be, at least partly, semantical,
which would endanger the non-circularity of the resulting general theory.
According to Ryle, there is no way in which the different categories can be
‘discovered’ by looking at the world or other non-semantical sources. There is no external
rod to be discovered, and philosophy does not rely on finding one, as science usually does,
not even a linguistical one. Ryle does not give a general theoretical account because he
simply does not think that such an account is possible in the first place. Categories and
category-mistakes are not the kinds of concepts that can be defined in the sense of giving a
theoretical description.
Philosophy as a Method and the Reductio ad Absurdum as the Ultimate

Philosophical Argument
From ‘Categories’ (1938) it is clear that Ryle considers philosophy to be a method rather
than a theory, argumentation being the essence of philosophical analysis. Another paper
from about the same time, ‘Taking Sides in Philosophy’ (1937b), presents this view in
explicit terms. Philosophers do not discover new matters of fact – they discover new
philosophical arguments. ‘The philosopher throws new light, but he does not give new
information’ (Ryle 1937b, 165) At this point Ryle is much nearer to the later Wittgenstein
than to Russell.
Philosophers do not make known matters of fact which were unknown before. The sense in
which they throw light is that they make clear what was unclear before, or make obvious things
which were previously in a muddle. And the dawning of this desiderated obviousness occurs in
the finding of a logically rigorous philosophical argument. Something that was obscure becomes
obvious to me in the act of seeing the force of a particular philosophical argument. (…) Anyone
who appreciates the argument ipso facto gets the clarification. Though, of course, it is often very
hard to appreciate involved and abstract arguments, like that which constitutes the Critique of
Pure Reason. (Ryle 1937b, 166-167)
This is why a philosopher’s discovery cannot be summarized by the conclusion of the

argument – as scientists’ discoveries can be summarized by stating what new facts they
have discovered – since the argument is what is discovered. And if a philosopher in fact
succeeds in finding a new philosophical argument the problem completely disappears.
The obscurity which he has overcome is, apart from collapses of cultures, dead from that time
on. His arduously achieved discovery becomes a public truism, and, if it is of any importance,
50
becomes crystallized in the diction and the thought of educated people, even though the great
majority of them have never read a word of him. (Ryle 1937b, 167)
This is why it is often difficult to determine the influence of philosophers. On retrospect the
discoverer of a new truism, will seem to have been talking platitudes.
The historian who wants to find out what Aristotle or Locke ‘discovered’ must see what public
truisms existed after the philosopher’s work was done which were not even the topic of a clearly
recognized question before he began it. (…) And just this is his great achievement, so to
emancipate men from an obscurity that they can regard as a platitude what their predecessors
could not even contemplate clearly enough to regard as a paradox. (Ryle 1937b, 167)
Ryle himself, as well as Wittgenstein, has been accused of talking ‘platitudes’.

In his inaugural lecture ‘Philosophical Arguments’ (1945), which he delivered
right after the Second World War, Ryle gave further thought to the nature of philosophy
and philosophical method, as opposed to the methods of the special sciences which are
aimed at discovering and explaining facts. In this lecture he formulates the method he was
to use a few years later in The Concept of Mind (1949a) to analyze the ‘logical geography’
of different mental concepts. As Hacker writes:
‘Philosophical Arguments’ (1945) was, in effect, a fresh declaration of principles, replacing

‘Systematically Misleading Expressions’ and developing further ideas in ‘Categories’. The task
of philosophy, he declared, is ‘the charting of the logical powers of ideas’. In a metaphor
reminiscent of the Blue Book (BB 57; cf. AWL 43; LFM 44), he observed that ‘People often
know their way about a locality while being unable to describe the distances or directions
between different parts of it or between it and other localities… Our workaday knowledge of the
geography of our ideas is a similar case.’ (Hacker 1996, 149)
According to Hacker, Ryle may have been influenced by Wittgenstein, whose Blue Book
circulated in Oxford in the 1930s, but apart from this ‘no clear ancestors can be traced of
this new conception of philosophy’ (Hacker 1996, 100)
Ryle proceeds with the method he started in ‘Categories’ (1938), showing more in
detail how categories and category-mistakes are the essence of philosophical thinking. If
philosophy is different from science and does not aim at discovering facts, its methods must
be different as well. What are the proper methods of philosophy? In ‘Philosophical
Arguments’ (1945) Ryle tries to exhibit the logical structure of a type of arguments which
are proper to philosophical thinking, praising his predecessor R. G. Collingwood for
realising that the apparent antithesis between natural sciences and human studies is an
illusion. They simply give their own answers to their own specific questions about the
49
world, not rival answers to the same questions. Philosophy, too, gives its own answers to
its own specific questions. Ryle claims that philosophical arguments are neither inductions,
50
nor deductions from axioms ; they are of a different category in that they ask different
questions and use different methods.
Ryle considers the reductio ad absurdum to be proper to philosophical thinking, by
which he refers to what he calls the strong reductio, as opposed to the weak reductio which
Euclid sometimes used – which proves only ‘either that the required theorem is true if the
axioms are true or that both are false, that is, that the contradictory of the required theorem
is not compatible with the axioms’ (Ryle 1945, 197). Ryle’s strong reductio does not
49
In Chapter 5 I shall discuss the relation between Ryle’s and Collingwood’s conceptions of philosophy.
50
This was already argued by Ryle in his early paper ‘Phenomenology’ (1932a, 169-170).
51
determine truth or falsity but shows that a proposition is illegitimate because it has logically
absurd consequences. It is important to note that propositions cannot themselves be absurd
– this would imply that there can be no such propositions. Only expressions can be absurd.
What the reductio does is to disclose ‘that a given expression cannot be expressing a
proposition of such and such a content with such and such a logical skeleton, since a
proposition with certain of these properties would conflict with one with certain of the
others.’ (Ryle 1945, 203)
The strong reductio is the type of argument Ryle already employed in ‘Categories’
(1938) and ‘Systematically Misleading Expressions’ (1932b). He denies that this type of
argument has only a destructive effect, and describes the reductio as having something in
51
common with the destruction-tests by which engineers discover the strength of materials.
(…) philosophical arguments of the type described have something in common with the
destruction-tests by which engineers discover the strength of materials. Certainly engineers
stretch, twist, compress, and batter bits of metal until they collapse, but it is just by such tests
that they determine the strains which the metal will withstand. In somewhat the same way,
philosophical arguments bring out the logical powers of the ideas under investigation, by fixing
the precise forms of logical mishandling under which they refuse to work. (Ryle 1945, 197-98)
The ‘logical powers’ of a proposition are its logical relations to other propositions. Since
intelligent people can never grasp all the logical relations of a certain proposition, mistakes
occur. In this sense they have an imperfect understanding of any proposition they use,
although they often learn from practice all the logical powers they need in order to use
certain propositions in the limited sense in which they are ordinarily used, without making
mistakes which would indicate an imperfect understanding of such propositions. There is
the risk of ending up in paradoxes by performing operations with propositions or ideas
which deviate from their familiar use, all the more so because the grammatical form of
propositions does not provide clues to their logical powers. Ideas or propositions with
different logical powers often have the same grammatical structure. ‘Men naturally,
therefore, tend to be blind to the fact that different ideas have different logical powers or at
least they tend to treat the varieties of logical types as being few in number.’ (Ryle 1945,
200)
Thus, we do have ‘workaday knowledge’ (Ibid., 201) of the geography of our
ideas, but this is ‘knowledge without system and without checks’ (Ibid., 201) – it is not
knowledge by rules and therefore provides a mere naïve, preliminary account of the logical
powers of these ideas. The real logical powers are only discovered by paradoxes which are
evidence for type-confusions (or category-mistakes) and in this way force us to turn back in
our tracks and to start using the idea in a different way – ‘determining with method and
with definitive checks the rules governing the correct manipulation of concepts’ (Ibid., 201.
This is what Ryle describes as ‘the charting of the logical powers of ideas’ (Ibid., 201).
From this moment, the metaphor of maps becomes central to Ryle’s idea of
philosophical analysis, and it also plays an important role in The Concept of Mind. The
metaphor helps to make clear what he means by the mapping of the logical powers of our
ideas. People often know their way in their own neighbourhood, but they are often unable
to describe distances or directions between different parts of their neighbourhood, or
between the neighbourhood and other locations. In a similar way we often have workaday
knowledge of when and how to use certain propositions or ideas, but we are unable to
51
This example reminds us of Wittgenstein’s engineering examples, e.g. in Philosophical Investigations 67 and
the Tractatus 4.461.
52
describe logical relations between these propositions or between these and other
propositions or ideas. Furthermore, just as a map does not show individual objects but
various kinds of features of the area – such as roads, bridges and altitudes – as well as
relations with other areas, so the logical geography of certain ideas or propositions is about
the cross-bearings of many ideas that belong to the same or adjacent areas. Again,
Wittgenstein’s voice seems to be present in this position.
The problem, that is, is not to anatomize the solitary concept, say, of liberty but to extract its
logical powers as these bear on those of law, obedience, responsibility, loyalty, government and
the rest. Like a geographical survey a philosophical survey is necessarily synoptic. Philosophical
problems cannot be posed or solved piecemeal. (Ryle 1945, 202)
However, there is also an essential difference between the mapping of propositions or ideas
and cartography. Whereas the cartographer has both a positive and a negative method at his
disposal, the philosopher only has a negative one. The correctness of a geographical map
can be determined negatively in that a cartographical contradiction would prove the map to
be incorrect, and positively in that visual observations are positive evidence of the map’s
correctness. The latter process, that of visual observation, has no counterpart in philosophy.
The charting of the logical powers of our ideas should not be interpreted as a plea
for an ideal language of any kind. As we have seen, Ryle had abandoned this idea already at
the time of ‘Categories’ (1938). In ‘Philosophical Arguments’ (1945) he felt the need to
make clear, once and for all, that he no longer believed in the use or possibility of an ideal
language.
The suggestion that men should coin a different diction to correspond with every difference in
the logical powers of ideas assumes, absurdly, that they could be aware of these differences
before being taken aback by the paradoxes arising from their naïvely attributed similarities. It is
like suggesting that drill should precede the formation of habits or that children should be taught
the rules of grammar before learning to talk. (Ryle 1945, 207)
The reductio ad absurdum is the instrument we use to determine our geographical map of
propositions or ideas negatively. As we have seen, Ryle no longer preaches an ideal
language, no philosophical doctrine, and no uniform relation between language and reality.
He propagates a philosophical method which is essentially different from scientific ones in
that it has a conceptual task, as opposed to the task of discovering new information.
Denotationalism is banned for causing absurdities, a conclusion Frege and Russell should
have drawn as well, but did not.
Conclusion
Ryle remained faithful to his early notion of philosophical analysis as an activity of
detecting the sources of absurdities, although his more specific methods changed and his
views on philosophical analysis became more positive throughout the years. Philosophy
was first described as a mere negative activity, but later he described the reductio as having
something in common with the destruction-tests by which engineers discover the strength
of materials (Ryle 1945, 198). By 1938 Ryle’s early decompositional or reductive
philosophical analysis had already changed into a connective type of analysis, focusing on
the diversity of different ways in which our concepts have meaning and the connections
between these concepts.
53
We have seen that Ryle moved from his early Russellian search for an ideal
language to a position more similar to that of the later Wittgenstein. Ryle soon abandoned
the Russellian method of analyzing and reformulating expressions, as well as
denotationalism, as he began to realize that denotationalism was responsible for many
misunderstandings, sham-questions and problematic theories in philosophy. In terms of the
positions I outlined at the beginning of this chapter, we may say that his philosophical
method and approach changed from ‘Systematically Misleading Expressions’ (position 1),
to his rejection of denotationalist theories of meaning (position 2). Although in 1938 Ryle
already rejected the idea of a homogeneous theory of meaning, it took him a few more
years to refine his thoughts into a heterogeneous ‘theory’ of use. ‘Conscience and Moral
Convictions’ (1940) is probably the first paper in which the ‘use’ of a word (in this paper
the word ‘conscience’) plays an important role, moving the focus away from ‘meaning’,
which for Ryle implied a homogeneous relationship between language and reality, or that
all expressions mean what they mean in the same way. ‘Use’, on the other hand,
underscores the many different ways in which expressions ‘mean’, that is, are used. Ryle’s
use-theory was further developed in The Concept of Mind (1949a) – which will be
discussed in the next chapter. Throughout the rest of his philosophical career, he rejected
homogeneous theories of meaning, moving towards a heterogeneous use theory of
meaning. And it is primarily by means of this general idea, his rejection of the ‘Fido’ Fido
theory of meaning, and his thoughts on the verifiability-principle that I will attempt to show
that his later work – primarily The Concept of Mind – has often been misinterpreted and
misunderstood.
54
The Concept of Mind: Main Aims, Method and Reception
Chapter 3
The Concept of Mind: Main Aims,

Method and Reception
In the previous chapter we have seen that, although the early Ryle adhered to a denotational
theory of meaning – that is a theory of meaning according to which all statements have
meaning in the same way, in the way ‘Fido’ means Fido – at the time of The Concept of
Mind (1949a) he had since long rejected denotationalism and in fact any type of
homogeneous theory of meaning. By now he stressed the heterogeneity of our use of
language. His method of philosophical analysis had changed from a logical and
decompositional or reductivist type of analysis to a connective type, largely analogous to
the task of a cartographer. The method employed in The Concept of Mind aims at showing
that certain sorts of operations with concepts of mind go against the rules which these
concepts ought to follow according to the logical geography of these concepts. No longer
using a reductive type of analysis, Ryle does not talk about the deeper level of the logical
form of facts, nor does he aim at an ideal language: his focus is on the possible and
impossible connections between different (types of) concepts. Wittgenstein was probably
an important source for Ryle – other sources of this new conception of philosophy are
difficult to identify, which perhaps partly explains the frequent misinterpretations of the
book.
An understanding of Ryle’s development from a homogeneous, denotational theory
of meaning to a heterogeneous theory of use is essential to a proper interpretation of The
Concept of Mind. The hardheaded misinterpretation of this book as a behaviouristic tract
can for example be exposed by pointing at Ryle’s anti-denotationalism and his ideas on
what philosophy is. It should be noted that anti-denotationalism is a recurrent theme in
Ryle’s later discussions of other philosophers; real progress implies a rejection of a
denotational theory of meaning altogether (e.g. in his review of Carnap’s Meaning and
necessity from 1949b and in his discussion of the historical development of the notion of
meaning in ‘The Theory of Meaning’ from 1957). This development in Ryle has been
52
relatively neglected. This is partly because Ryle’s main work has often been interpreted
as a new theory of mind rather than as the meta-philosophical project which it in fact was.
It may also be due to the fact that Ryle himself hardly mentions denotationalism with
respect to his own position, but only in discussing other philosophers.
However, an exclusive focus on this aspect of The Concept of Mind would not do
justice to the plurality of the problems Ryle raises. Rejecting denotationalism is not his
starting-point, although a denotational theory of meaning frequently turns out to be a poor
instrument for charting mental concepts and indeed leads to absurdities. Ryle does not, at
least not explicitly, focus on denotationalism since he may have realized that his theme is
much richer and more complex than that. Moreover, his primary target is Cartesian
dualism, which is not exclusively a philosopher’s problem, but is relevant to science and
everyday life as well. And since people in general do not have views on denotationalism,
52
With the exception of MacDonald 1951, Passmore 1957, Ramoino-Melilli 1983, Antoniol 1993, Park 1994 and
Rey 1997.
55
they cannot be persuaded of the absurdity of Cartesian dualism by proving that a

denotational theory of meaning is wrong. Furthermore, we see a change of method; Ryle no
longer wants to talk about theoretical, technical concepts (and denotationalism would be
such a technical concept) but wants to start with what we already know. That is, he starts
with the mental concepts as we use them, thereby avoiding the meta-level at which a
discussion about denotationalism would take place.
This chapter starts with a discussion of The Concept of Mind, focusing on Ryle’s
method, his main target, that is Cartesian dualism, and his positive contribution to
determining the correct ‘logical geography’ (Ryle 1949a, 10) of mental concepts. It is
important to give a detailed account of the main category-mistake which Ryle attributes to
Cartesian dualism. Secondly, I discuss some responses to The Concept of Mind, particularly
the reviews by Hampshire (1950), Austin (1950) and Ayer (1970), which give a valuable
insight in the reception of The Concept of Mind in the 1950s and which also help us to
understand Ryle’s later development. Finally, after showing that Ryle was – and still often
is – interpreted as a behaviourist, I shall criticise this persistent interpretation.
Ryle’s Method: Starting With What We Already Know

It has often been noticed that, compared to other philosophical books written at the time, as
well as to some of the earlier writings of Ryle himself, The Concept of Mind stands out for
its lack of technical language and footnotes, and for its clear and appealing common sense
examples. Although nowadays his use of examples may seem somewhat excessive, his
style should be seen as a response to a technical style of philosophy common in his early
days. Philosophers such as Bosanquet, Collingwood (at least in his early days) and Prichard
had a strong aversion against using common sense examples, considering them inferior to
abstract thinking. The discussion between Realists and Idealists which dominated Oxford
for a long time was a typical example of the high level of abstraction and technicality. Ryle,
however, considered technical language in philosophical texts (as well as an extensive use
of footnotes) to be a weakness instead of an ideal. As a result, The Concept of Mind is
pleasant to read. At first sight his examples seem plausible – sometimes they even seem
trivial – and are not difficult to understand.
However, Ryle does not explicitly state what he wants to put in the place of
Cartesian dualism, i.e. he does not present a positive position that should replace the dualist
one. In general, this makes it difficult to see what he exactly wants to achieve by means of
his examples. In his review from 1950 Stuart Hampshire strikingly characterizes Ryle’s
method and style:
The thought and the style are indissolubly linked in a manner which constitutes both the strength
and, as it seems to me, also the weakness of the book; its strength, in that the reader is carried
from the beginning to end by a single sustained impetus; its weakness, in that its argument seems
somehow to fade and to lose some of its force when, laying the book down, one probes it again
in some other and less powerful idiom. (…) There are many passages in which the argument
simply consists of a succession of epigrams, which do indeed effectively explode on impact,
shattering conventional trains of thought, but which, like most epigrams leave behind among the
debris in the reader’s mind a trail of timid doubts and qualifications. (Hampshire 1950, 17-18)
An unsatisfactory feeling is indeed what many people have experienced after reading
Ryle’s book. As will be discussed in the next section about the reception of The Concept of
Mind, such a feeling is not only caused by Ryle’s frequent use of ‘epigrams’, his somewhat
56
excessive use of examples, and the lack of a positive position and theoretical framework,
but also by his looseness of expression and his use of vague concepts and expressions.
Ryle’s style and method are closely connected with the intention he had in writing
The Concept of Mind. The book was written with a meta-philosophical purpose in mind and
it is important to realize that it was not primarily a theoretical interest in mental concepts as
such that made him write the book; it was above all his intention to produce an example of
good philosophy. He wanted to show what philosophical arguments are rather than to write
a theoretical story about the requirements they should meet. His reason for choosing the
concept of mind as the subject of his book was that he considered it to be a ‘notorious and
large-sized Gordian knot’ (Ryle 1970, 12).
In the introduction of The Concept of Mind, Ryle makes it perfectly clear that the
assumptions which he argues against in this book are assumptions which he himself once
embraced. Another preliminary observation he makes is that he does not intend to provide
us with new information about minds. He does not want to increase the knowledge we
possess about minds, but he wants to ‘rectify the logical geography of the knowledge we
already possess’ (Ryle 1949a, 9). We already know so many things about minds, and in our
daily life we can deal with them perfectly well. We can understand other people; we can
discern their motives and influence their minds; and we can correct the mistakes we
sometimes make in dealing with our own minds and those of others. So this we already
‘have’ before we start reading Ryle’s book. What we do not yet have, according to Ryle, is
knowledge how we can correlate our concepts of mind with one another and with other
types of concepts. He compares this situation to the one in which people, who have been
living in a certain area for years, know all the roads in the area but cannot construct or even
read a map of the region in which their area lies. Likewise, Ryle’s goal is to chart the
‘logical geography’ of our mental concepts.
Why is it important for philosophy to do this? Ryle’s answer is that throughout the
ages various disciplines – ethics, epistemology, political theory, aesthetics, etc. – have
provided us with flawed arrangements of mental concepts into categories, the doctrine of
Cartesian dualism underlying almost all of them. Ryle therefore wants to explode the
Cartesian myth and replace it with a new map of mental concepts. He wants to:
reveal the logic of the propositions in which they are wielded, that is to say, to show with what
other propositions they are consistent and inconsistent, what propositions follow from them and
from what propositions they follow. (…) It is important to see to what logical type or category a
concept belongs, because this gives us “the set of ways in which it is logically legitimate to
operate with it”. (Ryle 1949a, 10)
In other words, the method we should use is to expose category-mistakes, that is, to show
that some of the logical operations we perform with concepts of mind are not allowed
because of the logical types or categories these concepts belong to – these operations go
against the logical rules they should follow according to the logical geography of concepts
of mind. As we have seen in Chapter 2, Ryle no longer aims at the construction of a
formally logical calculus of any kind. He uses ‘logic’ in the sense of informal logic,
signifying the ‘logic’ – that is the rules – of our use of language.
Ryle provides us with several examples of category-mistakes. The most famous
one is that of a foreigner visiting Oxford for the first time who, after being shown the
colleges, libraries, sports facilities, departments, etc. asks: ‘But where is the university?’
The foreigner makes a category-mistake here, assuming that ‘university’ belongs to the
same category as ‘college’, ‘library’, etc., whereas university is just the way in which all the
57
institutions that were shown to the foreigner are organized. ‘University’ belongs to a
different category and cannot be treated in the same way as, for example, ‘library’ or
‘college’. In Ryle’s early papers, as we have already seen in Chapter 2, Ryle did not
provide a precise definition of category-mistake; he will not do so in The Concept of Mind
either.
The more interesting examples of category-mistakes are, according to Ryle, the
cases in which people are competent to apply concepts in at least some situations, but get
confused when it comes to abstract thinking. Then they suddenly treat the concepts as
belonging to logical types to which they do not belong, e.g. someone who can talk
intelligibly about ‘the average taxpayer’ in discussions concerning tax, perhaps does not
have a clue as to what to answer to the question: ‘why can’t you come across him in the
street?’ If one treats ‘the average taxpayer’ as a fellow-citizen, one will attribute all kinds of
ghostly qualities to him. It will be someone who is at the same time everywhere and
nowhere.
Showing that some of the logical operations performed on mental concepts lead to
53
absurd conclusions, Ryle’s main type of argument is the reductio ad absurdum . In this
way he tries to show both to what logical types or categories the different concepts of mind
belong and that certain operations are not allowed. This method is not merely destructive,
but also achieves positive results, ‘bringing out part of the correct logic of mental-conduct
concepts’ (Ryle 1949a, 24). As we have already noticed, Ryle compares it with the
destruction-tests by which engineers discover the strength of materials. (Ryle 1945, 197-
54
198)
He does not limit himself to the reductio, sometimes using other arguments which
are – as he himself characterizes them – ‘of a less rigorous sort’ (Ryle 1949a, 10). These
arguments are used in a therapeutic sense. People simply need them to get used to the
possibility of convincing arguments against the intellectual habits they have had for a long
time:
Philosophy is the replacement of category-habits by category-disciplines, and if persuasions of

conciliatory kinds ease the pains of relinquishing inveterate intellectual habits, they do not
indeed reinforce the rigorous arguments, but they do weaken resistances to them. (Ryle 1949a,
10)
Showing that mental happenings are not by definition conscious, Ryle for instance suggests
that no one ever replies to the question ‘but do you really remember x?’ by answering ‘oh
yes, for I am conscious of doing so’. According to Ryle, ‘this [argument] is not intended to
be more than a persuasive argument’ (Ryle 1949a, 154). Another way to weaken people’s
resistance against his more forceful arguments is to give a diagnosis of how the Cartesian
dualists lost their way. Why do they, for example, see the mind as a world separate from,
and opposed to, the one governed by mechanical theory? In showing that a conceptual
confusion led the theorists to adopt Cartesian dualism in the first place, Ryle hopes to make
people sensitive to the possibility that the view may be mistaken altogether.
It is important to take into account the difference between rigorous arguments and
those that are merely convincing. One of the misinterpretations partly responsible for the
persistent idea of Ryle as a behaviourist – as will be shown in the next section – was that
53
As Ryle explained in ‘Philosophical Arguments’ (1945), he uses the strong rather than the weak reductio,
showing that a proposition is illegitimate because it has logically absurd consequences. Cf. Chapter 2, pp. 52.
54
Cf. Chapter 2, p. 52.
58
his verificationist arguments were considered to be of the rigorous type instead of being
merely persuasive.
The theory of meaning underlying Ryle’s arguments is a heterogeneous theory of
use. The meaning of an expression is its ordinary use – use in the logical rather than the
grammatical sense; and ordinary not in the sense of what people actually say in practice but
rather in the sense of the norms of correct usage that are followed if one speaks (or writes)
with care, that is our stock or plain use. Ryle frequently tries to show that the implications
of what an expression means according to the official theory – that is the doctrine of
Cartesian dualism – do not match with the ordinary use of this expression. E.g. according to
the official theory we can never determine whether someone is intelligent or inventive
because this would require us to look at unobservable shadow actions inside the person’s
head. However, the use of labels such as ‘intelligent’ or ‘inventive’ in everyday life does
not correspond with this. We use these labels precisely because we can test whether
someone is intelligent; we do it all the time.
The mistakes Ryle tries to lay bare are conceptual confusions, e.g. people fail to
recognize metaphors, press analogies too far, treat abstract concepts as if they are things,
and look for objects behind every word. Ryle’s examples and his diagnoses show that our
constant urge to uniformity, homogeneity and simplification are mainly responsible for the
mistakes that are being made. These mistakes arise, for example, from treating statements
about the mental on a par with those about the body; from treating task-verbs (e.g. ‘hunt’,
‘look’, ‘treat’, ‘kick’) in the same way as success-verbs (e.g. ‘find’, ‘see’, ‘cure’, ‘score’) –
assuming that task-verbs, too, indicate that ‘some state of affair obtains over and above that
which consists in the performance’ (Ryle 1949a, 143); and from thinking that all sentences
in the indicative report facts. If we believe that the dispositional sentence ‘Peter knows
French’ reports a fact, we will look for a special occurrence inside Peter’s head. However,
the disposition functions as an ‘inference-ticket’ (Ryle 1949a, 119), allowing us to infer
from ‘Peter read a telegram in French’ to ‘Peter understood the telegram’, and as such does
not imply an occurrence inside Peter’s head. Ryle does not make theoretical claims
concerning uniformity and homogeneity, but they are recurrent themes implicitly present in
his examples.
These mistakes, at least the harmful ones, merely occur when one starts theorizing.
There is nothing wrong with our ordinary use of expressions, in the sense of our stock or
plain use. However, when we start talking ‘about’ these expressions – rather than ‘with’
them – as is the case when we start theorizing, we are in the danger of mistakenly, and
dangerously, treating them analogous to others. We run this risk even more so when we
assume – as we usually do – that sameness in grammar implies sameness in logical
functioning (e.g. in the case of treating task-verbs as if they are success-verbs).
Ryle’s Primary Target

As was already mentioned, Ryle’s arguments are aimed at what he sometimes calls ‘the
official doctrine’ or ‘the official theory’, at other times ‘Cartesian dualism’ or ‘Descartes’
myth’, ‘the double-life theory’ or ‘the ghost in the machine’. He does not attack the
historical Descartes, but anyone who embraces this myth, such as Kant, Husserl, Frege and
Russell; and not just philosophers but also scientists. In fact practically anyone who starts
theorizing about the mind seems to ascribe to Cartesian dualism in one way or the other.
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The myth primarily consists of the idea that every human being has both a mind
and a body. Human bodies are in space and obey mechanical laws, whereas minds are not
in space and are not governed by mechanical laws. During a human life, body and mind are
always together, but after a person’s death his mind continues to exist whereas the body
dies. The myth implies that a person leads two different lives: one which consists of all the
mental events, usually called internal events; and one which consists of all the bodily
events, that is, all the external events. Bodily events consist of matter or are functions of
matter, whereas mental events consist of consciousness or are functions of consciousness.
Just as the foreigner visiting the university of Oxford expected it to be something like
another college or playground, but also considerably different, so the official theorist
expects the mind to be something like another body, though considerably different. Mental
processes are causes and effects, but causes and effects of a different sort than those of
bodily processes.
According to the ‘official theory’, in normal circumstances we have a direct and
infallible access to the workings of our own mind by means of our consciousness. On top of
this direct access, a person is from time to time also able to use introspection. In other
words, he can reflectively ‘watch’ what goes on in his own mind. This active ‘watching’ of
one’s inner is also insusceptible to confusion or mistakes. When we actively ‘watch’ the
workings of our own minds, we cannot be mistaken in what we ‘see’.
Ryle not only wants to show what is wrong with the official doctrine, but also to
explain how the official doctrine came into being. Why did people believe it in the first
place? According to him, the basis of the doctrine lies in Galileo’s discovery that his
methods of scientific discovery could provide a mechanical theory which covered
everything in space. From a scientific point of view, Descartes believed in the claims of
mechanics, but from a moral and religious point of view he did not want to believe that
humans do not differ in kind but only in perplexity from mechanistic brute animals or
automata. His escape-route led to the official doctrine. Defenders of this doctrine try to
describe minds in what is merely a vocabulary obverse to the vocabulary in which they try
to describe bodies, e.g. ‘not in space’, ‘not accessible to other people’, ‘not visible’.
The differences between the physical and the mental were thus represented as differences inside
the common framework of the categories of ‘thing’, ‘stuff’, ‘attribute’, ‘process’, ‘change’,
‘cause’ and ‘effect’. Minds are things, but different sorts of things from bodies; mental processes
are causes and effects, but different sorts of causes and effects from bodily movements. And so
on. (Ryle 1949a, 20-21)
The belief that there is a polar opposition between matter and mind implies that both terms
are of the same logical type, that they belong to the same category. Thus, according to ‘the
official theory’, minds belong to the same category as bodies. And because bodies are
rigidly governed by mechanical laws, minds must be rigidly governed as well (by non-
mechanical laws); and because the material world is a deterministic system, some theorists
think that the mental world must be deterministic as well, and in this world there is, as a
consequence, no room for responsibility, freedom of choice, etc. So, the ‘official doctrine’
is, next to being the cause of many problems concerning theories of mind, also – at least
partly – responsible for the problem of the freedom of the will.
The view that mind and body belong to the same category reflects a specific theory
of meaning. ‘Since mental-conduct words are not to be construed as signifying the
occurrence of mechanical processes, they must be construed as signifying the occurrence of
non-mechanical processes.’ (Ryle 1949a, 20) Apparently the Cartesian myth presupposes
that there is one homogeneous account of the signification of words.
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Ryle claims that the polar opposition between internal and external events, between
mind and matter, which is implied by Descartes’ myth, causes immense trouble, even if
taken metaphorically. One of the main problems is how mind and matter could possibly
influence one another. The causal connections between mind and matter can be neither
material nor mental, so what do they consist of? Neither the physiologist nor the
psychologist can provide us with an answer to that question. Another problem is that
whereas bodies are mechanically connected and can therefore influence one another, this is
not the case with minds. There do not exist any direct causal connections between different
minds. The consequence is that people cannot know what goes on in other people’s minds.
Of course they can make inferences from a person’s observed behaviour to the person’s
state of mind, but these inferences are, at the least, problematic. We cannot even claim to
know for sure that there are minds other than our own. Based on the official doctrine, there
is just no way of confirming this claim. Thus, according to the official logical geography of
mental concepts, these concepts, Ryle argues, cannot be used effectively in our descriptions
of, and prescriptions for, other people’s minds. Because this totally conflicts with our
everyday life in which we do successfully employ mental concepts, the official logical
geography of mental concepts must be mistaken. Ryle’s aim is to show that when we
describe people in terms of mental concepts such as intelligent, careful, inventive, etc., we
are not referring to mystical or occult episodes as causes of which observable actions and
utterances are the effects. We rather talk about these actions and utterances themselves.
Ryle hopes ‘to prove that [Cartesian dualism] is entirely false, and false not in
detail but in principle’ (Ryle 1949a, 17), that it is one big category-mistake. But what
exactly is this mistake? Does Ryle think that the dualism he attacks should be replaced by
monism? The fact that he refrains from explicitly stating what he considers the category-
mistake to be in the case of Cartesian dualism, creates problems with respect to the
interpretation of the entire book. Different interpreters have attributed to Ryle different
category-mistakes, e.g. those who interpreted him as a behaviourist have considered the
category-mistake to be the mistake of treating statements about the mind as if they belong
to a different category than statements about the body. For now, I take the ‘big mistake’
Ryle refers to, to be, roughly, that of treating statements about the mind in the same way as
bodily statements. Statements about the mind are mistakenly supposed to have meaning in
the same way as those about the body, namely by their denotation. I shall qualify this claim
at the end of this section.
Why did Ryle not explain what exactly this category-mistake was? Probably
because this would mean telling a more theoretical story than the one Ryle wanted to do.
His project is to start with what we already know, with our use of everyday language, and
from there on to tackle Cartesian dualism. In doing so, Ryle attacks the following ideas
which belong to the official doctrine in some detail, thinking that they are primarily
responsible for the absurdities it brings about: firstly, the idea that theorizing is the primary
activity of minds and that it is intrinsically a silent, internal and private operation; secondly,
the view that intelligent doings necessarily consist of two processes – one of acting and one
of theorizing. The well-known and influential distinction he makes between ‘knowing how’
and ‘knowing that’ plays a central role in his attack of these two ideas, running through the
book like a continuous thread. Starting from our use of language, these dualist ideas and
others which follow from them are tackled by means of the reductio ad absurdum as well
as ‘less rigorous’ – ‘therapeutic’ – arguments.
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Theorizing as the Primary and Silent Activity of the Mind

In his rejection of the idea of theorizing as the primary activity of the mind, Ryle first
introduces the distinction between ‘knowing how’ and ‘knowing that’. ‘Knowing that’ is
what we normally call theorizing; it is knowledge of facts or operations and is also
characterized as the consideration of propositions. Our knowledge that the proposition
‘2+2=4’ is true is an instance of ‘knowing that’. ‘Knowing how’, on the other hand, refers
to knowing how to do something, indicating an ability rather than the fact that something is
the case or that something is happening. A clown knowing how to make people laugh is a
clear example of ‘knowing how’. The clown has the ability to make people laugh but this
ability does not, at least not exclusively or necessarily, consist in his consideration of
propositions. Ryle tries to show that ‘knowing how’ and ‘knowing that’ belong to different
categories by demonstrating some differences in our use of them, for example that we
cannot partly understand or partly know a fact, whereas we can partly know how to play
chess and partly understand how to play chess. Another difference is that ‘knowledge how’
to play chess is acquired gradually, whereas ‘knowledge that’ is acquired at a certain
moment.
It is perhaps tempting to describe Ryle’s difference between ‘knowing that’ and
‘knowing how’ as that between ‘explicit knowledge’ and ‘implicit knowledge’. At first
sight this seems to be plausible, since most of the time we use ‘explicit knowledge’ for
being able to recite certain rules, for example grammatical ones, and we use ‘implicit
knowledge’ for the cases in which we cannot recite the exact rules but in which our practice
betrays a certain type of knowledge after all. For example, ‘implicit knowledge’ is used for
the kind of knowledge we express in correctly using our native language while we cannot
(or may not be able to) recite its grammatical rules. However, we do have to be careful in
using ‘knowing that’ and ‘explicit knowledge’, and ‘knowing how’ and ‘implicit
knowledge’ interchangeably, since ‘explicit’ and ‘implicit’ may trick one into thinking that
they are the same types of knowledge, but one is conscious and the other unconscious. In
the case of our use of our native language one could be lead into believing that both our
implicit and our explicit knowledge consist of the same set of grammatical and syntactical
rules (propositions) inside our head, the only difference being that in the case of explicit
knowledge we are conscious of their presence and in the case of implicit knowledge we are
not. This would not at all be what Ryle wanted to propose. If one wants to equate ‘implicit
knowledge’ with ‘knowing how’ at all one has to let go of the idea that it is of the same
type as ‘explicit knowledge’, the only difference being that it exists on an unconscious
level. Thus, the difference between ‘knowing how’ and ‘knowing that’ can be described as
that between ‘implicit knowledge’ and ‘explicit knowledge’, but this will probably not
contribute to a better understanding since the second distinction would then have to meet
the specific requirements Ryle contributed to the first.
According to Ryle, the adherents of the official doctrine only take into account
‘knowing that’ and totally neglect ‘knowing how’, which in fact plays a much larger role in
our everyday life. We are much more concerned with other people’s abilities than with their
knowledge of facts. Consider a boy who learns how to play chess. He can either learn how
to play chess by looking at people who play the game correctly, or he can learn the rules by
heart and then learn how to apply them. And finally, it is not what the boy does in his head,
but what he does on the board that shows whether or not he knows how to play chess, just
as cleverness at fighting is exhibited in the giving and parrying of blows, not in the
acceptance or rejection of propositions about blows. Adherents of the official doctrine can
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only claim that theorizing is the primary activity of minds, because they simply neglect the
fact that minds are also, and even more, concerned with ‘knowing how’, which neither is
theorizing nor depends on it.
What is it like to know how to do something? The first condition Ryle mentions is
to perform well: for us to describe a person as knowing how to do something his
performances must meet certain standards. The second condition is that the person must be
responsible for his performance; he must be able to detect and correct mistakes, learn from
others and improve upon successes, which is often described as: ‘the agent is thinking what
he is doing while he is doing it, and thinking what he is doing in such a manner that he
would not do the action so well if he were not thinking what he is doing.’ (Ryle 1949a, 29)
This does not mean that the person who is performing an intelligent action, e.g. reading, at
the same time has to consider certain propositions and additionally has to put them into
practice. It simply means that the agent must pay attention to what he is doing (heedingly
do what he is doing). There is only one action, namely reading, and this action has a special
character.
By providing examples which do not by themselves give conclusive arguments
against the official doctrine, Ryle tries to weaken people’s resistance to his attacks to come.
To give his conclusive argument right away would probably have aroused too much
aversion. Ryle tries to let the reader get used to the idea that perhaps not every intelligent
action consists of first considering certain relevant propositions and then acting upon them,
even though this may be so in the case of chess.
Yet the general assertion that all intelligent performance requires to be prefaced by the
consideration of appropriate propositions rings unplausibly, even when it is apologetically
conceded that the required consideration is often very swift and may go quite unmarked by the
agent. (Ryle 1949a, 30)
There are situations in which people know how to execute intellectual operations without
knowing that the relevant propositions are true. A good clown knows how to act during his
performances, but may not be able to teach others how to do it, or even mention all the
relevant propositions to himself. And Aristotle knew perfectly well how to avoid and detect
fallacies even before he tried to formulate the maxims for reasoning intelligently. These
examples are not meant as conclusive evidence – and should not be judged as such – but are
merely supposed to weaken the reader’s resistance to Ryle’s attacks on the doctrine.
Finally, only after these less forceful arguments does Ryle present his, what he
calls, ‘crucial objection’ (Ryle 1949a, 31) to the intellectualist legend (roughly, the idea that
intelligence refers primarily to the class of theorizing-operations):
The consideration of propositions is itself an operation the execution of which can be more or
less intelligent, less or more stupid. But if, for any operation to be intelligently executed, a prior
theoretical operation had first to be performed and performed intelligently, it would be a logical
impossibility for anyone ever to break into the circle. (Ryle 1949a, 31)
Ryle claims that the idea that considering relevant propositions is a necessary condition for
performing an intelligent action is absurd. In performing an intelligent action A we would
have to consider the propositions relevant to A, but considering these propositions is itself,
if done correctly, an intelligent action (let us call it B) and should therefore be preceded by
considering those propositions relevant to B, etc. Knowing how to apply A cannot be
reduced to or derived from the acceptance of the relevant maxims, because for a person to
intelligently consider these maxims, he has to intelligently consider other maxims relevant
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to considering the relevant maxims for knowing how to apply A. The regress is infinite and
therefore the intellectualist legend is absurd, because it implies that for an operation to be
intelligent it should be preceded by a prior intellectual operation. Consequently, ‘knowing
how’ cannot be reduced to ‘knowing that’.
Ryle considers the view that theorizing is essentially a silent, internal and private
operation to be mistaken as well, although he does not provide a rigorous reductio here.
First of all, silence is not relevant; the criteria by means of which our actions are judged as
intelligent or not intelligent are the same in both cases, e.g. intelligent argumentations
should be cogent, clear, relevant and well organized, independent of whether one is arguing
aloud or silently. Moreover, Ryle argues that before we can think silently, and before we
can talk to ourselves in silence, we have to be able to talk out loud. Silent thinking cannot
be done without effort. It makes no sense to claim that theorizing is intrinsically a private or
internal operation, since we have to theorize out loud before we can do it silently.
One Action: Not Two

So, theorizing – ‘knowing that’ – is not the primary activity of the mind, nor are intelligent
performances essentially silent, internal and private operations. A second, related, dogma is
that intelligent operations must consist of two fundamentally different processes; one of
doing or acting and one of theorizing. The argument goes like this: actions concern
muscular activities, and therefore they cannot be mental operations. So, to be able to
attribute intelligence to an act, we have to refer to processes different from muscular
activities; we have to refer to a process of theorizing. Against this, Ryle argues:
What distinguishes sensible from silly operations is not their parentage but their procedure, and
this holds no less for intellectual than for practical performances (…) When I do something
intelligently, i.e. thinking what I am doing, I am doing one thing and not two. My performance
has a special procedure or manner, not special antecedents. (Ryle 1949a, 32)
Ryle uses an example of a clown to show that although it is true that there may be no overt
difference between the act of a clown and someone who is very clumsy, this does not mean
that the clown is performing some extra secret act. The tripping of a clown, which he does
on purpose, is both a mental and a bodily process, but it is not two processes. It is not the
case that the fact that the clown’s operations are intelligent implies that in his head there
must occur a counter performance to the overt performance that is taking place.
In showing what then constitutes the difference between the clown and a clumsy
man, Ryle introduces the concepts ‘skill’ and ‘disposition’. In contrast to the clumsy
person, the clown acts intelligently because he has a certain skill. And since a skill or
disposition is not an event, it cannot be seen (or unseen) by others – not because it is an
extra, secret event, but because it is not an event at all. Ryle later gives the following
description of ‘disposition’: ‘Moreover, merely to classify a word as signifying a
disposition is not yet to say more about it than to say that it is not used for an episode.’
(Ryle 1949a, 112) To say that someone has a certain disposition to do something is not to
say that he is at a particular moment in the process of doing (or undergoing) something, but
rather that he is able or prepared to do certain things when certain situations occur.
Hypothetical propositions describe dispositions whereas categorical propositions describe
episodes. However, many propositions are neither purely categorical, nor purely
hypothetical. These propositions are what Ryle calls ‘mongrel categorical’, or ‘semi-
64
hypothetical statements’ (Ryle 1949a, 135). ‘The bird is migrating’ is an example of such a
mongrel-categorical proposition, being more categorical (or episodic) than ‘the bird is a
migrant’ and more hypothetical (or dispositional) than ‘the bird is flying to Africa’.
The simplest dispositions can be described by a simple single-track disposition,
such as: ‘this glass is brittle’ (meaning: ‘if this glass ever is or ever had been struck or
stained, it would fly, or have flown, into fragments.’), or ‘I am an habitual smoker’
(meaning: ‘I am permanently prone to smoke when I am not eating, sleeping, lecturing or
attending funerals and I have not recently been smoking’), and all other habits and reflexes.
These propositions are called single-track dispositions because their actualisations are
nearly uniform. There also exist higher-grade dispositions, that is, dispositions the exercises
of which are indefinitely heterogeneous, and these are what Ryle is mainly concerned with
in The Concept of Mind. Dispositions like ‘knowing’ and ‘believing’ are examples of
higher-grade dispositions. Many epistemologists who expect all dispositions to be single-
track ones, suppose that there are specific intellectual processes by which these dispositions
are actualized. They expect to find an action which realizes ‘Peter is intelligent’, similar to
the one that realizes ‘Peter is a smoker’. Because ‘Peter is a smoker’ is true by virtue of
‘Peter smokes now’ being true regularly, they are convinced that there must be a specific
episode by virtue of which ‘Peter is intelligent’ is true. Since they cannot find such an
episode, they assume that it must be a secret unobservable one inside Peter’s mind.
Consequently, doing something intelligently is supposed to mean that two processes are
going on: an observable and public one of ‘doing’ and a private one inside one’s head.
Ryle claims that adherents of the official doctrine have wrongly argued from the
type-distinction between disposition and episode to, respectively, secret and hidden mental
causes and their overt physical effects, whereas the difference between dispositions and
episodes should have left them with dispositions that are neither witnessable nor
unwitnessable and episodes that are witnessable. Once more, it seems that the theorists
have been allured into treating mental concepts as if they are bodily ones. The idea that
logically complex propositions – such as ‘mongrel-categorical ones’ (Ryle 1949a, 135),
that is, those that are neither purely categorical, nor entirely hypothetical – are descriptions
of complex processes also contributed to the mistaken view that intelligent operations
consist of two separate processes (one internal and one external). But the greater
complexity of the description of a bird as migrating compared to the description of a bird
flying in the direction of Africa, does not consist in describing a larger number of
processes. ‘Only one thing need be going on, namely that the bird be at a particular moment
flying south. “It is migrating” does not tell more stories, but tells only a more pregnant
story than the one told by “It is flying south”. It can be wrong in more ways and it is
instructive in more ways.’ (Ryle 1949a, 136)
Similarly, if an agent is described as doing something (say reading) which he
knows how to do, he is described as paying attention to what he is doing (heedingly do
what he is doing). There is only one action, namely reading, and this action has a special
character. But then, if it is not the case that there are two processes, how can we reply when
asked why a person is reading a book: ‘because he is interested in what he is reading’ (Ryle
1949a, 137)? The answer is that we should not consider the interest to be the real cause of
the reading. ‘The interest explains the reading in the same general way, as the migrating
explains the flying south.’ (Ryle 1949a, 137) It is a matter of explanation, not causation.
The migrating is not an additional process but ‘it describes an event in terms which are law-
impregnated’ (Ryle 1949a, 137), warranting the inference ‘it is a migrant’.
So we now know that we have to describe intelligence in terms of higher-grade
dispositions, and we also realise that these dispositions do not have uniform actualizations
65
and that complex descriptions do not signify complex processes. But how do we distinguish
between intelligent and unintelligent actions? How can we know whether someone has a
certain skill, e.g. whether he knows how to shoot? How do we know that he does not
accidentally meet the standards, e.g. shoots in the bulls eye by pure luck? According to
Ryle, we have to look beyond the performance itself and determine the skills and abilities
of the person whose actions we are judging. This does not mean that we have to make
inferences to occult causes. It is only going ‘beyond’ in the sense of considering the powers
and propensities of which people’s performances are exercises.
But in looking beyond the performance itself, we are not trying to pry into some hidden
counterpart performance enacted on the supposed secret stage of the agent’s inner life. We are
considering his abilities and propensities of which their performance was an actualization. Our
enquiry is not into causes but into capacities, skills, habits, liabilities and bents. (Ryle 1949a, 45)
But is trying to grasp someone’s skills and abilities not simply an attempt to spot secret
occurrences inside the person’s head? According to Ryle, a consideration of a modest
number of heterogeneous performances usually suffices to establish whether someone who
just shot in the bull’s eye really knows how to shoot or was just lucky. For example, if the
same person after his one shot tries to shoot in the bullet’s eye again and succeeds, we will
normally be prepared to say that this person knows how to shoot. Ryle claims that: ‘The
mind is not the topic of sets of untestable categorical propositions, but the topic of testable
hypothetical and semi-hypothetical propositions.’ (Ryle 1949a, 46)
In understanding each other’s arguments or actions we are not inferring to the
workings of other people’s minds, but we are, according to Ryle, ‘following’ them.
Understanding other people, knowing about their capacities, interests and methods, is
nothing more than appreciating how their overt doings are conducted. We are merely
following and not causally explaining other people’s minds.
The Issues Under Discussion

In The Concept of Mind Ryle applies the method described above to several complex
problems which are connected to the concept of mind, treating ‘the will’, ‘emotion’,
‘dispositions and occurrences’, ‘self-knowledge’, ‘sensation and observation’,
‘imagination’, ‘the intellect’ and ‘psychology’. The assumption of extra things, objects and
processes is what Ryle argues against in all chapters.
He rejects the idea of a separate faculty of the will and that processes occur which
correspond to acts of the will. And our explanation of other people’s behaviour in terms of
emotions does not entail references to ghostly inner states or processes. Most emotions are
not states or processes but propensities, which are dispositions rather than episodes.
Consequently, they provide us with reasons for the actions of other people (and our own);
not with causal explanations.
The most important claim Ryle makes with respect to sensation and observation is
that sensations are of the wrong category to be observed. Sensation and observation belong
to different categories and neglecting this difference was partly responsible for the sense-
datum theory – according to which a squinter who reports that he sees two candles is said to
be seeing two ‘candle-looks’ – as well as phenomenalism. Both postulate extra entities next
to ordinary objects; sense-datum theorists postulate images and phenomenalists postulate
sensible objects, these images and sensible objects being what is really observed. Ryle’s
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account of people who upon encountering a round plate describe it as elliptical, is that the
round plate looks ‘as if’ it is elliptical. This does not require introducing new objects, such
as elliptical images or sensible objects.
Ryle’s rejection of the theory of special status images, that is, the view that if we
visualize or imagine something we see a picture with a special status, runs along the same
line. Again, visualizing is not observing, just as sensations are not observings. We make a
category-mistake if we describe our imagining a dragon as seeing dragon-fantasies.
Creating these kinds of extra objects is what Ryle is arguing against. If a child imagines
that his doll is smiling he does not see an image with a special status of the smile. As sham-
murders in a play are not murders, in the same way imagined images and sounds are not
really images and sounds.
As we have already seen, Ryle rejects the view that ‘knowing that’ is primary
rather than ‘knowing how’, which is clearly reflected in his chapter on the intellect (chapter
9). With respect to the intellect the category-mistake often made by epistemologists is that
they take concepts such as ‘deduction’ and ‘judgement’ to refer to actions of pondering
(that is, ‘path-making’) rather than to refer to the results of our ponderings (that is, ‘path-
using’). As a result, they ended up with extra actions: acts of judgement, acts of deduction
and acts of abstraction.
The same Occamising zeal can be found in Ryle’s chapter on self-knowledge,
which will be discussed in some detail below. This subject will prove to be particularly
relevant for the remainder of this chapter, since a considerable part of the comments of
contemporary reviewers were directed at Ryle’s treatment of self-knowledge. His later
work on the nature of thinking – which will be discussed in the next chapter – is also
related to it.
Case-study: Self-Knowledge
An important theory that belongs to the Cartesian dualist doctrine is that there are specific
ways of discovering what is going on in the mental world, as counterparts to the ones that
reveal what happens in the physical world. This ‘official doctrine’ puts forward
consciousness and introspection as the ways to achieve self-knowledge, that is knowledge
of our own mental occurrences. In order to show how Ryle makes different types of
arguments work together, I discuss some of his arguments concerning his rejection of self-
knowledge as immediate, private and infallible knowledge. He uses the reductio as well as
arguments which are less rigorous, and, as part of the latter type, diagnoses of how people
came to believe these doctrines. He both wants to show that the official theories of
consciousness and introspection are ‘logical muddles’ (Ryle 1949a, 149), and how we can
have self-knowledge without these doctrines.
The official dualist theory of consciousness is that a person’s mind cannot help
being constantly aware of the contents of the private room in the person’s head, which has
little affinity with the more common uses of consciousness (e.g. being awake or paying
attention). The official story of introspection is the idea that a mind can, by means of some
sort of non-sensuous perception, deliberately examine and acquire knowledge of at least
some of its own states and operations. Introspection differs from consciousness in that
everyone is constantly conscious, while awake, whereas introspection is an act of attention;
at the times we introspect we are interested in what is going on in our mind. Both
consciousness and introspection are supposed to be mistaken-proof, as opposed to
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knowledge of the inner states and operations of other people. Furthermore, adherents of the
two-world myth do not claim that the fact that mental processes are conscious means that
we do or could report on them post mortem but that we are aware of what is engaging our
notice exactly at the moment it is engaging our notice. It is considered to be a non-
dispositional type of knowledge.
Ryle rejects this idea of self-knowledge and considers it to be nothing more than a
myth. This does not, however, entail that we cannot know what there is to know about
ourselves but only that this is not fundamentally different from what there is to know about
other people. There are some differences in degree between what I can know about myself
and what I can know about other people, because there are differences in the requirement of
the relevant data in both cases. But it is definitely not the case that it is always easier for me
to find out a certain thing about myself. And self-knowledge is certainly not infallible. An
important advantage of dropping the privileged-access view is that we lose the danger of
epistemological isolationism, the idea that we can only ‘really’ know things about ourselves
and not about other people and that we are in this sense completely isolated from all other
people.
Challenging the claim that mental states and operations are by definition conscious,
Ryle makes use of several arguments. The first one depends upon his rejection of the
dogma of the ghost in the machine. If there is no such thing as a mental world, then,
obviously, no occurrences can take place in that world. The other arguments do not depend
on a rejection of the dualist dogma, asserting for instance that in everyday life no one ever
tries to vindicate any of his assertions of fact by saying that he found it out ‘from
consciousness’ (Ryle 1949a, 154). No one ever replies to the question ‘but do you really
remember x?’ by answering ‘oh yes, for I am conscious of doing so’. Ryle explicitly states
that ‘this is not intended to be more than a persuasive argument’ (Ryle 1949a, 154).
Another argument is aimed at the alleged infallibility of consciousness, purporting
to show that ‘there is no contradiction in asserting that someone might fail to recognize his
frame of mind for what it is’ (Ryle 1949a, 155). One may think of people deceiving
themselves about their motives, or those who do not know that they are dreaming when
they are in fact dreaming. If consciousness were infallible, as adherents of the dogma of the
ghost in the machine claim it to be, it would be logically impossible for such failures and
mistakes to take place.
Finally, Ryle presents his most rigorous argument, claiming that ‘it makes sense to
ask whether, according to the doctrine, I am not also conscious of being conscious of
inferring’ (Ryle 1949a, 156). This would lead to infinite regression, to an infinite number of
‘onion-skins of consciousness’ (Ryle 1949a, 156). The only way to avoid such a regress is
to claim that there are elements in mental processes which we cannot be conscious of, but
this would be to admit that ‘conscious’ cannot be part of the definition of ‘mental’.
What about introspection? Ryle’s main objection against it closely resembles his
infinite regression argument against consciousness. Our acts of introspection are
themselves also mental processes and should therefore also be introspectable. An infinite
regression of acts of attention seems unavoidable. Or else we would have to admit that
there is a limit to the number of synchronous acts of attention, which means that there must
be at least some mental processes which are unintrospectable, namely when the limit to the
number of synchronous acts of attention is reached. This means that a person’s knowledge
of his own mental states does not always rest on introspection, and then why would it ever?
In the cases where it does not, an escape-route would be to appeal to consciousness for our
knowledge that we introspect. However, the theory of consciousness has already been
shown to be far from unproblematic.
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Moreover, as was first put forward by Hume, there are some states of mind which
cannot be ‘coolly’ introspected, since our being in those states involves precisely that we
are not cool, for example being in a state of panic or fury. According to Ryle, states of mind
like these can be examined, but only in retrospect. He even goes further, asking: if
retrospection, that is, to catch oneself doing so and so, can give us the data we need for our
knowledge of some states of mind, why cannot retrospection give us the data we need for
our knowledge of all states of mind? Retrospection is a genuine process which neither has
problems concerning a limit to the number of synchronous acts of attention, nor does it
have the problem that some uncool states of mind cannot be the objects of cool
introspection.
These arguments purportedly show that the claim that people can in principle have
direct and failure-proof access to their own mental events is problematic. What people do
have is the ability to retrospect, but this is not limited to ‘mental events’, and therefore
cannot serve as evidence of the authenticity of mental events. The reports which a person
makes about himself are not free from bias or carelessness, but are subject to the same kind
of defects as his reports on other people. According to Ryle, part of what people have in
mind when they talk about introspection is really retrospection, the objects of which can be
both silent, private acts and overt acts. I can retrospect seeing things, as well as imagining
things, and I can report both the calculations that I have been doing in my head and the
ones I have been doing out loud in the classroom. Ryle compares a person’s retrospection
to a person’s diary: ‘a diary is not a chronicle of ghostly episodes, but it is a valuable source
of information about the diarist’s character, wits and career.’ (Ryle 1949a, 160)
Keeping in mind the idea of the diarist, we should not speak of someone’s mind
knowing this or that, but of someone knowing this or that, just as we cannot speak of
someone’s eyes seeing this or that, but only of a person seeing this or that. My mind is not
another organ, but it signifies my ability and proneness to do certain things. Therefore,
questions about the relations between a person and his mind, like those about the relations
between a person’s body and his mind, are improper questions: ‘We ought to follow the
example set by novelists, biographers and diarists, who speak only of persons doing and
undergoing things.’ (Ryle 1949a, 161)
But if there is no such thing as direct and infallible self-knowledge, then what is
the difference between self-knowledge and knowledge of others? For Ryle, there is no
difference in principle, only a difference in degree: ‘The ascertainment of a person’s mental
capacities and propensities is an inductive process, an induction to law-like propositions
from observed actions and reactions.’ (Ryle 1949a, 164) In real life we are quite familiar
with the techniques of assessing persons and accounting for their actions, whereas
according to the standard theory no such techniques could exist. And we never in fact
appeal to privileged access:
(…) in none of these senses in which we ordinarily consider whether a person does or does not
know something about himself, is the postulate of a Privileged Access necessary or helpful for
the explanation of how he has achieved, or might have achieved, this knowledge. There are
respects in which it is easier for me to get such knowledge about myself than to get it about
someone else; there are other respects in which it is harder. But these differences of facility do
not derive from, or lead to, a difference in kind between a person’s knowledge about himself and
his knowledge about other people. (Ryle 1949a, 173)
We know quite well how to find the answer to the question whether person x has
understood the argument. We must observe this person’s conduct, remarks and tone of
voice. Normally, ordinary day-to-day observation suffices. Although there is no single
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performance which could determine that person x had understood the argument, this does
not, according to Ryle, imply that there is no finite set of sub-sets that does.
A More Accurate Account of the Category-mistake of

Cartesian dualism
We may now develop our initial account of the category-mistake as treating statements
about the mind as if they were about the body, that is, as treating mental statements
analogous to bodily ones. To describe Ryle’s category-mistake in this way would be to
characterize his position as conceptual dualism. And we have now seen that his category-
mistake in fact refers to a variety of mistakes, which reveal that not even all bodily
statements function alike, and neither do all mental statements; hence it would not do to
qualify Ryle’s position as conceptual dualism.
In my discussion so far I have mentioned several mistakes, pointed out by Ryle,
which mainly consist in treating one type of statements as if they are of another type, for
example because grammatical similarity between two statements is taken as a clue of
sameness in type of meaning. The most important ones are:
1) treating dispositional statements as if they are categorical (e.g. our assumption that
‘Peter is intelligent’ has a meaning in the same way as ‘Fred is feeding the dog’ is
responsible for our urge to look for an episode or process taking place inside
Peter’s head, analogous to the one of ‘feeding the dog’.);
2) treating higher-grade dispositions as if they are single-track (e.g. if we treat ‘Peter
is intelligent’ analogous to ‘Peter is a smoker’ we mistakenly look for a uniform
actualization of ‘is intelligent’.);
3) treating mongrel-categorical or semi-dispositional statements as if they are
categorical (e.g. treating ‘Peter is driving carefully’ analogous to a categorical one
leads us to analyse the statement into two doings: ‘driving’ and an additional doing
corresponding to ‘carefully’.)
These category-mistakes are often caused by our general creed for uniformity, homogeneity
and simplification, and, more specifically, our employment of a homogeneous, denotational
theory of meaning. We make the mistake of treating all concepts as names, whereas mental
concepts are in fact qualifying; mental predicates are adverbial rather than substantive. We
are tricked into treating ‘intelligent’ as referring to a thing or process and in doing so we
create a realm of things and processes that do not exist in the bodily world, but merely in a
ghostly, mental world. Whereas our complex descriptions of intelligent actions are
considered to reflect a complexity in processes, they should rather be regarded as higher-
level descriptions of these same processes. The mental predicate ‘intelligent’ does not
describe a process but rather the way in which all kinds of processes are managed, neither
does ‘carefully’ in ‘Peter is driving carefully’ refer to a process other than driving; there is
no process corresponding to ‘carefully’.
This interpretation of the main category-mistake of Cartesian dualism as treating
all concepts as names is supported by several passages in The Concept of Mind:
But to speak as if the discovery of a law were the finding of a third, unobservable existence is
simply to fall back into the old habit of construing open hypothetical statements as singular
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categorical statements. It is like saying that a rule of grammar is a sort of extra but unspoken
noun or verb, or that a rule of chess is a sort of extra but invisible chessman. It is to fall back into
the old habit of assuming that all sorts of sentences do the same sort of job, the job, namely, of
ascribing a predicate to a mentioned object. (Ryle 1949a, 117-18)
The recommended restoration of the trade-names of traditional epistemology to their proper

place in the anatomy of built theories would have a salutary influence upon our theories about
minds. One of the strongest forces making for belief in the doctrine that a mind is a private stage
is the ingrained habit of assuming that there must exist the ‘cognitive acts’ and ‘cognitive
processes’ which these trade-names have been perverted to signify. (Ryle 1949a, 299)
My earlier description of the category-mistake as treating mental statements and bodily

ones in the same way can now be made more precise. If we made a scheme consisting of
types of statements, and we were to put the categorical ones at the bottom of the page and
work our way up to the purely hypothetical ones, it would be possible to say that the
category-mistakes Ryle mentions are all specimens of treating statements as if they are
lower in the scheme than they really are, that is treating them as if they are more
‘categorical’ or more ‘bodily’ than they in fact are. By ‘treating statements as if they are
(like) …’, I mean treating them as if they mean (what they mean) in the same way. In the
end, a rigid, homogeneous theory of meaning – the ‘Fido’-Fido theory of meaning – is
underlying these mistakes and is therefore largely responsible for the official doctrine of
Cartesian dualism.
So, Ryle does not appear to be a dualist, not even a conceptual dualist; rather, he is
what we may call a conceptual pluralist. It is not the case that the meaning of all statements
about the body are determined in one way and the meaning of all statements about the mind
in another way; there are not just two categories of meaning. It is rather that categorical
statements get their meaning in a different way than hypothetical ones, or semi-
categoricals, etc. There are many different types – or categories – of meaning. As Ryle puts
it later, in 1957, in his paper ‘The Theory of Meaning’: ‘there is an indefinitely large
variety of kinds of roles performed by the expressions we use in saying things. (…) there is
an endless variety of categories of sense or meaning.’ (Ryle 1957a, 365) Confusing these
categories with each other results in conceptual mistakes and wrongheaded theories, such as
Cartesian dualism.
The Reception of The Concept of Mind

The Concept of Mind has been of great importance to analytic philosophy. The book has
become a classic and has been studied by virtually every philosophy student in England for
many years. It is therefore interesting to see how the book was received by Ryle’s
contemporaries, not in the least because some of these comments led Ryle to develop and
change his views, especially on thinking, in his later writings.
It is also valuable to see how more recent philosophers have interpreted Ryle, and
how his book is received today. To this end I shall describe the main characterizations of
Ryle in handbooks in philosophy and cognitive science. The interpretation of Ryle as a
behaviourist will be shown to dominate contemporary interpretations, causing a general and
swift disregard of his views. After the rise of cognitive science and the influential rejection
of behaviourism by Chomsky (1959) and Fodor (1975), any association with behaviourism
became damaging.
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Ryle’s Contemporaries
In what follows I shall briefly enumerate some of the main points of praise and criticism
made by reviewers and commentators in the years following on the publication of The
Concept of Mind. I have used:
• P.S. Maclellan, ‘Professor Ryle and the Concept of Mind’ (1951);

• Albert Hofstadter, ‘Professor Ryle’s Category-Mistake’ (1951);
• Margaret MacDonald, ‘Professor Ryle on The Concept of Mind’ (1951);
• Hugh R. King, ‘Professor Ryle and the Concept of Mind’ (1951);
• J.L. Austin, ‘Intelligent behaviour. A critical review of The Concept of Mind’
(1950);
• A.J. Ayer, ‘An honest Ghost?’ (1970);
• Stuart Hampshire, ‘Critical review of The Concept of Mind’ (1950);
• Bertrand Russell, ‘What is Mind?’ (1958a);
• Morris Weitz, ‘Professor Ryle’s Logical Behaviourism’ (1951);
• John Wisdom, ‘The Concept of Mind’ (1950);
• Dickinson Miller, ‘Descartes’ Myth and Professor Ryle’s Fallacy’ (1951).
Besides showing appreciation for Ryle’s project, his commentators also expressed different
types of criticism. Ryle was, for example, accused of being unclear about his target, of
using vague concepts and distinctions, of remaining at the superficial level of description
rather than providing proper explanations, of unsuccessfully trying to reduce the mental to
the physical, and of making the counterintuitive claim that there was no fundamental
difference between self-knowledge and knowledge of other people. Roughly, we may
distinguish two types of criticism: on the one hand the critical remarks of philosophers such
as Austin, Wisdom and Hampshire who are in general in agreement with Ryle’s ideas on
the nature of philosophy and its relation to the other sciences; on the other hand Hofstadter,
Russell and others who criticize Ryle for not taking into account scientific explanations (for
example, of human behaviour) when doing philosophy. In what follows these comments
will be discussed and put in perspective.
Positive Remarks: Common Sense Philosophy, and the Avoidance of Technical Language
All of the commentators think that The Concept of Mind makes a significant contribution to
analytic philosophy. For example, Hampshire considered The Concept of Mind to be the
ultimate realization of analytic philosophy.
[The Concept of Mind] actually uses the now rapidly changing methods of linguistic analysis to
cut the root of a large metaphysical problem. (…) if analytical philosophy really is what it claims
to be, it must ultimately issue in plain and pointed prose, with most of the workshop apparatus of
technical distinctions left in the background; this, in the tradition of Locke and Berkeley, Mill
and Russell, Professor Ryle supremely achieves (…). (Hampshire 1950, 18-19)
And commenting on Ryle’s style, Hampshire writes:
The avoidance of technical jargon, and the disdain of footnote and historical allusion, are
evidently parts of a design to restore philosophy to common sense in the manner of the
eighteenth century (…), though the derision is generally of a more robust, and sometimes even
knock-about, character than was natural to Hume. (Hampshire 1950, 17)
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Wisdom admires ‘the power, the simplicity and the grace of Ryle’s work. It is an
achievement and a part of the progress of philosophy’ (Wisdom 1950, 189); and Austin
considers The Concept of Mind to be ‘stimulating, enjoyable and original (…), standing
head and shoulders above its contemporaries’ (Austin 1950, 45). Hofstadter praises Ryle
for ‘the most brilliant attack on the mentalism in mind-body dualism that has appeared in a
long time’ (Hofstadter 1951, 257), claiming that ‘it has already raised quite a dust (…) in
the intellectual world (…), and it will undoubtedly be read and discussed as a classic of its
kind’ (Ibid.). The book is further complimented for ‘its brilliance and penetration, its wit
and clarity, and the merciless incisiveness of much of its criticism of dualism’ (Ibid.). The
other reviewers used similar forms of praise.
An Unclear Target
One of the main criticisms of Ryle’s commentators is that it is never clear precisely whom
Ryle has in mind when he attacks the dogma of the ghost in the machine. He himself claims
that he is not attacking the historical Descartes, but what he calls ‘the official theory’,
‘which hails chiefly from Descartes’ (Ryle 1949a, 13) and which ‘continues to distort the
continental geography of the subject’ (Ibid., 10). But he is not always clear which specific
aspects of this theory he is attacking, and on what grounds.
Thus, Hampshire argues that Ryle does not even attack a philosophical theory, but
rather the following universal feature of ordinary language:
(…) That most of its forms of description have been and are being evolved by the constant
transfer of terms from application in one kind of context to application in another, and in
particular by the transfer of what were originally physical descriptions (…) into psychological
descriptions. (Hampshire 1950, 21)
This would mean that Ryle cannot have refuted the dogma merely on the basis of the
authority of ordinary language – since ordinary language itself is the source of the dogma:
dualism is firmly embedded in it. So something else is needed as well. Hampshire considers
this ‘something else’ to be an a priori theory of language, conflicting with our dualistic
ordinary language. Because Ryle is unclear about the exact nature of his target, Hampshire
finds it difficult to judge the adequacy of his arguments: ‘it is never clear precisely whom
he is attacking when he attacks the Ghost and therefore what weapons are appropriate’
(Hampshire 1950, 23).
Miller, too, claims that it is not clear what Ryle does and does not believe in The
Concept of Mind. ‘He [Ryle] cannot help alluding occasionally to the facts of private
consciousness, though he denies them. He never draws for us the urgently required line
between what he accepts and what he does not.’ (Miller 1951, 273)
Conceptual Confusions and Vague Distinctions

Unfortunately, the target is not the only thing that is unclear. A point of criticism often
voiced by reviewers (for instance, MacDonald, King, Austin, Russell and Hampshire) is
that Ryle himself – in his crusade against conceptual mistakes – was not able to avoid using
confused or vague expressions and concepts himself. This, of course, makes it difficult to
unravel his arguments and assess their power and convincingness.
Hampshire asserts that confusions arise because Ryle borrows certain distinctions
from logic in the strict sense of the word, e.g. the one between categorical and hypothetical,
and uses them to characterize distinctions which are only logical in a loose sense, e.g. the
one between occurrence and disposition. According to Hampshire, the latter distinction is
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not strictly logical because it depends on Ryle’s identification of the meaning of a statement
with its method of verification: ‘Because overt behaviour often constitutes for most people
the best, and, in some conditions of utterance, the sole available evidence for statements
about mental activities and states of mind, such statements come to be identified with
hypothetical statements about behaviour’ (Hampshire 1950, 32). Hampshire’s objections
against such a verificationist theory of meaning will be discussed later in the section on
behaviourist interpretations of Ryle.
Furthermore, Hampshire attributes to Ryle a naive correspondence theory of
language, which led Ryle ‘to write as if there were a real answer, independent of the
conventions of a particular language, to such questions as ‘Does the verb “mind” or “try”
designate a single, distinct activity or a complex of activities?’ – as though the world
consisted of just so many distinguishable Activities (or Facts or States or Things) waiting to
be counted and named.’ (Hampshire 1950, 26) Ryle uses this non-logical terminology of
‘different kinds of things designated’ (Hampshire 1950, 25) to characterize, among others,
the distinction between occurrence and disposition. As a consequence, his use of
occurrence and disposition is confused, which is, according to Hampshire, problematic
since what he considers the central thesis of the book – i.e. that statements ordinarily
construed as categorical statements about ghostly events should be re-interpreted as
hypothetical statements about overt happenings – heavily depends on the distinction
between occurrences and dispositions.
It suddenly becomes clear that there must be many verbs (…) which stand for an occurrence as
opposed to a disposition in some of the many senses given to this central distinction, namely,
that they name incidents which can be significantly dated or clocked, or that certain adverbs are
applicable to them, but which in another and predominant sense of the distinction are
dispositional verbs, namely, that any statement containing them can be accepted as true only if
some testable hypothetical statements about the future are accepted as true. (Hampshire 1950,
26-27)
Consequently, almost any statement can be said to be both categorical and hypothetical,
which according to Hampshire makes the distinction between categorical and hypothetical
unworkable. He even goes so far as to claim that this destroys Ryle’s whole account of the
relation between mind and body.
Hofstadter and MacDonald also direct their criticism against the distinction
between categorical and hypothetical. More specifically, Hofstadter asserts that Ryle’s line
between purely categorical and mongrel-categorical statements is too vague; as a matter of
fact he does not believe that, on Ryle’s own definitions, one can give an example of a pure
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categorical statement that is not at the same time a mongrel-categorical statement.
According to MacDonald, Ryle seems to be uncertain about what precisely to think of
mongrel-categoricals such as ‘being careful’, ‘paying heed’ and ‘minding’. For example,
for Ryle to say that someone is ‘paying heed to what he is doing’ is to say categorically that
he is doing what he is doing in a certain ‘frame of mind’, and hypothetically what he will
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It may be doubted whether the criticisms by Hampshire and Hofstadter cut ice, since, although they are certainly
right that the line between categorical and hypothetical statements is vague, there may be nothing wrong with such
a fuzzy line. Ryle sometimes seems to, but does not need to, claim that both types of statements exist in their pure
form. It would also do to regard all statements as more or less hypothetical (and less or more categorical), his aim
being to show that we mistakenly regard many statements as more categorical than they in fact are.
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do (with respect to the object of his paying heed). MacDonald interprets this ‘frame of
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mind’ as forcing Ryle to concede the existence of something like a private, inner life.
King points at another terminological confusion found in Ryle, namely the ‘often
indiscriminate use of the ambiguous word “intelligent”, which may mean “a directed
action” but can also mean “one species of directed action”’ (King 1951, 283), that is, a way
of performing such an action, namely intelligently – that is, skilfully – rather than stupidly.
Two episodically indistinguishable shots of a skilled marksman and a novice are both
directed, or conscious, actions, but one is performed more intelligently, in the sense of
skilfully, than the other. Similarly, a bad car driver may still be heeding what he is doing.
King takes Ryle’s confusion of the two different uses of ‘intelligent’ to have far-going
consequences, accusing him of shifting the reader’s attention from the real problem of
distinguishing between intelligent and non-intelligent action – in the sense of directed
action and nondirected action – to the problem of distinguishing between different
intelligent, that is, different directed, actions. In The Concept of Mind Ryle provides an
explanation of ‘intelligent’ by means of dispositions, but this is only relevant to the second
problem – not to the first, according to King more pressing, problem. When we are in doubt
whether a specific action is directed or not an appeal to dispositions is of no, or at least
hardly any, use. Dispositions are not able to tell us whether a given action is done
unconsciously or consciously, that is, whether the action is directed or not. Russell, too,
thinks that Ryle neglected to explain the difference between mental and nonmental
concepts: ‘(…) Professor Ryle never explains, or seems to think it necessary to explain,
what is the difference between “brittle” and “intelligent” that makes the latter mental and
57
the former not.’ (Russell 1958a, 636)
Austin mentions Ryle’s (occasional) looseness of expression, e.g. with respect to
the word ‘disposition’, as a defect of The Concept of Mind, claiming that this looseness of
expression, which also occurs several times in the formulation of critical points in Ryle’s
work, contradicts with Ryle’s ‘admirable sensitivity to the nuances of words’ (Austin 1950,
51-52) in most parts of the book. Moreover, it makes it very difficult for the reader to grasp
what exactly is Ryle’s purpose. Austin, however, at the same time, thinks this looseness is a
direct consequence of the praiseworthy untechnical style of Ryle.
He is less positive about Ryle’s suggestion that he uses a single technique or type
of argument in his rejection of Cartesian dualism as one big category-mistake. Ryle does
not show that he attacks a single clear type of mistake at all, unless it is so very general as
56
Perhaps Macdonald takes ‘frame of mind’ too literally here. Ryle most likely does not mean that someone who
is in a certain ‘frame of mind’ is having a private experience, but merely that the person acts – or would act – upon
the objects of his paying heed in a certain way. ‘(…) while we are certainly saying something dispositional in
applying such a heed concept to a person, we are certainly also saying something episodic. We are saying that he
did what he did in a specific frame of mind, and while the specification of the frame of mind requires mention of
ways in which he was able, ready or likely to act and react, his acting in that frame of mind was itself a clockable
occurrence.’ (Ryle 1949a, 134)
57
But perhaps Russell expects too much. He later claims: ‘I suppose Professor Ryle might agree that the main
purpose of this book is to give a new definition of the adjective “mental”.’ (Russell 1958a, 641) But Ryle does not
seem to aim at such a definition, he just rejects the existing ones. This does not mean that he would not distinguish
between ‘brittle’ and ‘intelligent’. In contrast to ‘brittleness’, ‘intelligence’ is a mental concept. In discussing
mental capacities and tendencies Ryle argues: ‘Our concern is with a restricted class of dispositional terms,
namely those appropriate only to the characterization of human beings. Indeed, the class we are concerned with is
narrower than that, since we are concerned only with those which are appropriate to the characterization of such
stretches of human behaviour as exhibit qualities of intellect and character. We are not, for example, concerned
with any mere reflexes which may happen to be peculiar to men, or with any pieces of physiological equipment
which happen to be peculiar to human anatomy.’ (Ryle 1949a, 121) It is clear that this description of mental
concepts excludes ‘brittleness’.
75
‘misunderstanding the ways in which words are intended to be, and normally are, used, and
so wrongly inferring that they can be made to behave like other, very different, words, and
that what they “stand for” (dangerous phrase) is “like” what those other words stand for’
(Austin 1950, 48). This is neither peculiar to the myth, nor its only basis. Ryle in fact uses a
number of ‘most effective’ (Austin 1950, 49) methods, showing, for instance, that words
which seem to stand for episodes in fact stand for dispositions; he also uses methods more
peculiar to the topic concerned, such as showing how a wrong treatment of index-words
leads to absurd theories of self-knowledge. For instance, treating ‘I’ and ‘you’ as if they are
proper names may easily result in the idea that these are names of a special kind, naming
extra, ghostly beings hidden inside the individuals which are indicated by ‘regular’ proper
names, such as ‘Charlotte’.
The difficulties in interpreting Ryle’s ‘one big category-mistake’ are not only
revealed by the critical remarks of his reviewers, but also by the fact that this category-
mistake has been interpreted in many different ways. MacDonald, for instance, argued that
‘The fundamental mistake of the Cartesian theory is to construe “Mind” (and, indeed,
“Matter” too) as a name and invent a simple substance for it to name.’ (MacDonald 1951,
82) According to Hampshire and Austin the mistake Ryle aimed at was the two-worlds-
view, that of the ghost and that of the body, whereas we should have been talking of only
one world – namely that of the body.
Description versus Explanation: Philosophy versus Science

A criticism often expressed by the more science-minded interpreters is that Ryle does not
give explanations, but remains at the superficial level of description, and therefore, as
Miller puts it, he:
never comes in contact with the main body of the enemy. (…) we still find that he has not
touched the facts that decide the question at issue, the facts that force us to form the conception
of consciousness. He does not prove his point, he can not, for he does not talk about this point.
He talks about something else that there is no necessity to question, a set of facts most familiar.
His fallacy is that of presenting an argument irrelevant to his conclusion. His book is one long
ignoratio elenchi. (Miller 1951, 271)
Maclellan, Russell and Hofstadter voice similar sentiments, arguing that The Concept of
Mind does not satisfy our hunger for explanation.
King believes that Ryle does try to give explanations, but fails because of his
appeal to dispositions. Whereas Ryle thinks that there is no physiological difference
between the description of a bird as ‘flying south’ and of another as migrating because to an
observer they are indistinguishable, King asserts, however, that scientific explanation has
now shown that physiologically the two episodes are not identical in character: something
more is going on inside a migratory bird than is going on inside one accidentally flying
58
south. We may appeal to scientific explanation in order to distinguish between the two
58
King may be right that physiologically the bird flying south and the bird migrating are not identical, but this is
not something that Ryle rejects (or affirms). In claiming that they do not differ physiologically (Ryle 1949a, 50),
Ryle seems to have meant that when we look at a bird migrating and one flying south we do not see a difference in
their physical behaviour. They make the same movements with their wings, etc. It is unlikely that he meant
differences on the level of neurons, especially since he identified meaning with use, and our use of ‘the bird is
migrating’ and ‘the bird is flying south’ does not depend on differences between the neurological processes that
take place in the birds. Ryle merely claims that on the level of descriptions the two birds are identical because to
an (ordinary) observer they are indistinguishable, and philosophy works on a different level than neurology and
(scientific) physiology do. (A quotation which supports this interpretation can be found on p. 90.) We can doubt
76
birds; no appeal to dispositions is required. Moreover, King asserts that if we assume that
the two episodes are identical, our appeal to dispositions would be nothing less than an
59
appeal to the ghost, which Ryle wanted to exorcize.
Miller holds that whereas Ryle claims that he will disprove the myth of
consciousness, he never actually does. He gets stuck at the level of describing our ordinary
practice, instead of disproving or explaining anything.
(…) this author’s philosophy is “the most natural thing in the world.” When a man approaches in
the street (…) we do not see his vision of us, but also we do not think of it. We can imagine (…)
that he is only a body there behaving in the natural way; smiling, nodding, speaking, answering,
but wholly without consciousness. But this is precisely thus that we do conceive him on all
ordinary occasions and for all ordinary purposes. Other people’s fields of appearance – we do
not pause to give ourselves the trouble of imagining them at all. We believe in them at all times
potentially, we are ready to think of them, we are on the very verge of doing so, but we rarely go
over the verge. (…) Professor Ryle’s book simply erects this ordinary oblivion into a philosophy,
gives it a sweeping and imposing formulation. (Miller 1951, 277)
Russell and Hofstadter also criticise Ryle for remaining at the level of common sense talk.
Ryle should have given a more scientific explanation to satisfy his goal. By limiting
himself to the question ‘How do we use such expressions as “he saw a robin”?’, while
dismissing the question ‘How do we see robins?’, he is, as Russell asserts, ‘dismissing
important scientific knowledge in favour of verbal trivialities’ (Russell 1958a, 640).
Hofstadter’s complaint is that Ryle offers ‘a philosophy of mind in the sense of a
logical analysis of talk about mind, and indeed not so much of scientific as of common-
sense talk.’ (Hofstadter 1951, 257-258) And if dualism is false, or at least improbable, ‘this
will have to be shown to be so on grounds of the sort used to invalidate a scientific theory,
not on grounds of the sort the author [Ryle] alleges. If dualism is a mistake, it is not merely
a logical one.’ (Hofstadter 1951, 259) He claims that the best way to attack dualism or
mentalism is to develop a better explanatory theory. Ryle’s strong preference for
description, according to Hofstadter, is caused by his excessive nominalism and the fact
that he turns logical analysis – which Hofstadter considers nothing more than a useful but
subordinate activity in philosophy – into philosophy itself.
Rather than appealing to the ideal of scientific explanation, Maclellan refers to our
‘deep-seated psychological need’ (1951, 139) for a causal explanation of the mind. We
should not try to dispose of the mind as cause and substitute it for the mind as description
of the acts and performances of human beings. What is at the root of the idea of cause is
more than a matter of logic: it is a fundamental psychological necessity:
The notion of cause admittedly sometimes turns out to be a phantom and problems often have to
be re-stated, but the expectation of cause is something demanded by the intellect. It would rather
have an erroneous explanation (as long as it was unaware that it was erroneous) than no
explanation at all. (Maclellan 1951, 140)
whether Ryle’s use of ‘physiological’ is not misleading here. And even if we take him to mean that there was no
physiological (in the sense of neurological) difference between a bird migrating and one flying south, we would
indeed have to say that he was wrong here, but this would be but a minor mistake which by no means causes
damage to his main ideas. It is not particularly relevant to Ryle’s claims whether or not the two birds differ on the
level of neurons. Even nowadays, with the progress of neurology and physiology, when we, in our everyday life,
wonder whether a particular bird is migrating or (just) flying south we do not – and do not need to – catch the bird
and try to look inside its brain by means of PET scans, MRI, or other methods to map the activity in the bird’s
brain.
59
This suggests that King thought that mentality either had to be explained by means of bodily happenings or by
means of ghostly happenings.
77
In other words, Ryle does not meet our needs when he denies that any causal concepts
should be involved in expressing the relationship of mind to body.
Ryle clearly does not provide us with the kind of explanation many scientists
would wish for. He does not occupy himself with physiology, but rather with our everyday
life, and gives us ‘explanations’ which are entirely different from those produced by
physiologists or other scientists. Scientific explanations are not the kind of explanations
philosophy can offer, which is evidently something not all of Ryle’s contemporaries agreed
with
Ryle’s Account of Self-knowledge

Several of Ryle’s reviewers critically assessed his ideas on self-knowledge. Especially
Ryle’s disqualification of introspection and its replacement by retrospection caused a great
deal of controversy. The claim that there is no fundamental difference between the things I
know about myself and the things I know about others seems counterintuitive and does not
do justice to our ordinary language practice. For example, how do we account for the fact
that it does not make sense to ask ‘How do you know?’ if someone says ‘I am thinking of
riding my bike’?
Hampshire asserts that whereas Ryle effectively undermines the thesis of
Privileged Access, he fails to account for the difference between my own and other
people’s knowledge of what I am thinking. Ryle rightly shows that the possibility of you
finding sufficient evidence against one of my reports about my own state of mind is never
in principle, though often in practice, excluded. If I claim to have been in pain yesterday
morning, you can object: ‘You could not have been in pain, you were anaesthetised’
(Hampshire 1950, 38). But he neglected to pay attention to the fact that I always know both
whether I am thinking and what I am thinking of without ever needing inferences, contrary
to other people’s knowledge of what I am thinking. If I say “I am thinking of climbing
Helvellyn”, it is senseless for you to ask “how do you know?”. In asserting: ‘The sorts of
things that I can find out about myself are the same as the sorts of things that I can find out
about other people, and the methods are much the same’ (Ryle 1949a, 149), and: ‘In fact
they [people] are relatively tractable and relatively easy to understand’ (Ryle 1949a, 110),
Ryle ‘proves too much’ (Hampshire 1950, 33), ignoring the conflict between what people
report about their own states of mind and what we observe. In doing so, he neglects the
important function of the word ‘really’ in combination with mental concepts, e.g. in the
utterance ‘you do not really enjoy gardening’ (Hampshire 1950, 39) – for example because
when it rains you never work in the garden – and ‘I think this is my real attitude, motive or
feeling, but I am not certain’ (Ibid.). The fact that Ryle does not discuss the conflict
between people’s reports about their own states of mind and what we observe is, according
to Hampshire, a serious lack in his treatment of the mind. He argues that neither Privileged
Access (only I can know about my own states of mind) nor Ryle’s Open Access can be
true. We can always think of situations in which further evidence would make the subject
withdraw his claim, for example in the case of ‘You could not have been in pain since you
were anaesthetised’; but, on the other hand, it is also not the case that my justification of ‘I
am in pain’, expressed in the present tense, and your justification of me being in pain are of
the same type.
Similar to Hampshire’s criticism is that of John Wisdom, who writes that Ryle
does not help us to understand ‘the facts which lead people to say that a person has a way
of knowing how he feels which no one else has, has a right to say what he does about how
he feels which no one else ever had or ever will have.’ (Wisdom 1950, 195) In his article
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‘The Concept of Mind’ (1950), Wisdom attempts to continue Ryle’s work on this point by
trying to determine why it is the case, and what it means to say, that ‘A never has that
60
reason for a statement about how things seem to B which B has.’ (Wisdom 1950, 200)
Ayer, too, thinks that there are still reasons to believe that a knowledge-claim which is
based on personally having the experience has authority over and above knowledge-claims
based on observation, even though Ryle may have been right in thinking that there is only a
difference in degree between knowledge of one’s own mental processes and knowledge of
another’s mental processes. Sceptical arguments concerning ‘external knowledge’ will still
have to be met. According to Ayer, Ryle has totally ignored this problem. It is more than a
trivial point of logic that another person cannot feel my twinges, just as he cannot smile my
smile.
King’s criticism is that self-knowledge by retrospection neither touches upon
introspection nor upon the problem of the privacy of consciousness, and that retrospection
is not even possible without introspection:
If we were not conscious of what we were doing when we did it, retrospection upon how as a
matter of fact we did act would be impossible. Retrospection is dependent on memory, and
memory is dependent largely upon the fact that we make conscious observations and are aware
of our performances. (King 1951, 292)
Moreover, when it is ambiguous whether a certain action was an intelligent one or not, only
the performer can tell us for sure whether it was. We must not forget that our overt actions
are not all there is to our mind; they are nothing but a small fragment of the workings of our
minds. King rejects – what he calls the ‘modern’ – assumption that we can clarify the
nature of observation and sensation without something like the ghost in the machine. The
problems for philosophy have just begun by eliminating this ghost, which ‘has long been a
convenient bearer of all sorts of phenomena which our natural ontology, or physiological
and physical theories, could not hope to explain’ (King 1951, 294).
Self-knowledge is not the only subject Ryle is considered to have mistreated by
many of his interpreters. His ideas on imagination, voluntary action, motive and belief were
61
also criticised, particularly his positive claims. But rather than dealing with these issues I
shall focus on behaviouristic interpretations of The Concept of Mind, which were – at least
partly – responsible for the later disregard of Ryle’s work.
Behaviourism
Many of Ryle’s contemporaries characterized his philosophy as behaviouristic. Some of
these interpretations suggest a strong, reductionist, type of behaviourism, others only a
weak, non-reductionist, one; some take into account Ryle’s explicit denial of aiming at a
reduction of mind to matter, others do not. In this section I present several behaviouristic
interpretations as well as those which go against this dominant interpretation.
Hampshire considers Ryle’s book to be written in transition from a two-world
conception of logic and philosophical method to a one-world view. He criticizes Ryle for
not realising that the logical arguments he directs against the form and generality of two-
world philosophical statements just as well apply to one-world statements – it is a matter of
60
This does not mean that Wisdom does not agree with Ryle about whether we can sometimes, or usually, have
knowledge about other people’s minds; but he considers this a question of fact and not of philosophy.
61
Cf. Hacker 1996 (pp. 170-171).
79
different sides of the same coin. That Hampshire does have a point may be seen from
Ryle’s letter to Thomas W. Bestor, which was written many years later in 1976:
The target I aimed at was the big and famous crux, the Cartesian Split. Only incidentally and
half-heartedly did I shoot at what I now see to be the Reductionist backside of the same target. I
suspect that this half-heartedness was partly due to strategic one-eyed-ness, but partly to the
patent pettiness of Watson, Neurath, Hebb, Quine, and Skinner [all of whose] Reductionism was
sketchy and mean compared with the Cartesian’s splendid ampleness. (Ryle 1976a, 241)
Thus, Ryle, too, considers Cartesian dualism and reductionism to be different sides of the
same coin, and admits in retrospect that in The Concept of Mind he had not paid enough
attention to the reductionist side. But Ryle did not in fact try to reduce the two-world view
to a one-world view. Hampshire may have been led in thinking so by his attribution of a
naive correspondence theory of language to Ryle (see above.). But as I have shown in the
previous chapter, Ryle had abandoned this type of theory already in the late 30s.
Because Ryle constantly tries to show that statements involving mental concepts
are testable propositions, Hampshire argues that Ryle’s project of laying bare the logic of
our mental concepts sets out to determine the standard tests appropriate to these concepts.
Because overt behaviour often gives people the best, or even the sole, available evidence
for statements about the mental activities and conditions, such statements then become
identified with hypothetical statements about behaviour. Hampshire’s ascription of this
verificationist position to Ryle provides him with another reason to think that he held a
behaviouristic one-world view.
For Hampshire this identification of meaning and verification is problematic
because it does not allow for exceptions. And the possibility of exceptions plays an
important role in our everyday life.
(…) we usually test a child’s concentration by testing his performance, but we do not identify the
performance and the concentration, precisely because although the first may often (not always or
necessarily) be properly accepted as sufficient evidence for the other, it is not a necessary
condition in the sense of being in all circumstances the only kind of relevant evidence available,
either to the child himself or to the teacher. (Hampshire 1950, 32)
Hampshire’s idea that the meaning of a statement is not to be identified with its verification
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is explicitly supported by Ryle later in 1951. And it may even be argued that Ryle held
this position already in The Concept of Mind. But it has to be admitted that Ryle was at
least unclear about this, and some passages suggest such an identification.
But Hampshire’s critique went further: Ryle would not properly have carried out
his behaviouristic project. Ryle’s position is ambiguous since he has a behaviouristic aim
while at the same time pointing out that re-interpretations of mental statements into
hypothetical ones about overt happenings are not always possible, e.g. in the case of
emotions, thrills and imaginings. Ryle sometimes even suggests that it would be a logical
mistake to do so.
Austin, too, maintains that Ryle’s aim is to present a doctrine of ‘one world’,
namely a bodily world. He criticizes Ryle for not eliminating ‘the ghost’ – e.g. he did not
succeed in disproving that sensation is not a ‘private’ or ‘occult’ experience. According to
Austin, Ryle’s conviction that he must show that there exists only one world, combined
with his belief that he employs one single method – ‘a single Excalibur, clothed in the name
of Logic’ (Austin 1950, 49) – caused a delusion in his thinking.
62
See Chapter 2, p. 35.
80
Miller and Russell also consider Ryle’s aim in The Concept of Mind to be
behaviouristic. The latter focuses on Ryle’s denial of introspection as a source of
knowledge, which connects him to behaviourism, and claims that Ryle only disagrees with
behaviourism in so far as it results in mechanistic explanations. Miller heavily criticizes
Ryle’s behaviourism, which he considers to result in the denial that we exist.
You cannot for a moment identify yourself with a body without consciousness. You are your
conscious self. What Professor Ryle is doing (without knowing it) is denying that we exist. (…)
Behaviorism is the tenet that I do not exist but other things do. This is the culmination of human
modesty. It surpasses even “Excuse me for existing”. Professor Ryle is substantially a
behaviorist. (Miller 1951, 272)
Wisdom, too, characterizes Ryle as a behaviourist, although he does notice that Ryle does
not deny that there are mental processes, e.g. doing long division and making a joke, and
that he does not seek to reduce mental states and processes to physical states and processes.
He attributes to Ryle a weaker type of behaviourism, namely that there are not mental
processes over and above physical processes (Wisdom 1950, 19).
He [Ryle] does, however, often use words which suggest that he does wish to say that in the
sense in which the average man is reducible to individual men the mind is reducible to the body,
that in the sense in which the passing of a division is reducible to the passing of men and guns,
mental processes are reducible to bodily processes, that consciousness is to its manifestations as
electricity to its manifestations.’ (Wisdom 1950, 191)
That many of his reviewers characterized Ryle as a behaviourist does not mean that they
disagreed with Ryle on this point. Some liked his views despite his behaviouristic
tendencies, and others, such as Morris Weitz, appreciated the form of behaviourism which
they thought Ryle advocates: ‘his basic logical behaviorism impresses me as essentially
correct and profoundly first-rate’ (Weitz 1951, 301)
There were also opposing views: Ayer and MacDonald denied that Ryle held a
behaviouristic position. The latter claimed that Ryle neither intended nor needed to accept
such a metaphysical conclusion.
What he does, I think, admit as the ultimate reference of discourse is a world, “the ordinary
world”, but if to do this is to be a metaphysical monist then so is every plain man, which is
absurd. The world of ordinary life is not one, and might have been two or more, but simply the
world. But we talk about this world in many idioms. (MacDonald 1951, 85)
Ayer, too, denies that Ryle is a behaviourist. Ryle does not attempt to completely reduce
people’s inner lives to behaviour (or behavioural dispositions), since he often refers to inner
occurrences, such as feelings of despair and pride, internal monologues, tunes running in
one’s head, and mental arithmetic. Ayer argues that Ryle does admit a ghost, but it is a
friendly one in that it does not require the stage of a private theatre – there is no observing
of privates states or processes by the person to whom they are private, nor is it logically
impossible for them to be observed by other people. ‘(…) He nowhere suggests that his
silent soliloquies are to be equated with physiological states or processes: nor does he make
any attempt to translate them into behavioural dispositions.’ (Ayer 1970, 65) Ayer thinks
that a thesis more consistently held throughout the book is that ‘whether or not the
programme of logical behaviourism can be carried out in its entirety, it does give a correct
account of a great deal of what is ordinarily classified as talk about the mind’. (Ayer 1970,
67) Silent thought can occur but is not a necessary condition for intelligent action – its role
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is minimized. Ayer believes that Ryle takes logical behaviourism ‘as far as it can
legitimately go’ (Ayer 1970, 74), but admits that the stronger (in fact, too strong) thesis of
behaviourism is suggested in some parts of The Concept of Mind.
The discussion about Ryle’s alleged behaviourism was often blurred because the
reviewers often failed to distinguish between different types of behaviourism and neglected
to make clear what type they used. Or when they did, they did not make the effort to
discuss other types. In the next section I hope to provide a more complete account of Ryle’s
position, taking into account different types of behaviourism.
The Concept of Mind as a Non-Behaviourist Attack on

Dualism
As we have seen, many of Ryle’s contemporaries interpreted him as a behaviourist in one
way or another. This reception can partly be explained by the scientific Zeitgeist of the
1940s and 50s. The ideal of objectivity rendered behaviourism an attractive position, since
it rejected unobservable, internal causes, as well as the intensionality of cognitive
constructs.
In modern handbooks Ryle is usually also mentioned as a behaviourist. At the time
he wrote The Concept of Mind Ryle expected that he would be interpreted as a behaviourist,
claiming that ‘the general trend of this book will undoubtedly, and harmlessly, be
stigmatized as “behaviourist”’ (Ryle 1949a, 308). He could not have been more wrong
about the harm this label would cause. In the 1960s the cognitive revolution killed
behaviourism, which from then onwards carried the stigma of being an outdated and
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uninteresting view. After showing several examples of characterizations of Ryle as a
behaviourist in modern handbooks, I shall discuss which type of behaviourism, if any, can
be attributed to him.
Ryle’s Behaviourism According to Modern Handbooks

In modern handbooks in the philosophy of mind, as well as introductions or companions,
Ryle, if discussed at all, is almost without exception characterized as a behaviourist
(although the type of behaviourism differs), often resulting in him being put aside as
outdated. In E. J. Lowe’s An Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind (2000) Ryle is
mentioned only briefly in three footnotes. And in Philosophy of Mind (1996) Jaegwon Kim
mentions The Concept of Mind as ‘the influential classic work representing behaviorism as
a philosophical doctrine’ (Kim 1996, 45) – the only reference to Ryle. In Contemporary
Philosophy of Mind (1997) Georges Rey characterizes Ryle’s view as analytical
behaviourism:
Ryle and others did propose a more positive approach, which emerged as the doctrine of
Analytical Behaviorism (“Abism”). The general idea is that claims about the mind should be
understood as equivalent to various sorts of dispositional or conditional claims about how an
agent would behave if she were in such and such circumstances, on the model of dispositional
elsewhere: “Salt is soluble” presumably means something like, “If salt is put into water in certain
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William O’Donohue and Richard Kitchener argue that behaviourism is by no means dead nowadays. However,
this primarily has to do with the fact that they call Ryle and Wittgenstein behaviourists too, and thus use
behaviourism in a broad sense. (O’Donohue and Kitchener 1999, 7)
82
normal conditions, then it dissolves”; “Glass is fragile” something like “If struck in normal
circumstances, it breaks”. (Rey 1997, 151)
In Lowe’s An introduction to the philosophy of mind (2000) it is mentioned in a footnote

that in The Concept of Mind ‘a sophisticated version of logical behaviourism is developed
by Ryle’ (Lowe 2000, 42). In his introductory Minds and Bodies (2000) Robert Wilkinson
claims that ‘philosophical (or analytical) behaviourism is most thoroughly set out in The
Concept of Mind (1949)’ (Wilkinson 2000, 50). From an earlier date is Armstrong’s
contribution to William G. Lycan’s Mind and Cognition. A Reader (1990), in which he
asserts that ‘in The Concept of Mind (1949), Gilbert Ryle, although he denied that he was a
Behaviorist, seemed to be upholding an account of man and his mind that was extremely
close to Behaviorism’ (Armstrong 1990, 38). In the Blackwell Guide to Philosophy of Mind
(2003) six – rather general – references to Ryle can be found. The most interesting remark
is of the hand of William G. Lycan, who claims that in 1956 Place was the first to formulate
a middle way between dualism and behaviourism: ‘So matters stood in stalemate between
dualists, behaviorists, and doubters, until the late 1950s, when U. T. Place (1956) and J. J.
C. Smart (1959) proposed a middle way, a conciliatory compromise solution.’ (Lycan 2003,
50) According to Lycan, before 1956 one was either a dualist or a behaviourist – there was
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no way of rejecting both. Tim Crane’s The Mechanical Mind (1995) does not contain any
reference to Ryle, and The Oxford Companion to the Mind (2004) no more than two – one
that he argued against those who ‘dubbed the mind “the Ghost in the Machine”’ (2004,
285); the other is a general account of Ryle’s most well-known ideas with a total length of
one page.
And what about handbooks concerning the philosophy of language? Of course
Ryle wrote about the mind and about mental concepts, but was he not principally a
philosopher of language? After all, The Concept of Mind had a meta-philosophical purpose,
and was about concepts of mind, not about the mind itself. Ryle’s aim was to expose a
defective theory by showing the true logical geography of mental concepts, not by offering
an alternative theory of mind. However, in handbooks about philosophy of language Ryle
does not frequently occur either, e.g. in A Companion to the Philosophy of Language
(1997), his name is not mentioned once (in comparison: Wittgenstein is referred to over a
hundred times; Russell counts eighteen references).
Now, it is important to see why there is still such a strong urge to interpret Ryle’s
work behaviouristically, and – accordingly – to classify him as a philosopher of mind rather
than a philosopher of language. There are obviously passages in The Concept of Mind
which invite similar interpretations.
Suggestions of Behaviourism in The Concept of Mind

References to behaviour and suggestions of behaviourism first occur in ‘Conscience and
Moral Convictions’ (Ryle 1940). In this article, Ryle argues that public tests of whether a
person really knows or is really convinced are behavioural, suggesting that the word
‘conscience’ is used ‘for those moral convictions which issue not in verdicts but in
behaving or trying to behave’ (1940, 188). ‘Conscience is not something other than, prior to
or posterior to moral convictions; it is having those convictions in an operative degree, i.e.
being disposed to behave accordingly.’ (Ibid., 189) And in ‘Knowing how and knowing
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I hope to show in the remainder of this section that in The Concept of Mind Ryle already found a way to reject
both dualism and behaviourism – not by providing an alternative theory of mind, but by rejecting what was at the
basis of both ‘isms’, i.e. a denotational theory of meaning.
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that’ (Ryle 1946a) Ryle argues that knowledge does not refer to a thing or process – as
physical verbs such as ‘to walk’ do – but knowledge is an ability, a disposition to behave
such and such.
The main source of Ryle’s reputation as a behaviourist is of course The Concept of
Mind (1949a). First of all, from his claim that he wanted to get rid of the ghost in the
machine it was easy to imply that he just wanted to get rid of the ghost, while retaining the
machine, whereas what he really wanted was to get rid of the whole mind-body dichotomy.
His description of the ghost in the machine in terms of a category-mistake did not help to
avoid misinterpretation: ‘It represents the acts of mental life as if they belonged to one
logical type or category (or range of types or categories), when they actually belong to
another’ (Ryle 1949a, 17). It is tempting and easy – but wrong – to interpret this as if Ryle
means to say that the facts of mental life, rather than belonging to the category of ghostly,
immaterial being, actually belong to the category of the material world. Moreover, as we
have seen, Ryle does not point at one single category-mistake but rather presents a whole
cluster of category-mistakes, some of which are underlying others, though never so general
that they are underlying our whole geography of mental concepts. Only the category-
mistake of denotationalism seems to cover the whole picture. Other category-mistakes,
which operate in a more limited area, only show more specific mistakes and do not, for
example, rule out behaviourism; sometimes they even seem to suppose it.
Ryle’s frequent appeals to behaviour in his analysis of category-mistakes
strengthened the suggestion of behaviourism. He considered the methods of verification of
an expression to be important indications of its meaning, and this verification generally
involved observable behaviour. For example, the cleverness of a clown is not a hidden
performance taking place inside the clown’s head. What his spectators admire is not a
secret, hidden performance, but the visible performance. Another example is Ryle’s claim
that knowledge statements are dispositional statements: ‘to say that this sleeper knows
French, is to say that if, for example, he is ever addressed in French, or shown any French
newspaper, he responds pertinently in French, acts appropriately or translates it correctly
into his own tongue’ (Ryle 1949a, 119). It may be tempting to infer from this that there is
nothing but behaviour, or at least that our mental concepts can be reduced to ones about
(bodily) behaviour.
It is not difficult to see how verification and behaviourism are connected. When I
want to verify that someone has a dream, is in pain or is sad, the only thing I can do is to
collect testimony and observe external symptoms. What could this testimony and these
external symptoms be but this person’s overt behaviour? Ryle, however, did not identify
verification and meaning, but only saw verification as providing indications for the
meaning of expressions. This would mean that Ryle’s verificationist arguments are nothing
but therapeutic, less rigorous, arguments. The following type of logical behaviourism lies in
ambush when an identification of meaning and verification is attributed to Ryle, and his
verificationist arguments are interpreted as logically rigorous instead of therapeutic:
Logical Behaviorism: every mentalistic term M refers to (means) a set of behaviors B and/or
behavioral dispositions BD, which are the verification basis (evidence) for the application of M.
(Kitcher 1999, 400)
Hacker (who did not himself consider Ryle a behaviourist) claims that the main reason why
Ryle is so frequently interpreted as a behaviourist is that his cause – ‘Exorcize the ghost in
the machine’ (Hacker 1996, 171) – was misleading in that it suggested the view ‘that all
mental predicates signify behaviour, behavioural dispositions, tendencies or inclinations’
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(Hacker 1996, 172). Moreover, he calls the category-mistake ‘double-edged’ (Hacker 1996,
172) and therefore very much susceptible to misinterpretation. Ryle’s idea that the
Cartesian myth was one big category mistake ‘could all too easy be read as arguing that the
mistake was to construe psychological predications as categorical ascriptions to one
substance, namely the body – which was not what he meant at all’ (Hacker 1996, 172).
What further helped to establish the view that Ryle was a behaviourist was that ‘he
arguably overworked the dispositionality of many psychological expressions (e.g. belief,
motive)’ (Hacker 1996, 171) and failed ‘to give due attention to the detailed analysis of the
concept of disposition itself’ (Ibid.).
The misconception of Ryle’s theory of meaning as denotational or of his theory of
language as a naive correspondence theory of language has also contributed to
behaviouristic interpretations. In Chapter 2, I showed that Ryle had in fact already
abandoned the idea of a denotational theory of meaning before 1938 and that from then
onwards he worked on a heterogeneous theory of use. However, as Hampshire pointed out
in his review of The Concept of Mind, Ryle’s terminology is (at least sometimes) still that
of a naive correspondence theory of language (or of denotationalism). Rather than to jump
to the conclusion that Ryle must therefore still have held this view, I would argue that in
this respect his use of language was sometimes misleading, and that it was – at least partly
– this confused use of certain concepts which led Hampshire and others to their
behaviouristic interpretations.
Ryle’s Rejection of a Behaviouristic Interpretation

Already in The Concept of Mind itself we find clear indications of Ryle’s non-
behaviouristical stance:
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 the equally hallowed
absorptions of Mind by Matter or of Matter by Mind, but in a quite different way. For the
seeming contrast of the two will be shown to be as illegitimate as would be the contrast of ‘she
came home in a flood of tears’ and ‘she came home in a sedan-chair’. The belief that there is a
polar opposition between Mind and Matter is the belief that they are terms of the same logical
type. (Ryle 1949a, 23)
This passage is incompatible with the claim that Ryle’s project was to reduce statements
about the mental to statements about behaviour, or to identify the two: if both kinds of
statement belong to different categories such a move would clearly be absurd. Ryle’s aim
was to differentiate statements about the mind from those about matter, rather than to
65
reduce the one to the other. Such a reduction was precisely what he was arguing against.
As Hacker argues:
Ryle did not deny that nouns such as “pain”, “twinge”, or “tickle” signify sensations, or affirm
that they are reducible to dispositions to behave. He did not, save in incautious moments, deny
that words for various kinds of “agitation” (e.g. the shock of surprise, throb of compassion, thrill
of anticipation) signify episodes which have phenomenological features, or claim that they
connote merely dispositions and susceptibilities. He did not deny that people have afterimages,
visualize things and picture things to themselves or have tunes running through their heads, but
only that there are mental pictures or mental tunes which only their subject can see or hear. And
he asserted that some of our thinking is conducted in internal monologue, which we can keep to
ourselves. (Hacker 1996, 171)
65
See also Park 1994 for this argument.
85
In fact, from the introduction to The Concept of Mind it is clear that Ryle talked about the
meaning of mental concepts; he did not intend to increase our factual knowledge about
minds, but to ‘rectify the logical geography of the knowledge which we already possess’
(Ryle 1949a, 9). In other words: his aim was conceptual rather than factual, which in itself
shows the untenability of the view that Ryle is an ontological behaviourist, since he was not
interested in making ontological claims. However, in order to discard a logical
behaviouristic interpretation as well, we should keep in mind the meta-philosophical
purpose of the book, in combination with his more explicit ideas of philosophy and
philosophical method in his papers written from the 1930s onwards.
Two Interpretations: Shelley M. Park and Rowland Stout

I shall now discuss what I consider to be the most charitable interpretations of Ryle’s
alleged behaviourism, since these take seriously both the suggestions of behaviourism in
The Concept of Mind and the clues to the opposite. I start with Shelley Park’s
interpretation, which denies that Ryle is a behaviourist. Rowland Stout, on the other hand,
denies the presence of certain types of behaviourism in The Concept of Mind, but does not
reject a behaviouristic interpretation altogether.66
Park denies that Ryle was an ontological behaviourist, that is, the position of
ontologically reducing minds to physical behaviour or of an ontological elimination of
minds, since this did not seem to fit with his meta-philosophical aim and the fact that he
considered philosophy to be a conceptual rather than a factual inquiry. Ryle could not have
been a logical behaviourist either – logical behaviourism being defined as, roughly, the
position that ‘all talk about mental events is translatable into talk about actual or potential
overt behaviour’ (Park 1994, 276), or that of ‘attempting to “identify” the meaning of
mental-conduct statements with their verification’ (Ibid.). She mentions other versions of
logical behaviourism as well, but limits her discussion to the version just mentioned.
According to Park, Ryle’s position in The Concept of Mind would be better
characterized as ‘linguistic Antirealism’, that is:
The meaning of sentences about the mind is not a function of the denotation of their constituent
mental-conduct terms, and sentences about the mind are not to be judged as true or false (if true
66
Ullin T. Place, who wrote a chapter on Ryle’s behaviourism in the Handbook of Behaviorism (Place 1999)
should be briefly mentioned as well. He considers Rylean behaviourism to be the weak view that the primary
function of our ordinary concepts is public talk and talk about the behaviour of other people, rather than talk about
our own private experiences. I do not think that Park or Stout would reject that this weak form of non-reductive
behaviourism can be attributed to Ryle, although Park would argue against Place’s suggestion that Ryle at the time
still held a denotational theory of meaning. Place namely claims Ryle’s behaviourism to be a deduction from the
following two principles: (1) ‘The primary function of language is to enable human beings to communicate with
one another across the space between them in such a way as to provide the listener with instructions and
information relating to objects, events, and states of affairs in the physical environment common to both parties to
which the listener would otherwise have no access.’ (Place 1999, 363-4) (2) ‘The lexical words (names) that
comprise a language user’s basic vocabulary acquire their meaning by a process somewhat misleadingly referred
to as “ostensive definition”, whereby the child learns the meaning of a word by being shown instances to which it
applies.’ (Ibid.)
It seems that Place suggests that this position entails some kind of denotational theory of meaning – after all, an
ostensive definition is a way of defining a term by pointing to its referent. Or at least, he does not clearly explain
that Ryle did not ascribe to a denotational theory of meaning. Of course Place is right that Ryle believes that
language is in a way learned by means of instances to which it applies, but ‘ostensive definition’ seems to be too
simple and homogeneous for characterizing this position. Language is learned by showing how it is used, but there
is no such uniform relation between lexical words and objects in reality as Place’s account suggests. Ryle’s point
is precisely that the meaning of sentences about the mind is their – heterogeneous – use, rather than their reference
to objects, processes, etc. in reality.
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means, as above stipulated, true by virtue of denotation) because their constituent terms are not
meant to denote: and thus
The question concerning whether mental-conduct terms denote material or immaterial entities is
a pseudoquestion. (Park 1994, 282)
Therefore, Ryle refutes dualism and behaviourism alike, since both depend on Linguistic
Realism, which is, according to Park’s definition, ‘the view that the meaning of sentences
about the mind is a function of the denotation of their constituent mental-conduct terms,
and such sentences are to be judged as true or false depending upon whether or not those
terms successfully denote’ (Park 1994, 282). Logical behaviourism is ‘seeking to translate
statements which are ostensibly about (referentially) minds into statements which are really
about (referentially) observable behaviors’ (Park 1994, 278-79), but this was not Ryle’s
aim. At the time of The Concept of Mind Ryle did not hold a denotational theory of
meaning. The meaning of mental concepts and statements is not their denotation: ‘we
should not be misled into thinking that these terms denote, name, refer to, or stand for
states, episodes, happenings or events, acts, incidents, occurrences, processes,
performances, operations or things’ (Park 1994, 278). It is not the case that the meaning of
‘person x is intelligent’ is determined by the denotation of ‘the intelligence of person x’ in
the sense in which ‘Fido’ denotes Fido – it does not denote an object in reality (either
material or immaterial). This is simply not how sentences about the mind mean according
67
to the Ryle of Park’s interpretation.
This interpretation holds that a denotational theory of meaning has influenced
discussions about mind and body and is responsible for the most important claims of
Cartesian dualism, e.g. that theorizing is the primary, and intrinsically private, silent and
internal, operation of the mind; and that intelligent performances always consist of doing
two things: one of considering the appropriate propositions and another of putting these
into practice. I believe Park to be right, since looking for the thing or process in reality
behind the mental concept seems to have made us accept these dualist claims. We treat
mental concepts just like the name ‘Fido’ and believe that they mean in the same way, or
the same sort of thing as ‘Fido’, which results in our desperately trying to find Fido’s in
order for our mental concepts to have meanings. Because we are unable to find the Fido’s
we are looking for, we assume that there are two worlds: the material world of the Fido’s,
which mean ‘Fido’ by denotation, and the mental world in which mental concepts also
mean by denotation – but denotation of mental objects rather than of material ones. If we
accept that statements about the mind do not get their meaning from denoting in the way
‘Fido’ denotes Fido, we are not tempted to accept Cartesian dualism in the first place.
The mistake made by the interpreters who attribute a behaviouristic position to
Ryle is that they (implicitly) consider him to be a ‘linguistic Realist’ (see above) rather than
a ‘linguistic Antirealist’. But according to Park, Ryle’s main objection to Cartesian dualism
is precisely that it entails linguistic realism, which ‘renders mind-language unlearnable’
(Park 1994, 285) in that ‘we could never be assured that our comments about the mental
conducts of others “have any vestige of truth”’ (Ibid.). But we do know how to make these
comments, and it is precisely because we know how to make them that theories of meaning
about mental concepts and the reality they describe have been invented in the first place:
‘Hence, learning the meaning of mental-conduct sentences must be possible and, contrary
to the claims of linguistic Realism, it must consist simply in learning the appropriate and
inappropriate conditions of their use’ (Ibid.), not in learning their denotation. In this way,
67
In fact, it is not how some sentences about material things mean either: the brittleness of glass does not denote in
this way either.
87
Park is able to explain Ryle’s identification of meaning with use, as well as his frequent
appeals to ordinary language.
Ryle wants to show us that we are operating, in the philosophy of mind, with a wrongheaded
theory of meaning. And one of the ways to convince us of this is to show that the consequences
of that theory of meaning are things that “no one ever does or would say” (CM 161). We are
talking nonsense about mental-conduct concepts, if our philosophical theory of those concepts
undermines our ability to talk sense with them. (Park 1994, 289)
Park’s paper gives a very good analysis of The Concept of Mind, since it can account for its
meta-philosophical aim as well as for the fact that Ryle believes philosophy to be a
conceptual rather than a factual enquiry. Park considers the Cartesian myth to make the
mistake of ‘treating a philosophical problem – in this case the mind-body problem – as a
matter for factual investigation’ (Park 1994, 186) and regards The Concept of Mind as ‘a
case study in the great difference it makes to apply (consciously or unconsciously) one,
rather than another, theory of meaning to philosophical statements’ (Ibid.). Thus, she
convincingly argues that Ryle wanted to show that the ‘Fido’-Fido theory of meaning – the
theory that statements are true or false ‘depending upon whether the entities and
occurrences they refer to are as they describe them’ (Park 1994, 279) – is an incorrect
model of interpretation for statements about the mind. The meaning of statements about the
mind is their use, not their reference to things, occurrences, entities, etc.
One minor point of criticism may be that Park’s interpretation is a bit too
Wittgensteinian. Although she is strictly correct in claiming that ‘sentences about the mind
are not to be judged as true or false (if true means, as above stipulated, true by virtue of
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denotation ) because their constituent terms are not meant to denote’ (Park 1994, 282), she
suggests that Ryle considers ‘true’ and ‘false’ to be inapplicable in philosophy. Whereas
this view can indeed be linked to Wittgenstein, Ryle always maintained that ‘true’ and
‘false’ are applicable to philosophical statements as well. And he would have found no
reason to exclude them from the realm of mental statements. We just have to keep in mind
that ‘true’ and ‘false’ in philosophy are not used in the way in which they are used in
science.
Park’s coherent and plausible interpretation may also be too charitable, for Ryle’s
views were not so clear and coherent, as he himself acknowledged many years later in 1976
in a letter to Thomas W. Bestor, when he admitted that he had neglected to reject the
reductionist backside of Cartesian dualism in a systematic way. Not only this ‘one-eyed-
ness’ (Ryle 1976a, 241), but also Ryle’s tendency to overwork certain distinctions was
responsible for misinterpretations. As Ryle himself confessed to Bestor: ‘having started my
anti-Cartesianism and anti-Lockeanism over the special concepts of Knowing and
Believing, I was over-captivated by the luminousness of the contrast between Having (or
Owning or Being equipped to …) and, for example, Doing Undergoing, Trying,
Succeeding, Failing, etc.’ (Ryle 1976a, 235). The fact that Ryle was mistakenly considered
to hold a denotational theory of meaning was also partly responsible for the persistent
interpretation of Ryle as a behaviourist. As noticed above, other things played a role as
well: his numerous appeals to overt behaviour; his focus on Cartesian dualism; his rather
loose use of ‘category-mistake’ and other concepts; and, above all, the unclarity of his real
target.
68
Italics are mine.
88
In a recent paper another philosopher, Rowland Stout, argues that there are
sufficient reasons to call Ryle a behaviourist – at least as long as we realize that he was not
a reductionist behaviourist. He attributes to Ryle the following claims:
1) ‘That our entitlement to describe an individual’s state of mind depends on being

entitled to make certain inferences about their behaviour’ (Stout 2003, 38).
2) ‘The interpretation of behaviour rather than introspection was the primary method
of access to the mind.’ (Ibid.)
3) ‘There is nothing more to one’s assertion that someone is in a certain state of mind
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than that one is entitled to make certain inferences about their behaviour.’ (Ibid.)
According to Stout, the problem underlying both materialism and dualism, which Ryle
tackled in The Concept of Mind, did not start with the assumption of a special realm of the
mental, but rather one step further back: with the assumption that there is a special physical
realm, that is a non-mental realm which is fully describable without using mental language.
This assumption of a purely physical realm only leaves open three options for mental
language, namely: dualism, reductive materialism – that mental language can be reduced to
70
non-mental language – and the position ‘that mental language describes nothing at all’
(Stout 2003, 39). But Ryle would have opted for a fourth position, namely ‘that such talk
[mental language – CV] is talk of the ordinary world and is an eliminable part of our talk of
the material world.’ (Stout 2003, 39) This fourth position was only possible because Ryle
rejected the existence of a physical world which is fully describable by non-mental
language. There is only one world and this is neither a ‘mental world’ nor a ‘physical
world’, but it is our ordinary world ‘of people’s doings, sayings, imaginings, etc.’ (Stout
2003, 39). Both mental and non-mental language describes this world – that is, our ordinary
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world.
Support for such an interpretation comes from the following quotation (which
Stout, surprisingly, does not give):
But when a person talks sense aloud, ties knots, feints or sculpts, the actions which we witness
are themselves the things which he is intelligently doing, though the concepts in terms of which
the physicist or physiologist would describe his actions do not exhaust those which would be
used by his pupils or his teachers in appraising their logic, style or technique. He is bodily active
and he is mentally active, but he is not synchronously active in two different ‘places’, or with
two different ‘engines’. There is the one activity, but it is one susceptible of and requiring more
than one kind of explanatory description. Somewhat as there is no aerodynamical or
physiological difference between the description of one bird as ‘flying south’ and of another as
‘migrating’, though there is a big biological difference between these descriptions, so there need
be no physical or physiological differences between one man as gabbling and another as talking
sense, though the rhetorical and logical differences are enormous. (Ryle 1949a, 50)
And another quotation supports this interpretation as well:
69
At first sight this may seem a strong claim that does suggest some type of reductive behaviourism. However, we
will see that Stout’s use of behaviour is broader than just bodily behaviour.
70
Stout attributes this third position to Park. However, this seems to be cutting too many corners. Park merely
claims that mental language does not describe in the way ‘Fido’ describes Fido (the dog), rather than saying
anything about weaker (more commonsense) versions of ‘describing’.
71
This interpretation is similar to the one given by MacDonald 1951 (p. 85). It is also the position Thomas W.
Bestor attributes to Ryle (Bestor 1979).
89
His [a person’s] life is not a double series of events taking place in two different kinds of stuff; it
is one concatenation of events, the differences between some and other classes of which largely
consist in the applicability or inapplicability to them of logically different types of law-
propositions and law-like propositions. Assertions about a person’s mind are therefore assertions
of special sorts about that person. So questions about the relations between a person and his mind
like those about the relations between a person’s body and his mind, are improper questions. (…)
It follows that it is a logical solecism to speak, as theorists often do, of someone’s mind knowing
this, or choosing that. The person himself knows this and chooses that, though the fact that he
does so can, if desired, be classified as a mental fact about that person. (…) ‘my mind’ does not
stand for another organ. It signifies my ability and proneness to do certain things and not some
kind of personal apparatus without which I could or would not do them. (…) Where logical
candour is required from us, we ought to follow the example set by novelists, biographers, and
diarists, who speak only of persons doing and undergoing things. (Ryle 1949a, 160-61)
According to Stout, Ryle’s mental language ‘serves a descriptive function that we have no
reason to suppose can be served without such language’ (Stout 2003, 39), which he
illustrates by the following quotation from The Concept of Mind:
To talk of a person’s mind is not to talk of a repository which is permitted to house objects that
something called the “physical world” is not permitted to house; it is to talk of the person’s
abilities, liabilities and inclinations to do and undergo certain sorts of things, and of the doing
and undergoing of these things in the ordinary world. (Ryle 1949a, 190)
Stout makes two distinctions:

1) between limiting oneself to discussing overt phenomena and discussing
phenomena that can be measured by scientific instruments;
2) between a reductive conception of behaviour and a non-reductive one.
Distinction (1) is between limiting oneself to, for example, a discussion of stimuli and
responses, and limiting oneself to overt phenomena, such as doings, sayings and gestures,
which can, however, not ‘be read off a scientific measuring device’ (Stout 2003, 40). It is
the difference between saying that ‘the way someone is disposed to behave can be specified
in terms which make no use of mental or intentional language’ (Stout 2003, 40) – i.e. that
statements about the mind can, without loss of meaning, be translated into ones about the
body – and saying that this is not possible. Distinction (2) is between specifying behaviour
in a way which is neutral ‘between the description of a machine’s behaviour and the
description of a person’s behaviour’ (Stout 2003, 40) and specifying it in a way which does
differ between machines and persons. In this way he can call Ryle a behaviourist while still
allowing him to make allusion to things beyond people’s purely bodily behaviour.
Ryle is regarded as a non-reductive behaviourist who limits himself to overt
phenomena, but does not go so far as to limit himself to ones that can be measured by
scientific instruments. Stout characterizes Ryle’s behaviourism as follows:
The non-reductive (Rylean) behaviourist operates with an irreducibly mentalistic or intentional

conception both of bits of behaviour and of ways of behaving. One way of spelling out such a
non-reductivist behaviourist view would be the following: What it is to say that someone is in a
certain state of mind is to say that they are disposed to behave in a way characteristic to that state
of mind.
It may not be possible to describe the characteristic way of behaving without referring to
that state of mind considered abstractly. So this is not the sort of behaviourism that would
explain to someone what certain mental terms meant if they did not already know. It is instead
the sort of behaviourism that reveals the nature of the systematic relationship between being
entitled to describe states of mind and being entitled to make behavioural inferences. (Stout
2003, 41)
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At first sight the views of Park and Stout may seem irreconcilable, since Stout rejects
Park’s position, but there are important similarities between their positions. They both
argue against the idea that Ryle was a reductionist behaviourist, as well as against the
thought that Ryle would have aimed at characterizing states of mind in a purely scientific
way. However, Stout mainly focuses on the exact type of behaviourism which may be
attributed to Ryle, whereas Park concentrates on the importance of meaning and language
for Ryle, and on his rejection of a denotational theory of meaning. That Stout nevertheless
rejects Park’s position is due, in my opinion, to the fact that he did not clearly distinguish
between different ways in which ‘description’ (and perhaps also ‘denotation’) is used. Stout
attributes to Park the position that mental language describes nothing at all, holding her to
claim that mental language serves another purpose, which may have been caused by Park’s
– somewhat misleading – description of Ryle’s position as linguistic antirealism. However,
Park merely claims that Ryle’s mental terms do not denote in the sense in which ‘Fido’
denotes Fido, and surely she attributes to Ryle the position that mental terms do not
describe in the way ‘Fido’ describes Fido. But in the more general sense of ‘denotate’,
‘signify’ or ‘describe’, she would not have denied them of mental concepts.
Another point of contention is that whereas Stout suggests that Ryle was a (non-
reductive) behaviourist, Park thinks he was not a behaviourist at all. This difference may be
due to Park’s interpretation of behaviourism in terms solely of one version (or, at best, one
cluster of versions of the same type) of logical behaviourism. What she rejects is the view
that Ryle seeks to translate statements about the mind into ones that are about observable
behaviour, which contain no reference to the state of mind considered abstractly – which
differs from Stout’s description of Rylean behaviourism: ‘The non-reductive (Rylean)
behaviourist operates with an irreducibly mentalistic or intentional conception both of bits
of behaviour and of ways of behaving’ (Stout 2003, 41). Park does not take into account the
kind of behaviourism Stout has in mind, but there is no reason why she would not have
accepted it. Her arguments against ‘regular’ – in the sense of reductive – logical
behaviourism do not work against the non-reductive type of behaviourism Stout attributes
to Ryle.
As said before, we should not forget that in 1949 Ryle did not have such a
complete and coherent position and was not totally clear about it himself. He did not aim at
rejecting behaviourism, focusing his attention rather on the dualist theory – which he
considered to be far more dangerous. Ryle himself later admitted that at the time of The
Concept of Mind he had not yet realised the full scope of behaviourism, nor had he been
fully aware that dualism and behaviourism were two sides of the same coin. And although
it is certainly true that Ryle could have criticised behaviourism theoretically by means of
his rejection of a denotational (homogeneous) theory of meaning, he did not in fact do so, at
least not in a systematic way.
Concluding Remarks
In this chapter I have given an interpretation of The Concept of Mind by focusing on Ryle’s
method and main aims, and by giving an overview of the most important interpretations of
the book. The reviews of The Concept of Mind exposed confusions and a vague, sometimes
misleading, use of some of the basic concepts and main distinctions. Several commentators
wrote, for example, that it is never clear precisely whom Ryle has in mind when he attacks
the dogma of the ghost in the machine. Another point of criticism often voiced by reviewers
91
(for instance, MacDonald, King, Austin, Russell and Hampshire) is that Ryle himself – in
his crusade against conceptual mistakes – was not able to avoid using confused or vague
expressions and concepts himself. This, of course, made it difficult to unravel his
arguments and assess their power and convincingness. Furthermore, some reviewers
demanded a method of explanation instead of mere descriptions and argued that Ryle never
in fact touched upon the arguments of his opponents. Above all, Ryle was criticised for
insufficiently defining his target and for an unclear use of his basic tool – the category-
mistake.
A proper understanding of the category-mistake which Ryle attributes to Cartesian
dualism seems to hold the key to a proper interpretation. As I argued, in The Concept of
Mind category-mistakes occur on many different levels, and this partly explains the
difficulties in interpreting the book. The most general category-mistakes are: treating
mental concepts as names, and thinking that mental language describes a mental world and
that there is something like a physical world which is fully describable by non-mental
language. These two category-mistakes expose both dualism and behaviourism, although
Ryle was not fully aware of this at the time. The mistakes as they are described are of
different types. The first concerns the question how specific expressions mean what they
mean. The answer is that there is an endless diversity of categories of meaning. We have to
look at how expressions are used; the heterogeneity of our use of language has replaced
Ryle’s earlier homogeneous, denotational theory of meaning. Mental concepts should no
longer be treated as names. The second category-mistake concerns the question what our
language – as a whole – is ultimately about (where ‘being about’ has to be interpreted in the
broad sense rather than in the narrow sense of ‘Fido’ being about Fido). Our language is
ultimately about the world; not about a mental or a bodily world but about our ordinary
world. Physical and mental language are just different ways to describe the same world.
This is a conceptual rather than an ontological position. Ryle replaces the view of having
one type of relation between language and reality – reality consisting of many different
worlds – by that of an endless diversity of relations between language and reality.
According to the latter view reality is defined as just one world, that is the world.
These two category-mistakes were not, as such, identified by the reviewers of The Concept
of Mind, except by MacDonald (1951). The main reason why they did not recognize the
first category-mistake was that Ryle was still, at times, employing a denotational
terminology, as was pointed out by Hampshire (1951). Ryle’s rejection of the dichotomy of
a mental and a physical world, instead of merely rejecting a mental world, and his
transcending of this dichotomy by replacing it with the ordinary world, about which we can
talk in terms of mental and in terms of bodily language, were also neglected. This was
mainly due to Ryle’s rather misleading claim that he wanted to get rid of the ghost in the
machine – thereby suggesting that the machine could be retained – and his frequent appeals
to behaviour and references to the verification of mental statements by means of overt
behaviour.
This lack of recognition of the ‘real’ category-mistake(s) which Ryle tried to
expose was largely responsible for the behaviouristic interpretations then and now, and
these interpretations still prevent Ryle from being taken seriously in contemporary
philosophy of mind and language. In the following chapter we will see that in his later
papers Ryle becomes more explicit – and accurate – about his rejection of behaviourism.
Ryle’s non-reductive method of connective philosophical analysis, stripped of its alleged
behaviourism, may still be of value for modern philosophy as will be suggested in the
concluding chapter of this thesis. It is, for example, relevant for discussions about the
foundations of neuroscience.
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Gilbert Ryle’s Later Writings
Chapter 4
After The Concept of Mind (1949a) Ryle felt the need to clarify some issues. After all, the
book was written to provide an example of what he considered to be good philosophy and
hardly contained any theoretical claims concerning the nature of philosophy – Ryle’s
explanation of the category-mistake probably came the closest to any such thing. The
theoretical claims which Ryle had presented in his earlier papers, such as ‘Categories’
(1938) and ‘Philosophical Arguments’ (1945), could not fully carry the weight of the
method of The Concept of Mind. Hence, in the late fifties and early sixties Ryle wrote a
series of papers meant to add to and clarify his earlier work: ‘Ordinary Language’ (1953b),
‘Proofs in Philosophy’ (1954b), ‘The Theory of Meaning’ (1957a) and ‘Use, Usage and
Meaning’ (1961a).
Furthermore, in 1953 Ryle gave the Tarner Lectures in Cambridge, which were
published as Dilemmas (1954a). His purpose with these lectures was similar to that of The
Concept of Mind, namely to show what good philosophy is by providing examples. Ryle
later said that the Tarner Lectures ‘were fairly explicitly dedicated to the consolidation and
diversification of what had been the meta-theme of the Concept of Mind’ (Ryle 1970, 12).
A difference between the two books is that in the later one Ryle qualifies his notion of the
category-mistake; Dilemmas is also more explicit on the theoretical framework backed up
by the numerous examples, which makes it easier to grasp.
But the majority of Ryle’s writings after The Concept of Mind is dedicated to the
notion of thinking, which kept fascinating and troubling him until his death. In his later
writings on thinking Ryle sharpens, and sometimes changes, his earlier thoughts in The
Concept of Mind with a focus on persuading people, using analogies rather than the
reductio ad absurdum. Ryle’s most well-known writings on thinking are his papers written
between 1951 and 1968, which were printed in the second volume of his Collected Essays
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(1971b) . However, there are many other papers, most of which were published
posthumously:
• On Thinking (Kolenda 1979): a collection of posthumously published papers and

lectures, containing papers from the last period of Ryle’s life, up until 1976 – the
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year of his death.
• Aspects of Mind (1993), a collection of posthumously published papers edited by
René Meyer, Professor at the University of Pretoria and in 1964 a student under
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‘Thinking and Language’ (1951a), ‘Thinking’ (1953a), ‘A Puzzling Element in the Notion of Thinking’ (1958),
‘A Rational Animal’ (1962a), ‘Thinking Thoughts and Having Concepts’ (1962c), ‘Thinking and Reflecting’
(1966-67), ‘The Thinking of Thoughts – What is ‘le Penseur’ doing?’ (1968a)
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‘Adverbial Verbs and Verbs of Thinking’ (1979a), ‘Thought and Soliloquy’ (1979b), ‘Thought and Imagination’
(1979c), ‘Thinking and Self-Teaching’ (1972a), ‘Thinking and Saying’ (1972b), ‘Mowgli in Babel’ (1974),
‘Negative “Actions”’ (1973), ‘Improvisation’ (1976b)
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Ryle in Oxford. It contains papers to which Ryle gave Meyer access in 1964 ,
papers discovered by Meyer in the ‘Ryle Collection’ in Linacre College Library
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and in the Philosophical Library in Oxford , and Meyer’s own notes of Ryle’s
lectures and seminars from 1964.
• Finally, the separately published paper ‘Courses of Action or the Uncatchableness
of Mental Acts’ is relevant to Ryle’s views on thinking. This paper was prepared
for delivery at the annual conference of the Experimental Analysis of Behaviour
Group at Bangor in April 1974 (but was in the end read by Professor T. R. Miller
because Ryle was not able to attend), and was only published in 2000 in
Philosophy.
This chapter is divided into three parts: I start my discussion of Ryle’s later writings by
giving an account of the theoretical papers postdating The Concept of Mind, followed by a
discussion of Dilemmas. Finally, the focus will be on Ryle’s account of thinking, on which
relatively little has been written. It is particularly this account that bears close resemblances
to Wittgenstein’s views and makes one realize that a behaviouristic interpretation of Ryle is
not just a minor mistake, but rather a serious and damaging misinterpretation.
Ryle’s Meta-Philosophical Papers

The Concept of Mind (1949a) had a meta-philosophical purpose, but did not contain an
explicit theoretical account on how to do philosophy. The book was supposed to show what
philosophy was instead of providing a theory of it. As we have seen in the reviews of The
Concept of Mind, this relative absence of theoretical claims left the readers of the book with
many unanswered questions and difficulties. In the 1950s and early 1960s Ryle wrote four
theoretical papers which, on the one hand, can be regarded as responses to contemporary
developments in the field of philosophy – e.g. the tendency to think of the enterprise of
philosophy as revealing the logic of our ordinary use of language as a mere verbal
enterprise, and the rising criticisms of the general program of the philosophy of language
(e.g. on the paradigm case argument). On the other hand they were further explications of
his Concept of Mind.
An examination of these later papers will, I think, not only shed light on Ryle’s
later views but also – in retrospect – on The Concept of Mind; for he now presents a more
explicit theoretical framework. Moreover, the complaint – which has often been expressed
– that Ryle merely describes whereas he should have given explanations can also be
countered by Ryle’s later account of the essential difference between philosophy and
science (and mathematics).
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‘Is Induction a Sort of Inference?’, ‘Induction’, ‘Deductive and Inductive Thinking’, ‘Our Thinking and Our
Thoughts’ and ‘Reason’, all of which were written in the late fifties and early sixties. Since my focus will be on
thinking, I shall only discuss the last two papers in this chapter.
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‘Ontological and Logical Talk in Wittgenstein’s Tractatus’, according to Meyer written in the late thirties; ‘The
Meno’, written in preparation for delivery to the Cambridge B Club in October 1976 (however, Ryle died early in
that month); and a Paper Read to the Oxford Philosophical Society 500th Meeting in 1968. The first paper will be
discussed in Chapter 6, the others are only briefly mentioned.
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Continuity in Ryle’s Ideas on Philosophical Method

Many of the ideas which Ryle outlined in his later theoretical papers had already been – in
some form – present in the earlier ones. As was already mentioned in the preceding
chapters, at the time of The Concept of Mind (1949a) Ryle adhered to what may be called a
use theory of meaning. The homogeneity of denotationalism had been replaced by the
heterogeneity of use, and the need of the existence of a Third Realm housing meanings was
rejected. It was no longer assumed that all words, phrases and sentences have the same
homogeneous role of naming extra-linguistic objects or processes. On the contrary, as Ryle
later alleged, ‘there is an endless variety of categories of meaning’ (Ryle 1957, 365).
Ryle also continued to express his view that philosophy was about informal logic;
he did not want to translate our everyday expressions into formal notations. He made this
point in various works, e.g.:
Of those to whom this, the formaliser’s dream, appears a mere dream (I am one of them), some
maintain that the logic of everyday statements and even the logic of the statements of scientists,
lawyers, historians and bridge-players cannot in principle be adequately represented by formulae
of formal logic. The so-called logical constants do indeed have, partly by deliberate prescription,
their scheduled logical powers; but the non-formal expressions both of everyday discourse and of
technical discourse have their own unscheduled logical powers, and these are not reducible
without remainder to those of the carefully wired marionettes of formal logic. (Ryle 1953b, 316)
Ryle not only showed the difference between philosophy and formal logic, but in his
inaugural lecture (Ryle 1945) he also pointed at the difference between philosophical
arguments and the types of arguments that are used in mathematics and science.
Philosophical arguments are neither inductions nor deductions. An argument which is
especially appropriate to philosophy is the reductio ad absurdum. In ‘Proofs in Philosophy’
(1954b) Ryle followed up on this issue and claimed that, as opposed to mathematics or
science, there are no proofs in philosophy – by which he does not mean that philosophy is
not argumentative or rhetorically persuasive. Proofs are built upon true premises, but
philosophers’ arguments do not work like that. Whereas philosophers usually reject the idea
of building anything on this or that particular premises, they should reject the whole idea of
premises-theorem proofs in philosophy. ‘Only we have been shy of saying anything of the
sort, because we have inadvertently assumed that any argument with any degree of logical
powerfulness must have the shape of a premises-theorem proof.’ (Ryle 1954b, 321)
Another important difference between philosophy and science is stressed in
‘Philosophical Arguments’ (1945), The Concept of Mind (1949a) and ‘Abstractions’
(1962b) by drawing a comparison between doing philosophy and drawing maps. We should
not put philosophical problems on a par with, for example, those of the chemist which can
be solved piecemeal. Philosophical quandaries are of a different nature in that they are
intertwined in all sorts of ways. There is no such thing as first solving philosophical
problem a and then starting on philosophical problem b, etc.
Philosophers’ problems do not in general, if ever, arise out of troubles about single concepts, like
that, say, of pleasure or that of number. They arise, rather, as the traffic-policeman’s problems
arise, when crowds of conceptual vehicles, of different sorts and moving in different directions
meet at some conceptual cross-roads. All or a lot of them have to be got under control conjointly.
This is why, in its early stages, a philosophical dispute strikes scientists and mathematicians as
so messy an affair. It is messy, for it is a traffic-block – a traffic-block which cannot be tidied up
by the individual drivers driving their individual cars efficiently. (Ryle 1954b, 325)
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Different non-synonymous words and phrases have different, what Ryle calls, ‘implication
threads’ (Ryle 1962b, 443), that is, they are ‘different in having different implications, in
requiring different tests for truth or falsehood, in being compatible and incompatible with
different affiliated statements, in being evidence for or against different corollaries, and so
on’ (Ryle 1962b, 442-43). Since the things we say are often mixtures of different words or
different phrases, and ‘sometimes the implication threads generated by one of them pull or
seem to pull across or away from the implication threads generated by another’ (Ryle
1962b, 443), it is no longer sufficient to be familiar with the separate contributions of single
words and phrases. We need to be able to say something about the relation between them,
for instance about why their apparent conflict is not a real one. Ryle argues that:
when two or twenty familiar implication threads seem to pull across and against one another, it is
no longer enough to be able unperplexedly to follow along each one by itself. We need to be able
to state their directions, their limits and their interlockings; to think systematically about what
normally we merely think competently and even dexterously with. (Ryle 1962b, 444)
Philosophical questions for the crossing implication threads are questions of a new sort, not
just new questions of an old sort.
The ideas discussed so far have been present from the early works onwards, but in
Ryle’s later theoretical papers there are some relatively new ideas as well. They are new not
in the sense that they reveal a radical change of mind, but rather in that they were not made
explicit before. To these we will turn now.
The Ordinary Use of Language

In The Concept of Mind Ryle frequently appeals to our ordinary use of expressions, for
example, when he refers to the ordinary use of concepts such as ‘intelligent’, ‘being a good
car driver’, ‘knowing how to do x’. But what does philosophy have to do with our ordinary
use of concepts in the first place? Do philosophers have to limit themselves to what
ordinary people say, thereby neglecting technical concepts? And what is this ‘use’ – does it
require a sociological investigation into people’s customs and practices? These are some of
the misunderstandings which Ryle attempts to rectify in his papers on ‘ordinary language’,
‘use’, ‘linguistic usage’ and related concepts.
It is important that ‘the use of ordinary language’ should not be identified with ‘the
ordinary use of the expression’. ‘Ordinary’ means ‘stock’ or ‘standard’ rather than
‘everyday life’ or ‘non-specialist’, as it qualifies ‘use’ rather than ‘language’. The ordinary
use of a fish-knife is to cut up fish with; a non-stock use would be to cut tomatoes with it.
Technical as well as everyday life concepts have an ordinary or stock use, and often they
also have many non-stock uses. ‘Use’ in the phrase ‘the ordinary use of the expression x’ is
all about what is done with the expression: ‘(…) the enquiry is an enquiry not into the other
features or properties of the word, coin or pair of boots, but only into what is done with it,
or with anything else with which we do the same thing.’ (Ryle 1953b, 305) To use the
analogy of the coin, the enquiry is into the use of the coin – that is what I can and cannot do
with it – and not into, for example, its date, shape or colour. This reveals why it is
misleading to categorize philosophical questions as either linguistic or non-linguistic ones –
the use of ‘cause’ is the same, according to Ryle, as that of ‘Ursache’; they are not about
the English (or the German) language. When Wittgenstein said (according to Ryle
somewhat misleadingly) that philosophical problems were linguistic problems he meant
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problems about the logic of how expressions work, that is the description of the rules of
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use, not to be confused with philological or rhetorical problems.
Thus, ‘use’ should be interpreted in a logical rather than in a philological sense and
‘the ordinary use of an expression’ is not the same thing as ‘the use of ordinary
expressions’. But of course there is some kind of primacy of the stock use of our everyday
expressions over that of scientific or specialist expressions in that explanations of technical
terms depend on our knowledge of the use of ordinary expressions. Moreover, Ryle does
sometimes recommend that philosophers use everyday language. First of all, they should
only use technical terms if useful, which does not just apply to philosophers but to anyone.
A reason more connected to the nature of philosophy is that a philosopher’s job is generally
to determine the cross-bearings between the concepts of different theories or disciplines,
and in doing so, ‘he cannot naively employ the dictions of either theory. He has to stand
back from both theories, and discuss the concepts of both in terms which are proprietary to
neither. He may coin neutral dictions of his own, but for ease of understanding he may
prefer the dictions of Everyman.’ (Ryle 1953b, 314) Furthermore, since there is no peculiar
field of knowledge or skill that belongs to philosophy, it is often worth to appeal to
everyday language, whereas this is much more difficult in the case of science or law, which
do have their own special objects.
Although it is certainly clarifying in important respects, our talk about the use of
expressions sometimes mislead us as well; a few possible misunderstandings have to be
dealt with. First of all, ‘use’ should not be interpreted in the sense of ‘utility’ or
‘usefulness’. To learn the utility of a sparking-plug is not yet knowing how to operate with
it; and the way, method or manner of whistling can be known without attributing any
usefulness to the trick. A second confusion is between ‘use’ and ‘usage’, that is custom or
practice. Knowing how to operate with a canoe-paddle, a traveller’s cheque or a word is not
identical with knowing sociological generalities about other people. Moreover, in order to
describe usages we have to have a description of uses. In order to avoid the confusions
between ‘use’ and ‘usefulness’ as well as between ‘use’ and ‘usage’, Ryle recommends to
use ‘employ’ (or ‘employment’) instead of ‘use’.
Language versus Speech and Words versus Sentences

Although Ryle has rejected denotationalism, he warns us against turning the scale in favour
of philosophy as some kind of philology: ‘The difficulty is to steer between the Scylla of a
Platonistic and the Charybdis of a lexicographical account of the business of philosophy
and logic.’ (Ryle 1957, 371) We have already seen that philosophical problems are not to
be treated as a kind of philological ones. If we put the stress on ‘use’ in ‘the ordinary use of
language’ we may be able to avoid this misunderstanding. However, this mistake can also
arise if we confuse speech with language, or rather ‘using “Language” and “linguistic”
ambivalently both for dictions and for dicta, i.e., both for the words, etc. that we say things
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This point of view was heavily criticized, for example by Zeno Vendler. He argued that no such clear distinction
could be made between conceptual and linguistic inquiries: ‘How could Ryle know, without an exhaustive study
of both languages, that the use of Ursache is the same as that of cause?’ (Vendler 1967, 252) However, as Oswald
Hanfling makes clear in his discussion of the claim that philophical inquiries are language-neutral, it is irrelevant
to Ryle’s claim whether or not the use of ‘Ursache’ is exactly the same as the use of ‘cause’. They have to
correspond in the relevant aspects, but not in every respect. ‘What matters is that the same questions can be
discussed by a German philosopher with reference to the use of “Ursache” as are discussed in English with
reference to the use of “cause”.’ (Hanfling 2000, 66-67)
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in and for what we say in them’ (Ryle 1961a, 413). Therefore the distinction is in need of
clarification.
A language, such as the French language, is a stock, fund or deposit of words, constructions,
intonations, cliché phrases, and so on. ‘Speech’, on the other hand, or ‘discourse’ can be
conscripted to denote the activity or rather the clan of activities of saying things, saying them in
French, it may be, or English or some other language. (Ryle 1961a, 407)
In other words, language is what we say things in – e.g. in French or English – whereas
speech is used to indicate what we say in them. Speech involves language but cannot be
reduced to it: ‘The reproof “You cannot say that and speak good French” is generically
different from the reproof “You cannot say that without absurdity”. (…) Speech-faults are
not to be equated with Language-faults. (Ryle 1961a, 410-11) Philosophy is concerned with
exposing absurdities and therefore with speech-faults rather than language-faults – showing
why we cannot say what we are tempted to say rather than showing why we cannot say
things in the language we say them in, or are tempted to say them in. A philosopher’s task
is to look at the dicta that are made or can be made with certain problematic words, and to
consider possible speech-faults. ‘E.g., what sorts of dicta could not be significantly made
with them [these words – CV], and why; what patterns of argument pivoting on these live
dicta would be fallacious, and why; what kinds of verification-procedures would be
impertinent, and why; to what kinds of questions such live dicta would be irrelevant, and
why; and so on.’ (Ryle 1961a, 413)
Closely connected with the difference between speech and language is that
between words and sentences – a difference which should also not be neglected. Only
words have a use, or better an employment; we cannot ask whether a person knows how to
employ a certain sentence. Ryle compares words and sentences respectively with the salt,
sugar, flour, beans and bacon, and the pie for which they are used. ‘Sentences are things we
say. Words and phrases are what we say things with.’ (Ryle 1953b, 311) Just as it does not
make sense to ask how the cook uses the pie, we cannot ask how sentences are used; only
how words are used. It follows that only words (and phrases) can be misused. Furthermore:
(…) sentences and clauses make sense or make no sense, where words neither do nor do not
make sense, but only have meanings; and that pretence-sentences can be absurd or nonsensical,
where pretence-words are neither absurd nor nonsensical, but only meaningless. I can say stupid
things, but words can be neither stupid nor not stupid. (Ryle 1953b, 313)
Ryle considers words to be the atoms of a language; sentences are the units of speech. The
first we have to learn in order to master a language; the second we construct when we say
things. ‘I am its author, not its employer. Sentences are not things of which I have a stock
or fund.’ (Ryle 1961, 408) Therefore we have to clearly distinguish between words and
sentences, a distinction not always observed by philosophers. We should avoid talking
about the use of sentences in the way we talk about the use of words or expressions. In
learning a language we learn how to employ these words and in doing so we construct
sentences. And the truth which is conveyed by a given sentence is not just an assemblage of
the several meanings of the several words in the sentence. In a different order these very
same words might have produced a falsehood (or a different truth or nonsense).
In short, we should be careful not to confuse speech with language, and not to treat
words and sentences in the same way. We do not want to end up with a philosophy that is
mere philology, any more than that we want to turn philosophy into an enterprise of
discovering platonic entities.
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Philosophy as an Inter-Level Activity

As was mentioned above, Ryle described philosophy as opposed to science in that
philosophical problems cannot be solved piecemeal and in that philosophy does not give
proofs. But if philosophy does not concern giving proofs, what are we doing when
philosophising? According to Ryle to do philosophy is to make explicit the previously
implicit logic of the employment of expressions. He compares this activity with someone
who tries to ‘formulate verbal recipes or instructions for correct operations with numbers’
(Ryle 1954b, 322), which is different from merely being able to operate with numbers as
children do. The second activity always precedes the first. We already know how to operate
with certain expressions – but philosophical arguments are second-order; they are
operations upon operations: ‘we are trying to codify in words of one level the rules
observed in the employment of words of another level’ (Ryle 1954b, 323).
As an example of proper philosophy Ryle mentions Frege, who showed, for
example, that those were wrong who suggested that just as adjectives such as ‘green’ and
‘square’, adjectives such as ‘one’ and ‘two’ also stood for qualities of things. He showed
that ‘numerical expressions will not go through all the same inference-hoops as quality-
expressions’ (Ryle 1954b, 324) – ‘“numbering 1” is not, as “honest” is, the sort of predicate
which can characterise me. Numerical predicates – such as ‘numbering 1’ – can
characterise only such subjects as “the Oxford Professors in this room”’. (Ryle 1954b, 324)
By pointing at a specific fault in the suggested codification (the fault of characterizing
adjectives such as ‘one’ and ‘two’ as standing for qualities of things) Frege fixed a positive
element of the required codification.
As opposed to proofs, philosophical arguments concern multiple levels: ‘(…) they
are operations not with premisses and conclusions, but operations upon operations with
premisses and conclusions. (…) Proving is a one-level business; philosophical arguing is,
anyhow sometimes, an inter-level business.’ (Ryle 1954b, 324)
This is exactly what constitutes the difference between philosophy and the
sciences. Whereas the sciences explain in the sense that they are trying to discover new
facts and directly operate on them, philosophy does not concern the discovery of facts but
operates on operations. In this sense philosophy is concerned with the level of descriptions,
rather than with the level of explanations. ‘Abstractions’ (1962b) is one of the papers in
which Ryle is concerned with this difference between concrete or factual questions and
abstract or conceptual questions. He mentions the example of St Augustine who was
perfectly capable of answering concrete questions about time, e.g. how to use a calendar,
but unable to answer abstract questions such as ‘Why could time never have started?’ and
‘What is Time – is it a thing, a process or a relation?’. Abstract or conceptual questions are
not about things or processes but about concepts. Seen in this light, the criticisms frequently
voiced that Ryle merely provides his readers with descriptions whereas he should have
given explanations seems to be misdirected – since from Ryle’s point of view explanations
do not belong to the realm of philosophy.
Dilemmas: The Tarner Lectures

In order to illustrate his views on the nature of philosophy, Ryle introduced real
philosophical problems and the methods for solving them. As we have seen, he did this in
The Concept of Mind with respect to various kinds of problems about the mind, or more
accurately: about our descriptions of mind. He then decided to widen his scope, using a
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variety of other examples in the Tarner Lectures held in Cambridge in 1953, and
published as Dilemmas (1954a). The book contains eight chapters: one on the theory
followed by seven practical applications of it. After discussing the theoretical part, I will
briefly sketch the case studies, concluding with a more detailed discussion of one in
particular – ‘It Was To Be’, which deals with the dilemma between the idea that we are
responsible for at least some of our actions and the equally stringent – and seemingly
conflicting – thought that everything that is was to be.
Philosophical Dilemmas
The general title, Dilemmas, suggests that the book is about conflicts between different
theories. At the beginning of the book Ryle specifies the particular type of dilemmas in
which he is interested. His aim is to discuss a specific type of conflict between theories,
namely ‘quarrels between theories, or, more generally, between lines of thought, which are
not rival solutions of the same problem, but rather solutions or would-be solutions of
different problems, and which, none the less, seem to be irreconcilable with one another’
(Ryle 1954a, 1). Therefore, the conflict or dilemma does not exist in the sense that there is
one problem or question and two competing solutions or answers, but rather in the sense
that we are confronted with two seemingly contradictory statements – accepting the one
seems to logically entail rejecting the other – both of which we strongly insist on. In reality,
however, these are only apparent conflicts and not real ones, since the statements or lines of
thought in question are not answers to the same question but to different ones. Take for
example the different account of perception given by the neurophysiologist and by the
ordinary man. Whereas the neurophysiologist arrives at a theory of the mechanisms of
perception according to which we never perceive what is really there, the ordinary man
finds out what is there (e.g. that the clock has stopped) by perceiving, so they seem to be in
conflict. However, according to Ryle, there is no real competition between the different
accounts of perception of the neurophysiologist (what are the mechanisms of perception?),
the philosopher (what is perception?) and ordinary people (how did you find out that the
clock had stopped?); they are simply different questions.
How are we to deal with these seeming conflicts? Once again, Ryle stresses that
we need to reveal the informal logic of our ordinary and our technical concepts and to show
the different relations between these concepts in different – partly overlapping – areas of
thinking. What we do not need is more ‘internal’ evidence, e.g. more scientific research, in
order to back up any of the seemingly conflicting lines of thought. It is tempting, though, to
look for more evidence of that kind, since this is precisely what would be needed if we
were dealing with real conflicts, that is, between rival solutions to the same problem. But in
the cases which Ryle discusses – seeming conflicts between solutions to different problems
– we need philosophical enquiries that do not concern the internal aspects of these lines of
thought, but rather the informal logic of the relations between them. It is not an issue of one
line of thought triumphing over another; ‘what is at stake is not which shall win and which
shall lose a race, but what are their rights and obligations vis à vis one another and vis à vis
also all other possible plaintiff and defendant positions’ (Ryle 1954a, 5).
It is not just, or even primarily, the technical concepts themselves that trick us into
making logical mistakes, but rather the underlying non-technical concepts. In fact, since
highly technical concepts have relatively well-defined functions, they are in general easier
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These public lectures had been established in 1916 by Mr. Tarner and were supposed to deal with the philosophy
of the sciences. Three of Ryle’s most well-known predecessors were Broad (1923), Russell (1926) and Moore
(1929).
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to map than non-technical concepts. The latter belong to no specific discipline and their
functions are far more intricate, involving a high complexity of many overlapping and
intertwined areas of thinking. As a result, highly technical concepts, such as those of
Bridge, are philosophically uninteresting because they usually do not generate
philosophical puzzles. More interesting are less technical concepts that have a place in
many different fields – these are the ones that generate dilemmas.
One may think that dilemmas can be avoided altogether, since, after all, they are
seeming conflicts rather than real ones. This, however, is not the case: inevitably we make
the attempt to fix particular concepts, such as pleasure, by describing them in terms of
concepts which belong to theories in other fields, e.g. political or psychological theories.
However, this does not mean that we are to blame for borrowing them in the first place,
since according to Ryle ‘we learn the powers of a borrowed tool side by side with learning
its limitations, and we find out the properties of the material as well when we find out how
and why the borrowed tool is ineffectual upon it, as when we find out how and why it is
effectual’ (Ryle 1954a, 66). Moreover, there is no other option than working on concepts
that are still uncharted. In the end, only trial and error shows us what we can and cannot do
with our concepts.
This description of philosophical method explains Ryle’s frequent use of the
reductio ad absurdum. We only know that we mishandle concepts when absurdities arise,
which indicates that we treat them as belonging to one category when they in fact belong to
quite another one. Real conflicts between lines of thought do not reveal category-mistakes
whereas dilemmas do.
Clearly, Ryle still thinks of doing philosophy in terms of categories and category-
mistakes, a method he developed in ‘Categories’ (1938) and The Concept of Mind (1949a).
However, he now feels the need to qualify his use of category and category-mistake,
probably (at least partly) as a response to the criticisms that his use of these concepts in The
Concept of Mind (1949a) had provoked. He does not use ‘category’ in an exact way, as
some sort of ‘skeleton-key’ that ‘will turn all locks for us’ (Ryle 1954a, 9) but rather as a
mere ‘coal-hammer’ which ‘will make a satisfactory knocking noise on doors we want
opened to us’ (Ryle 1954a, 9). ‘Category’ should be used in an inexact – and amateurish –
way, ‘[giving] the answers to none of our questions but it can be made to arouse people to
the questions in a properly brusque way’ (Ryle 1954a, 9). The philosopher’s job by no
means ends here. It still remains to be shown in detail that and how the discipline or sub-
discipline of the concept which was supposed to function in a way similar to that of another
discipline or sub-discipline in fact differs from it more, or less, than was initially supposed.
And this is what Ryle puts into practice in the remaining chapters of the book. Ryle’s
qualification of ‘category-mistake’ should not be interpreted as a departure from his earlier
account. He felt the need to qualify the strictures of its applicability because he realised that
he had not been sufficiently clear about this in The Concept of Mind (1949a), in which it is
sometimes suggested that Rylean ‘categories’ and ‘category-mistake’ perform the role of a
‘skeleton-key’. But his overall position did not change in any substantial way.
It is commonly accepted that the main aim of Dilemmas is meta-philosophical. His
message that philosophy is heterogeneous, that there is no such thing as the philosophical
method, has been noticed by various scholars. As A. M. Quinton wrote: ‘There is no
determinate set of precisely articulated logical patterns by reference to which all
philosophical paradoxes can be resolved. Philosophy is inescapably ad hoc.’ (Quinton
1954, 89) In Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale a reviewer describes Ryle’s meta-
philosophical aim as follows: ‘On ne peut mettre une fin à ces disputes d’une façon
stéréotypée. Le mérite du livre c’est de nous initier aux méthodes convenables, chaque fois
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différentes.’ (1958, 499) More recently, Jennifer Szalai has credited Ryle with an
existentialist position, in the sense that ‘the world does not contain a “theory of everything”
awaiting our discovery’ – there is no one particular theory that can provide the answer for
everything: ‘The possibilities for understanding our world are infinite, and the freedom to
choose means the freedom to misunderstand and, ultimately, the freedom to fail.’ (Szalai
2002, 57) Whatever the merits of Ryle’s solutions of individual dilemmas – and as we shall
see, they have been criticized – his meta-philosophical message has proven to be of great
value.
Discussions of Concrete Dilemmas

Ryle’s dilemma’s are not all of the same type. According to William Lyons (1980a), we
can distinguish between three different types of dilemmas: the first type is caused by
different answers to different questions; the second by a seeming competition between
science and an everyday account of the world; the third type is caused by turning an
unproblematic view into a problematic one by making a category-mistake. On closer
inspection, however, it seems that all dilemmas are, in a broad sense, examples of being
answers to different questions.
The first two dilemmas – ‘It was to Be’ and ‘Achilles and the Tortoise’ – are
different from the others in that they are more like riddles than like problems that really
worry us; they can be solved in a black-and-white kind of way, e.g. either Achilles will or
will not catch the Tortoise; either some things are our fault or not. The other dilemmas do
not admit such a yes-or-no answer. Furthermore, the first three dilemmas – the third one
concerns pleasure – are rather marginal or somewhat peripheral tangles, whereas the last
four are more fundamental; they are ‘out in the middle of the room’ (Ryle 1954a, 68).
Whereas Dilemmas was widely appreciated for its meta-philosophical value (cf.
Quinton 1954 and Szalai 2002 mentioned above), its reviewers were more critical about
Ryle’s specific treatment of individual dilemmas. The main disadvantage of his
discussions, according to his reviewers, was that he did not even start to solve the
philosophical problems underlying the dilemmas, and merely aimed at recognising the
dilemmas and providing proper descriptions of them. As J. O. Urmson puts it, ‘the
treatment of the more important problems is too brief and, deriving from the lecture-hall,
too loosely-knit to constitute the main interest’ (Urmson 1955, 554). And A. M. Quinton
claims: ‘Professor Ryle’s technique is rather more suggestive than convincing. His rejection
of the disputes of the schools and of the paraphernalia of erudition (…) seems to exclude
more valuable things as well – in particular rigorous methods of argument and precisely
defined expression of problems.’ (Quinton 1954, 90) In order to assess these criticisms, we
have to keep in mind that the main aim of Dilemmas was of a meta-philosophical nature.
As L. J. Russell correctly remarks: ‘It is not vital to his [Ryle’s] task that he should
convince us that he has resolved all the difficulties. What he is doing is to show how
philosophical enquiry is appropriate to situations where the clearing up of perplexities does
not depend on our getting further facts but on more careful use of our concepts.’ (Russell
1955, 348) Barnes also admits that ‘Ryle in raising this topic is not claiming to have solved
it and wishes merely to be provocative’ (Barnes 1955, 358) Perhaps the conclusion should
be that whereas Ryle’s specific discussion of the individual dilemmas was often too brief
and superficial to be completely satisfactory, his treatment of the dilemmas did fit his meta-
philosophical purpose.
Ryle’s distinctive style of presenting numerous everyday life examples and
metaphors undoubtedly gave flair to his writings. Although generally appreciated, this style
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was sometimes considered to be a disadvantage as well. As Winston H. F. Barnes

remarked: ‘Perhaps it is a little overdone. On one or two occasions the hitching of so much
theoretical harness made me a little hot under the collar; and the metaphors served rather to
distract me with unwanted, though amusing, imagery than to strike out light.’ (Barnes 1955,
364) And according to Bambrough: ‘the manner is sometimes lost amid the mannerisms’
(Bambrough 1994a, 380). The weaknesses of Ryle’s style are expressed more accurately by
Erik Götlind: ‘There are risks of letting the analogies be answers of the original questions
and for hiding weak points in the reasoning for the reader by knocking him down with a
super-drastic expression, just when his reflection begins to protest.’ (Götlind 1956, 70)
Sometimes Ryle’s style rather than the content of his arguments is what convinces people;
but at the same time this style makes it at times difficult to see the value of his arguments.
‘It Was To Be’

We shall now look at one particular dilemma, ‘It was to be’, in more detail. Ryle seeks to
find a way to reconcile our idea that we are responsible for our actions with the thought that
‘whatever is, was to be’. The problem of the freedom of the will already interested him
before 1953. In fact, this problem was an alternative project to that which resulted in The
Concept of Mind, as Ryle later recalls: ‘For a time I opted for the problem of the Freedom
of the Will as the most suitable Gordian Knot; but in the end I opted for the Concept of
Mind.’ (Ryle 1970, 12) He chose to discuss this particular dilemma as the first in a series
because it is not a burning issue and can therefore be studied like a puzzle without strong
passions playing a role and muddying the debate. A second advantage is that it is not a
technical controversy; thirdly, only a few concepts are involved which makes the question
relatively easy to deal with.
What does it mean to say ‘whatever is, was to be’? It says that ‘for whatever takes
place it was antecedently true that it was going to take place’ (Ryle 1954a, 15) – henceforth
referred to as ‘the principle of antecedent truth’ – which clearly cannot be doubted. The
dubious step is the one that leads us from here to the claim that ‘everything, including
everything that we do, has been definitively booked from any earlier date you like to
choose’ (Ryle 1954a, 15), and subsequently to the Fatalist assertion that ‘nothing that does
occur could have been helped and nothing that has not actually been done could possibly
have been done’ (Ryle 1954a, 15). This assertion is incompatible with our equally strongly
held opinion that we are responsible for our own actions. Exposing the flaws of the
argument from the principle of antecedent truth to determinism, Ryle tries to dissolve the
apparent conflict between the freedom of the will and the principle of antecedent truth.
In order to do so he starts by analysing what is exactly meant by ‘it was true a
thousand years ago that a thousand years later these things would be being said in this
place’ (Ryle 1954a, 17). It does not mean that there is an identifiable person who knew that
these things would be said in this place, that is it is not required that there was someone
who at one time had foreknowledge of these things. Neither do we have to suppose that
someone did in fact make the prediction. What the above phrase means is something like:
‘if anybody had made a prediction to this effect, though doubtless nobody did, he would
have been right.’ (Ryle 1954a, 17) Essential is Ryle’s assertion that what we talk about is
not an actual prediction having come true, but a conceivable prediction that would have
been made true by a certain event if the prediction had been made. ‘Came true’ and ‘was
fulfilled’ apply to predictions actually made, but get us into trouble if we apply them to
‘might-have-been predictions’ – just as ‘might-have-been bullets’ cannot hit targets.
Furthermore, since ‘true’ and ‘false’ have the connotation of ‘sincere’ and ‘insincere’ which
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is improper to the realm of guesses, Ryle suggests to use ‘correct’ and ‘incorrect’ instead,
reformulating the principle of antecedent truth into: ‘for any event that takes place, an
antecedent guess, if anyone had made one, that it was going to take place, would have been
correct, and an antecedent guess to the contrary, if anyone had made it, would have been
incorrect’ (Ryle 1954a, 19).
Now, what the fatalist in fact does is to assume that since the antecedent truth
requires the event of which it is true, this event must be in a way caused by its antecedent
truth. Necessity is automatically considered to be causal necessity. The mistake can be
exposed by comparing the fatalist’s claim to the claim that ‘for everything that happens, it
is true for ever afterwards that it happened’ (Ryle 1954a, 20), which does not trick us into
fatalist assumptions. In this case it is clear that the event renders the posterior truths about it
true, and not the other way around. In the case of posterior truths we are not tempted to say
that they are the causes of the events of which they were true, because causes precede their
effects and therefore posterior truths can never cause the events which make them true– it is
a matter of the relative dates of event and truth.
Ryle thinks that the fatalist’s mistake arises out of an interplay between the
concepts ‘event’, ‘before and after’, ‘truth’, ‘necessity’, ‘cause’, ‘prevention’, ‘fault’ and
‘responsibility’. The fatalist goes wrong in trying to apply the inescapability of the
conclusions of valid arguments, which is an absolute or logical inescapability, to events,
which belong to a different category and are only practically (in)escapable.
Our talk of singular statements in the future tense strengthens these fatalist urges.
We cannot say of any designated event that it was averted (for instance, this collision was
averted) and this leads us to conclude that it is logically impossible to avert any events.
Ryle argues that singular propositions do not belong to the realm of statements in the future
tense, and that only statements in the past and present tense can be singular. The mere fact
that we can ask questions such as ‘Could this collision have been prevented?’ or ‘Could the
Battle of Waterloo have been unfought?’ is because they happened – otherwise we would
not have been able to talk about ‘this collision’ and ‘the Battle of Waterloo’. It is absurd to
ask the question whether the Battle of Waterloo was fought or unfought, since: ‘That it was
fought goes with our having an it to talk about at all.’ (Ryle 1954a, 26) Singular
propositions do not belong to the realm of statements in the future tense and the fact that we
cannot say of any specific event that it was averted is a logical fact about future tense
statements which does not have anything to do with an impossibility to keep events from
happening.
Ryle draws two general points from this dilemma: firstly, that there is no such
thing as the method for solving philosophical problems. We have to use a method of trial
and error to discover which moves are to be made in this or that specific situation.
Secondly, this dilemma illustrates once more that philosophy does not consist in untying
logical knots one at the time:
the quandary, though relatively simple, does depend upon a smallish number of concepts,
namely, in the first instance, upon those of event, before and after, truth, necessity, cause,
prevention, fault and responsibility. Now there is not just one of these concepts which is the
logical trouble-maker. The trouble arises out of the interplay between all of them. (Ryle 1954a,
31)
In this dilemma, Ryle reveals the conceptual mistakes that are made when one argues from
the innocent principle ‘that whatever is, was to be’ to a fatalist conclusion. He illustrates the
complexity of the interplay of different concepts and the need for philosophy to take up the
task of exposing ‘speech-faults’ (see above) and showing how seeming conflicts – of a
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seemingly non-conceptual nature – vanish if conceptual mistakes are laid bare. No new
facts are discovered and no real proofs are given. His treatment of this dilemma is a school-
example of what philosophy purports to be, as described in his theoretical papers.
Despite Ryle’s witty and original, inventive manner of approaching this dilemma,
it may be doubted whether he in fact has solved it. A general point of criticism is that Ryle
only disentangled philosophical puzzles without solving the underlying problems (Kaplan
1955, Ambrose 1955). In this case, he may be said not even to have started to solve the
philosophical problem underlying the argument from ‘that whatever is, was to be’ to a
fatalist conclusion. Further, some more specific points of criticism were directed to his
treatment of ‘It Was to Be’ as well. For example, Barnes argues that Ryle never pays
attention to the relation between foreknowledge (if possible) and fatalism, which seems to
constitute an important part of the underlying problem of ‘It Was to Be’, neither does he
sufficiently clarify the difference between ‘true’ and ‘correct’. (cf. Barnes 1955) He also
seems to use ‘come true’ and ‘was true’ interchangeably without recognising the difference
between these notions. In her review, Alice Ambrose, too, suggests that Ryle just solves the
rather superficial problem which was caused by a confusion of categories, without solving
the underlying problem. In order to avoid the category confusion the problem can perhaps
be reformulated as follows: ‘everything there is was from eternity causally necessitated’ is
incompatible to ‘we often should do certain things and not others’, while we strongly
consider both statements to be true. (Ambrose 1955, 157) Although these criticisms perhaps
need not have bothered Ryle too much, for his main aim was a meta-philosophical one, it
should be noted that virtually all of his specific solutions to the dilemmas have been
disputed, mainly for their superficiality.
An Adverbial Account of Thinking

From the 1950s onwards Ryle wrote papers and lectures on a variety of subjects – e.g.
Dilemmas, papers dealing with induction, moral philosophy, the history of philosophy, etc.
– but what kept intriguing him most strongly were conceptual puzzles concerning mental
concepts. The majority of his later writings is devoted to this theme.
As we have already seen, in The Concept of Mind (1949a) Ryle regards mental
concepts to be adverbial rather than substantive; they are qualifying and should not be
treated as names. Complex descriptions of intelligent actions should be regarded as higher-
level descriptions of processes, not as descriptions of complex processes. The mental
predicate ‘intelligent’ does not describe an extra process, but rather the way in which all
kinds of processes are managed, just as ‘carefully’ in ‘Peter is driving carefully’ does not
refer to a process other than driving.
Ryle’s later writings on thinking deal primarily with what it precisely means to say
that our descriptions of thinking are higher-level descriptions of processes. Ryle usually
distinguished between a broad and a narrow concept of thinking. The first includes every
type of thinking, ranging from our practical thinking in everyday life to highly intellectual
thinking, e.g. in scientific discovery and philosophy. The narrow concept – characterized as
what Le Penseur does when he is thinking – seems to include higher intellectual activities
such as philosophical and scientific theorizing, and the composition of music, but not
practical activities such as intelligent car driving. The thinking of Le Penseur is a mental
concept, and hence, according to Ryle, does not describe a process, but rather a higher-level
description of processes – i.e. the way in which certain processes are managed. It may
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perhaps be distinguished from the broader notion in that it does not seem to have a specific,
identifiable action to supervene upon. Ryle mainly concentrates on the narrow notion of
thinking, since it is the most problematic one.
A question that rises immediately is: if the thinking Le Penseur is doing is (merely)
the way in which processes are managed, then what kind of processes are we talking about
here? In the case of ‘intelligent’ and ‘carefully’ it is clear that there are many different
processes which these higher-level concepts can be about, e.g. ‘driving a car’, ‘playing
chess’. Whereas someone who drives a car intelligently can be said to perform the actions
of driving a car in a special way, this cannot be said of Socrates, Mozart and the scientist.
Ryle uses ‘the thinking of Le Penseur’ precisely to indicate this category of thinking of
which it is most difficult to grasp that thinking is adverbial and is supervening upon actions
instead of itself being qualified as an action. If the ‘thinking’ of Socrates, Mozart and the
scientist does not describe a process but a manner of ‘X-ing’, what can this X-ing possibly
be? Is it ‘pondering’, ‘reflecting’ or ‘meditating’? What ‘happens’ when we do that? To
present an answer to this question – or better: to this group or family of related questions –
is the main objective in Ryle’s later papers on thinking.
These papers have generally been neglected by later scholars. The only paper
which thoroughly discusses the development of Ryle’s later thoughts on thinking is
Sibley’s ‘Ryle and Thinking’ (1970) in which Sibley sketches Ryle’s development from a
multiple-activity account of thinking to a polymorphous one, and finally to an adverbial
account of thinking. According to Sibley, all three positions must be seen in the light of
Ryle’s negative project to reject accounts ‘which find thinking to consist in any single
ingredient or unitary activity’ (Sibley 1970, 76). The difference between the first two
positions is that the polymorphous account is stronger than the multiple-activity account in
the sense that in the polymorphous account these activities can also be performed when one
is not thinking. What both positions have in common is that ‘thinking comprises a
collection of activities with no common strand of importance’ (Sibley 1970, 76). The
difference between these positions and the third one is that in his last papers Ryle argues
that thinking is not a separate activity (or even group of activities) at all. ‘Verbs of thinking
are really “adverbial”; they do not themselves denote activities, but ways or manners in
which other, often overt, activities are performed’ (Sibley 1970, 76). According to Sibley
the third position was introduced not until ‘Thinking and Reflecting’ (Ryle 1966-67). In
addition to Sibley’s paper, I should also mention a short paper by William Lyons, entitled
‘Ryle’s Three Accounts of Thinking’ (Lyons 1980a). Similar to Sibley, Lyons also
recognizes three stages in Ryle’s development of the notion of thinking: (1) a mongrel-
categorical account of thinking; (2) a polymorphous account; and (3) an adverbial one.
Both Sibley and Lyons argue that at the time of The Concept of Mind Ryle did not yet hold
an adverbial account of thinking.
As has been shown in Chapter 3, however, Ryle already held an adverbial account
of thinking in The Concept of Mind (1949a). What he did in the later papers was only
sharpening and strengthening his position on thinking, without radically changing his mind.
Although he puts it rather negatively, Gareth B. Matthews seems correct, I think, when he
argues that the book makes clear that ‘alas, he [Ryle] developed very little new to say on
the subject’ (Matthews 1981, 443). In 1949 when Ryle described thinking as ‘mongrel-
categorical’ his description included mention of an occurrence or doing and of a
disposition, i.e. a frame of mind whereby one is disposed to purposefully, methodologically,
attentively, etc. do what it is that one is doing in that frame of mind. Except for the
problematic concept of ‘frame of mind’ which Ryle stopped using shortly after 1949,
Ryle’s position does not seem to have radically changed between The Concept of Mind and
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his last writings on thinking. Problems concerning Ryle’s use of ‘frame of mind’ were put
forward by his reviewers. According to MacDonald (1951), it suggested something internal
to the mind, which was exactly what Ryle wished to avoid. Ryle may have toned down (or
perhaps it is better to say ‘reformulated’) his earlier dispositional account because of these
unsolvable problems with ‘frame of mind’ or, as Lyons suggests, because the propositional
account (partly due to the notion of ‘frame of mind’) would not have enabled him to
succeed in his later project of accounting for original or creative thinking. Although
admittedly more prominent in his later writings on thinking, the adverbial element seems to
me to have been present already in 1949.
In On Thinking Ryle introduces several concepts and connects them to the notion
of thinking, thereby making an attempt to pinpoint more exactly what this ‘thinking’
amounts to. The most important concepts and distinctions which Ryle introduces for this
purpose are ‘abstract verb’, ‘polymorphous’, ‘higher-level description’, ‘parasitic action’
versus ‘host action’, ‘thin description’ versus ‘thick description’, ‘pathfinding’ (‘trying’,
‘delving’) versus ‘path-following’ (‘borrowing’), ‘imagination’, ‘improvisation’, ‘self-
teaching’, and ‘lower-order act’ (or ‘infra-act’) versus ‘higher-order purpose’ (or ‘supra-
policy’). We shall see that the notions of ‘abstract’, ‘higher-level’, ‘parasitic’, ‘thick
description’, higher-order purpose’ and ‘supra-policy’ are all used with the same purpose
and are more or less identical. Basically, they are all used to point at one and the same
distinction; the only difference lies in the manner in which this distinction is presented to
us. Using the ‘higher-order’ concepts (as we may call them) Ryle tries to show – more
explicitly and also more accurately than in The Concept of Mind – that a description of the
thinking of Le Penseur is not a description of complex processes, but rather a complex (or
higher-order) description of processes. This enables him to explicitly reject both dualism
and behaviourism, carefully steering between these views which both – mistakenly in
Ryle’s view – take for granted that all descriptions are treated as if they were names and
directly refer to processes or things, rather than that some descriptions do not function as
names at all, but are higher-order descriptions.
In what follows I shall discuss Ryle’s position and use of concepts in more detail.
It is interesting to see how he tries to avoid the main pitfalls of The Concept of Mind, e.g.
the suggestion of behaviourism. I shall pay attention to the strong as well as the weak
points of his treatment of the notion of thinking, mainly by reference to how it was received
by his contemporaries.
The Broader Notion of Thinking and the Problems with the Thinking of
‘Le Penseur’
To start with, it is important to look at Ryle’s ideas on the general notion of thinking, not
just because it is interesting in its own right, but also because it helps to show why Ryle had
difficulties with the notion of thinking of Le Penseur: prima facie it is hard to explain how
this type of thinking fits the criteria Ryle formulated for thinking in general. A more
detailed explanation of the nature of thinking in general provides clues for solving
problems with respect to the more restricted notion of the thinking of Le Penseur.
Moreover, in ‘Thinking and Reflecting’ (Ryle 1966-1967) Ryle intends to show that the
thinking of the tennis-player or the person who carefully drives his car is the basic notion,
the thinking of le Penseur being secondary. Therefore, this narrow notion of thinking needs
to be explained via the more general, more basic, notion of thinking.
A difficult question is what thinking (in general) is. An answer that Ryle quickly
dismisses in ‘Thinking thoughts and having concepts’ (1962c) is ‘having-concepts-in-
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mind’. Even if there were incidents of ‘having-concepts-in-mind’ – but Ryle claims that
there are not – simply put together they would still not amount to thinking. His concept of
thinking amounts to acquiring concepts; he focuses on the notion of thinking as travelling,
rather than focusing on thinking in the sense of the result.
In his later writings Ryle keeps paying attention to two of the basic ideas of The
Concept of Mind: firstly, that the existence of a particular homogeneous X-ing is not
necessary in order for a person to be thinking; secondly, that the concept of thinking is
adverbial rather than substantial. Our inability to grasp the second often makes us reject the
first. In ‘Adverbial Verbs and Verbs of Thinking’ (1979a) Ryle claims, as he already did in
The Concept of Mind with respect to the broader notion of thinking, that there is not one
homogeneous X-ing that necessarily exists for a person in order to reflect, meditate or
ponder. And in ‘Thinking Thoughts and Having Concepts’ (1962c) he argues that to point
at what the different kinds of thinking have in common ‘is not to point to a separately
recollectable experience or a separately performable act’ (Ryle 1962c, 448-449). In
‘Thinking and reflecting’ (1966-67) he provides one of the most important reasons why we
often believe there to be such an X-ing after all. We often assume that all active, tensed
verbs are verbs of performing an action. The fact that we often treat ‘think’ in this manner
explains our search for an homogeneous X-ing. However, ‘think’ should not be treated as a
verb of doing any more than ‘perish’, ‘inherit’, ‘sleep’, ‘know’ and ‘forget’. Thinking is not
an autonomous action and the verb ‘to think’ needs a proper verb to qualify, which is why it
should be treated as an adverbial rather than an active verb, analogue to the verb ‘to hurry’.
(…) to obey or disobey the command to hurry, I must do some autonomous X, like eating or
humming, etc., for there to be a hurried or an unhurried X-ing that tallies with or flouts the
understood command (…). Trying, scamping, succeeding and failing are, in generically similar
ways, not autonomous activities. There must be an X-ing, if there is to be successful,
unsuccessful, difficult or easy, industrious or scamped X-ing. (Ryle 1966-1967, 467)
Just as driving carefully is not performing two actions, as driving while singing a song is,
neither is X-ing hurriedly. ‘To think’ is also to be classified as an adverbial verb, not being
an autonomous action, ‘nor a concurrent procession of autonomous anythings’ (Ryle 1966-
1967, 469). No one homogeneous X-ing needs to be going on for a person to be thinking. In
‘Thinking and Language’ (1951a) this view on thinking is used to explain why our
reportings of our thinkings are graphic – for instance ‘go round in circles’, ‘grasp’ – as we
do not seem to be able to find ungraphical, literal idioms. Literal, concrete idioms cannot be
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used precisely because there is no one homogeneous X-ing underlying all thinkings.
At this stage it is important to pay attention to Ryle’s use of the notions of
‘autonomous’ and ‘homogeneous’. Sometimes it seems as if Ryle is using them
interchangeably, when he claims that thinking is not an autonomous doing and is not, or
does not require, an homogeneous X-ing. He uses his notion of thinking as non-autonomous
and non-homogeneous with the purpose of showing that thinking is a heterogeneous higher-
order concept. Although closely related, there is a difference between Ryle’s use of these
two concepts. When he claims that thinking is not an autonomous doing he means to show
that, as in the case of ‘hurrying’, we are in need of another action, of a lower level, which is
autonomous. In order to be able to hurry at all, I must do some autonomous X-ing.
Similarly, in order to think at all, I must do some autonomous X-ing. At the end of the chain
(from higher-level to lower-level) there must always be at least one autonomous X-ing.
Ryle’s thought that thinking is non-homogeneous refers to the idea that there is not one
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Cf. Ryle 1958 (pp. 399-400).
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specific autonomous doing which is necessarily at the end of the chain in the case of
thinking. Many different types of autonomous actions could do, for example one can be
pronouncing syllables while thinking or moving chess pieces while one is thinking, which
is why he calls thinking ‘heterogeneous’. So, because thinking is not itself an autonomous
action and there are many possible autonomous actions at the bottom, the concept of
thinking is heterogeneous rather than homogeneous (‘smoking’ would be an example of a
homogeneous verb because there is only one autonomous action at the bottom of the chain,
namely smoking).
Introducing the terminology of ‘parasites’ and ‘hosts’, and ‘thickly’ and ‘thinly’
described actions in ‘Thought and Soliloquy’ (1979b) and ‘Thinking and Reflecting’ (1966-
67), Ryle makes an attempt to sharpen his account of the higher-order character of thinking.
If we take the example of someone practising jumping or parodying jumping, the thin
description entails his ‘bare’ doings, whereas the thick description also includes his
intentions. The thin description of bare jump-doings enters into each of the thick
descriptions (e.g. practising jumping and parodying jumping) without exhausting them.
Moreover, the thick descriptions stand to the thin ones as parasites stand to hosts. We have
to know what jumping is before we can grasp the idea of someone practising or parodying
jumping. Yet, without the thick description which includes the intentions, the thin
descriptions alone do not amount to thinking. We may add further descriptions, further
layers; take for example a boy who is rather clumsy in winking: the thick description of
what a boy is doing who is parodying the one who is winking in a clumsy way, adds
another layer. One more layer is added when the boy is described as practising parodying
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the other boy.
The thinnest description of what the rehearsing parodist is doing is, roughly, the same as for the
involuntary eyelid-twitch; but its thick description is a many-layered sandwich, of which only
the bottom slice is catered for by that thinnest description. Taking the word ‘only’ in one way, it
is true enough that the rehearsing parodist is, at this moment, only contracting his right eyelids.
Taken in another way, this is quite false; for the account of what he is trying to effect by his
eyelid-contraction, i.e. the specification of its success-conditions, requires every one of the
successively subordinate ‘try’ clauses (…). (Ryle 1968a, 482-83)
‘Practising’ and ‘preparing’ form a category of thinking with problems of its own, since
practising an action, e.g. a chess-move, is not yet performing the action itself. The question
rises what someone who is practising or preparing an action is doing. Again, it is in the
separation of parasite-actions from host-actions that Ryle expects to find the defining
characteristics of practising something, e.g. boxing, or preparing something, e.g. an oration.
It is the very fact that the solitary shadow-boxer is not now boxing against an opponent and yet is
purposefully and self-coachingly doing something that forces us to find a name and a home for
the something that he is now engaged in, and for what the composing or the rehearsing orator,
musician or conjuror is now engaged in, and for what the undecided chess-player is now engaged
in while tentatively making dummy-moves with his queen. All of them are meditating –
meditating actions which they are not yet performing, and which, when they are being
79
In the paper ‘Courses of Action or the Uncatchableness of Mental Acts’ (Ryle 2000), Ryle tries to explain the
nature of our ponderings by introducing the concepts ‘infra-act’ and ‘higher-order purpose’, which function in the
same way as ‘thin description’ and ‘thick description’. Infra-acts can be regarded as actions, whereas higher order
purposes cannot. ‘Exploring is conducting ten thousand variegated infra-acts with one governing and complex
supra-policy or Higher Order purpose.’ (Ryle 2000, 336) These infra-acts could all on their own have been
prosecuted by persons with other higher order purposes, or by persons without any higher order purpose.
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performed, will not themselves be bits of meditating, that is they will not themselves be parasite-
actions but host-actions. (Ryle 1979b, 38)
But what is this ‘something’ we are hoping to find a name for? What actions are the
shadow-boxer and the rehearsing orator performing which can function as the hosts on
which their ‘shadow’-actions are parasitic? Ryle’s explanation is that the host-actions are
the ones they are not yet performing (fighting a boxing match or giving an oration) and the
parasite-actions are the ones they perform in order to perform their host-actions well, e.g.
making dummy-moves. The success of their parasite-actions, which are of a higher order
than their host actions, can solely be measured by the success of the host-actions.
Thus, according to Ryle, mental verbs are adverbial and stand, as it were, as
parasites to hosts in the way in which ‘to practice jumping’ stands to ‘jumping’. But what
consequences does this have for the thinking of Le Penseur? To which thin description does
the thick description of the thinking of Le Penseur stand?
The Thinking of ‘Le Penseur’

We have distinguished two different notions of thinking: a more general notion and the
thinking of Le Penseur. But in what sense precisely do they differ? Ryle argues against the
idea that these types of thinking differ merely in complexity. In the case of the tennis-player
who is trying to win the game, the tennis-player is concerned with his play, but not with his
thinking how to play. He may blame himself for playing carelessly, but not for ‘thinking
carelessly how to play’ (Ryle 1962a, 428). In contrast, the more specific notion of thinking
as reflecting is thinking in which the thinker is concerned to think properly. And this
thinker’s findings are ‘disengaged from any particular urgencies’ (Ryle 1962a, 429) What
he discovers is neutral between the different practical purposes his discoveries may (later)
appear to have – in a way he is exploring for its own sake. And while the tennis-player is
more successful upon being more responsive to what happened outside him, Le Penseur’s
concentration reveals itself in not paying attention to the outside world.
Both are absorbed, but the tennis-player’s absorption is in his and his opponent’s momentary
playing, while le Penseur’s absorption is in something detached from the rock-squatting that he
is momentarily doing, and the rain-drops that are momentarily wetting him. His quick and
appropriate responses to what occurs around him on the tennis-court show that the player is
concentrating. His non-responses to what occurs around him show, or help to show, that le
Penseur is concentrating. (Ryle 1966-67, 466)
Whereas some of the actions of the tennis-player cannot be done without concentrating, it
seems that le Penseur is not doing anything except tackling his problem. And he is
detached from the other things he may be doing, such as breathing or scratching his head.
Ryle labels this disengaged or detached thinking ‘reflecting’. Le Penseur is – unlike the
tennis-player – completely, or at least nearly completely detached from external
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circumstances.
What is important according to Ryle is not to characterize someone who is merely
composing a speech or translating a passage as Le Penseur. This Thinker with capital ‘T’
should not just be thinking in the sense of trying to decide only what to say and how to say
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Ryle does not wish to go so far as to consider any dependence on external circumstances as a disqualification of
thinking as the thinking of le Penseur. Someone who is drawing dots and lines on paper depends on external
circumstances for his possession of pen and paper as well. However, external circumstances do not force this
person into drawing specific dots and lines rather than others.
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it but he should utmost and for all be trying to make up his mind what to think. His primary
task is not rhetorical, although it is not totally devoid of rhetorics. Ryle presents ‘trying to
decide what to think’ as a difference between Le Penseur (that is, an intellectual explorer,
for instance, Euclid, Sherlock Holmes, Gibbon and Kant) and the composing orator. The
first is working on a higher or deeper level and if successful ‘will have found something
that, thenceforward, they and their hearers or readers will know, which they did not know
before, but needed to know.’ (Ryle 1979b, 46)
Connected with this are Ryle’s views on what the thinking of Le Penseur has to do
with imagination and improvisation. Ryle argues against the idea that a person’s mind is
divisible into faculties, the intellect being one such department and the imagination another.
He thinks that imagining is neither an activity to be contrasted with thinking, nor a species
of thinking. It is rather the innovative, risk-taking aspect of thinking.81
An important feature of the thinking of Le Penseur vis-à-vis the thinking of a more
general kind is its explorative character. Ryle explains this in his remarks on teaching,
learning and improvising. A pupil, for instance, qualifies as thinking if he makes his own
applications and misapplications of the lessons of his teacher in new tasks. ‘Thinking is
trying to better one’s instructions; it is trying out promising tracks which will exist, if they
ever do exist, only after one has stumbled exploringly over ground where they are not.’
(Ryle 1972a, 78) A thinking pupil is ‘experimentally playing himself with might-be cues,
clues, reminders, snubs, exercises, spurs, and the like, of types which are sometimes or
often employed experimentally by teachers who are teaching what they do know.’ (Ryle
1972a, 67) So, the difference between teaching and thinking is that the teacher often knows
what he tries to teach his pupil, whereas Le Penseur is thinking just because he does not
know what he wants to know. Sometimes, however, from earlier experiences he does have
an idea about which directions are more promising, what makes his attempt not just a
matter of guesswork. He poses his questions experimentally, in order to find out whether
they are the right questions to pose, or, in other words, whether they will be heuristically
rewarding. The thinking of Le Penseur involves finding out by trial and error which
questions are the best ones to ask. What Le Penseur is trying to do in saying things to
himself is trying, by success/failure tests, to find out whether or not the things that he is
saying would or would not be a ‘guiding track’ (Ryle 1968a, 494). His thinking is a trying-
out: ‘when something is obvious no thinking, no task is required. But thinking is required
when things are not obvious.’ (Ryle 1964, 148)
Improvisation is essential to Le Penseur’s thinking. Ryle wants to reject our
everyday ‘step-after-step’ picture of thinking which does not leave room for improvisation
in thinking. Sometimes it is suggested that thinking is a neat step-by-step procedure like the
presentation of a finished argument. However, we have to keep in mind that ‘what passes
through the barrister’s mind when thinking out his argument is nothing like the argument he
presents to the court’ (Ryle 1964, 163); ‘it is a baseless dream that our ponderings can be
described in the idioms used in describing the results of our thinkings’ (Ryle 1964, 160).
81
Describing both an imaginative biographer and an unimaginative one, he argues that not all thinking deserves
the label ‘imaginative’. The unimaginative biographer and the imaginative one properly employ certain concepts
alike, for instance ‘heavy rain’. However, the unimaginative biographer starts and ends with these concepts
whereas the imaginative one proceeds to a higher level and actually starts to work with them; he, for example,
starts to think, after finding records of heavy rain, about the depth of the mud and the belatedness of the mules.
(Ryle 1979c, 59).
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Thin and Thick Descriptions, Hosts and Parasites: Applied to the Thinking of Le Penseur
We have seen that thinking in a more general sense can be explained in terms of thin and
thick descriptions and in terms of hosts and parasites. What about the more restricted notion
of the thinking of Le Penseur? What can be considered as a thin description of what Le
Penseur is doing? And is it possible to describe the activities of Le Penseur in terms of
hosts and parasites?
In ‘Thought and Soliloquy’ Ryle introduces ‘saying so-and-so’ as a possible host
on which the thinking of Le Penseur parasites. ‘Saying so-and-so’ can, just as jumping,
function as a host to parasites of different levels of sophistication. The description of a child
trying to echo ‘the mouse ran up the clock’ parasites on ‘the child uttered “the mouse ran up
the clock”’. At a higher level of sophistication the child for example wants to be original in
telling the story of the mouse and is disappointed upon finding out that his hearer heard it
before. The same utterances function as the host: ‘This crude ladder of sophistication-rungs
is a crude ladder of parasitic sayings that are all, in different ways, parasitic on the host
saying of the phonemes “the mouse ran up the clock”.’ (Ryle 1979b, 49)
‘Saying so-and-so’ is, according to Ryle, just one optional host on which the
thinking of Le Penseur parasites, but there are more. Not all thinking requires saying things
to oneself; no homogeneous X-ing, such as for example saying things to oneself, exists
which is the host on which ‘thinking’ parasites. Tackling philosophical problems usually
does require saying things to oneself, but the thinking of Le Penseur comprises more types
of thinking than merely this one. The thinking of Mozart, for example, is not parasitic on
Mozart saying things to oneself. But what is at least clear is that the question what Le
Penseur is doing is a question about the sophistication-level of the doing, for instance of the
saying, which he is engaged in.
Although, according to Ryle, no one specific autonomous X-ing exists for the
thinking of Le Penseur, purely as a matter of logic, we do seem to need a non-adverbial –
or at least partly non-adverbial – verb for the adverbs to attach to. And although adverbial
verbs have the characteristic that they may pyramid, in the sense that the one adverbial verb
can be parasitic on the other, the bottom one needs to be attached to a (partly) non-adverbial
verb. For example:
If I am eating my breakfast, you may tell me to hurry over my breakfast. If I obey you, I do so
not by breakfasting, since I am doing that already, but by accelerating the rate of my
breakfasting. I am then obediently hurrying over my breakfast. If I resent your command but
dare not disobey it, then I am with reluctance obeying your command to hurry over my
breakfast. I am reluctantly obediently hurriedly breakfasting. I am not reluctantly breakfasting,
nor necessarily reluctantly hurrying over my breakfast; I am with reluctant obedience hurrying
over my breakfast, though I might have cheerfully hurried over it if you had ordered me not to do
so. And so on, in principle, indefinitely. (Ryle 1966-67, 473-74)
In this example the bottom adverbial verb is attached to the non-adverbial verb
‘breakfasting’. There is not one specific verb to which ‘hurrying’ is always attached; like
‘thinking’ the adverb ‘hurrying’ can be attached to many different non-adverbial verbs, as
long as it is always connected to one.
It is important to realise that the verb ‘to say’, contrary to what is commonly
thought, cannot function as the bottom-level-verb, that is the thinnest action-report, of the
thinking of Le Penseur. ‘To say’ is an active verb not used for the bottom-level; at a lower
level does something like ‘to voice syllables’ come. (see Ryle 1968a, 487) Le Penseur’s
saying things to himself (if he is) is therefore not the thinnest action-report of his doings,
which would be something like ‘murmuring syllables under his breath’ (Ryle 1968a, 487).
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Thus, the conclusion is that the thinking of Le Penseur, like all adverbial verbs, does need a
non-adverbial verb. However, which verb it is that takes this place depends on the situation;
there is no such thing as one homogeneous non-adverbial verb which is always attached to
the thinking of Le Penseur and without which the person in question is not thinking in the
sense Le Penseur is thinking. In some, but not other, circumstances the non-adverbial verb
is something like ‘murmuring syllables under his breath’. We have to keep in mind though
that a proper characterization of Le Penseur mentions what he was trying to achieve while
murmuring those syllables, rather than to describe this murmuring itself.
The (possible) sayings of Le Penseur are propositions with a heuristic point, rather
than remarks with a conversational point – they are steps for him to get somewhere but they
do not function as necessary steps for possible hearers. They are part of what Ryle calls
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‘pathfinding’ (Ryle 1972b, 92), rather than of the process of path-following. ‘Thinking,
then, can be saying-things-tentatively-to-oneself with the specific heuristic intention of
trying, by saying them, to open one’s own eyes, to consolidate one’s own grasp, or to get
oneself out of a rut (…)’ (Ryle 1972b, 92). Le Penseur is not just saying things to himself,
but he is saying things to himself ‘with a special governing purpose, with a specially
directed vigilance, resolution, interest, readiness for failure, and so on’ (Ryle 1972b, 92).
Thus, thinking is not just saying things to oneself, nor is it saying things to oneself and
doing something else as well. It is saying things to oneself with an experimental intention,
‘experimentally’ not adding an extra action but rather the ‘specific-intention-to-find-out-
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what-happens-when-the-tap-is-turned’ (Ryle 1972b, 92). This is also the reason why in
‘Thinking and Language’ – a paper which he presented in 1951 at the symposium
‘Thinking and Language’ of the Aristotelian Society – Ryle rejects the idea that thinking is
to be equated with using ordinary language; it is rather using ordinary language ‘with a
special governing purpose’.
What a thinker is doing with (or about or to) the expressions that occur makes all the difference;
and there are scores of widely different things that he may be doing with (or about or to) them.
Until we have heard his economic story, his technical story, his tactical story, or his artistic story,
we do not know what he was trying to do or what he accomplished or failed to accomplish. And
if we have not got its plot, we have not got any part of the story but only a welter of, so far,
pointless details. A pure chronicle of the occurrence of expressions (or of images, hummed
notes, glimpses or fingerings of plasticine) would not yet be even the beginning of a history of
the thinker’s pondering.84 (Ryle 1951a, 265)
We do not want a detailed description of our simplest utterances, which would amount to
sequences of letters or sounds; what we need is ‘idioms which, while neutral between the
disparate details of the activities, are appropriate to the similarities and differences between
82
This distinction was already introduced in The Concept of Mind (1949a) where it was described as the difference
between path-making and path-using (Ryle 1949a, 273).
83
The fact that thinking in general requires saying things to oneself does not mean that what is being done is
thinking in these words and phrases. In fact, this claim would be absurd. How could someone who is preparing a
speech possibly have thought in the phrases and sentences that finally constitute his speech while still composing
his speech? Similarly, it does not make sense to say that the translator who is trying to render into German a
passage from Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire is thinking in Gibbonian English or would-be
Gibbonian German words, phrases and sentences. (Ryle 1979b, 41-42) Cf. Ryle 1951a.
84
Ryle distinguishes between three different accounts of thinking, as an alternative to the three levels of thinking
put forward by A. C. Lloyd, who would later become Professor of Philosophy at the University of Liverpool and
was a scholar in late ancient philosophy, at the symposium ‘Thinking and Language’ (1951a). The first level is the
chronicles account, that is, an account of the things that went on (without anything like a plot); secondly, there is
the historian’s account, which is an account of the plot, often by using graphic idioms, neglecting most of what
happened; thirdly, the scorer’s account, which is the outcome or results of the thinkings.
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the policies, techniques, and clumsiness of the agents’ (Ryle 1951a, 267) Accordingly, in
1958 Ryle describes the reporting of one’s thoughts as not being a matter of merely
chronicling internal, simple, items; but rather as reporting the complex items such as a
man’s thought of these roses as his wife’s favourite flowers, or of the Oxford rowing crew
as insufficient to beat Cambridge. But what is this ‘as’?
To describe someone as thinking of something as so and so is to say of him, at least inter alia,
that it would be natural or easy for him to follow up this thought in some particular direction.
(…) A person who thinks of something is, ipso facto, primed to think and do some particular
further things; and this particular possible future that his thinking paves the way for needs to be
mentioned in the description of the particular content of that thinking. (…) Roughly, a thought
comprises what it is incipiently, namely what it is the natural vanguard of. Its burthen embodies
its natural or easy sequel. (Ryle 1958, 403)
One of the ways to achieve this preferred way of talking about thinking is using non-literal,
metaphorical expressions. Thus, a description of our thoughts cannot be done merely in
bottom-level sequences but needs higher order concepts too. ‘What qualifies an undertaking
as one of pondering or, not very differently, as one of discussing, is not any catalogue of
simple qualities and simple relations, whether rude or refined, but some nexus of statable
because statement-shaped conditions.’ (Ryle 1972b, 92-93)
Steering Between Dualism and Behaviourism

The misleading interpretation of The Concept of Mind as a behaviouristic work led Ryle to
be more explicit about his rejection of both Cartesian dualism and behaviourism, especially
since by now he fully realized that both make the same type of mistake. Dualists duplicate
whereas behaviourists reduce, but – as Ryle now recognized – they do so on similar
grounds. They both assume that mental verbs (for instance, calculating, deliberating, etc.)
behave similarly to, for instance, verbs like eating and typing. Both feel the need to create
extra events; the dualists create events which exist in a second, separate ghostly world,
whereas the behaviourists fully reduce the mental verbs to descriptions of events in the
material world. Ryle considers both to be mistaken and, as must be clear by now from the
discussions of his notion of thinking above, on several occasions he tries to make this point:
‘It is a gross error in the one direction to say that Le Penseur is, for instance just saying
things. It is a gross error in the other direction to say that since he is not just saying things,
he is therefore doing something else as well’. (Ryle 1979b, 49 and Ryle 1972b) This is a
useful qualification of Ryle’s statement in The Concept of Mind that our descriptions of
intelligent behaviour, such as driving carefully, describe one action; not two, which still
leaves room for behaviourism and sometimes perhaps even suggests it.
If we realize that mental verbs are of a different, more abstract level than eating
and typing, there is no need for committing ourselves to either reduction or duplication.
And this lesson is precisely what Ryle wants to inculcate in his later writings on thinking.
In ‘Thinking and Saying’ (Ryle 1972b) Ryle rejects one central point both reductionists and
duplicationists agree upon, that is, that the actions of a mimic can only differ from the
actions of his victim by the former’s performance of extra actions which the victim did not
perform. The fact that no such actions are witnessed leads the reductionist to ignore the
different intentions and skills of the mimic, whereas it leads the duplicationist to believe
that these differences must consist in extra, unobservable actions. One of the things Ryle
tries to show is that actions often are not, in the strict sense, observable. For instance, a
referee cannot strictly see that the player has scored a goal, since scoring a goal is not just
kicking the ball between two posts. Scoring is kicking a ball between two posts when
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several complex conditions or rules are satisfied. Neither is scoring kicking the ball
between two posts and performing an additional action. It is rather performing one action
which is of a higher order than merely kicking a ball between two posts. What is higher
order about it is that the ball is kicked between the two posts satisfying complex conditions
and rules.
Similarly, a penny is neither merely a metal disc, nor is it two articles – a metal
article and a non-metallic article. It is a disc that is qualified for some quite specific sorts of
transactions. We need higher order concepts to describe these qualifications: ‘the
formulation of these qualifications would require not just some simple auxiliary nouns,
simple adjectives, or simple verbs but a whole batch of syntactically variegated subordinate
clauses.’ (Ryle 1972b, 88)
In the same way as scoring is neither just kicking the ball between two posts nor
performing the kicking-action plus an additional action, and a penny is neither just a metal
disc nor a metal disc and some additional thing, so a word is neither just a noise, nor is it a
noise and something else as well.
The word is not a noise and something else as well; and it is not just a noise. It is a complexly
qualified noise, a noise endowed with a quite specific saying-power, endowed sometimes by
institutional regulations, generally by accumulating public custom, slightly rigorized by
pedagogic disciplines; and so on. (Ryle 1972b, 88)
Thus, Ryle is neither a dualist nor a behaviourist, but what we may term a ‘conceptual
pluralist’. Concepts are not to be treated in one single way, or even in two different ways,
but in many different ways all depending on context. Concepts do not link to or represent
our states of affairs in one or two uniform ways or on a limited amount of levels, but they
are of multiple representational kinds. The assumption of one or two different types of
concepts should be abandoned altogether.
Pitfalls in the Experimental Investigation of Thinking

For Ryle, this philosophical analysis of thinking implies a rejection of a scientific-
psychological investigation of it. In his paper ‘Thinking’ he argues explicitly that there is
no place for a scientific approach to or a scientific method in exploring the nature of
thinking. This brought him into conflict with Professor George Humphrey (1889-1966)
who at the time was director of the newly founded Oxford Institute of Experimental
Psychology, and had been working with Wilhelm Wundt in Leipzig. Let us briefly look at
this debate.
Ryle argues that ‘the experimental investigation of thinking had been, on the
whole, unproductive, because the researchers have had confused or erroneous notions of
what they were looking for.’ (Ryle 1953a, 300). These researchers looked in vain for things
such as ideas or images which philosophers had assumed in their theories. Philosophical
confusions had misled experimental researchers. According to Ryle, ‘there are no
ingredient activities common and peculiar to (…) thinking’ (Ryle 1953a, 296), and this can
only be showed by conceptual rather than experimental method.
Humphrey responded to Ryle’s points in the same issue of Acta Psychologica.
While agreeing with Ryle’s point of view that ‘many different activities are classed as
thinking’ (Humphrey 1953, 199), as well as with the idea that the experimental
investigation of thinking has been rather unproductive so far, Humphrey questions Ryle’s
conclusion that therefore there is no place for an experimental method in the research on
thinking. He argues that we need to do experiments since in this way we can prove the
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falsity of apparently obvious things, as has been frequently done in the past. While agreeing
with Ryle that ‘thinking (…) uses various techniques, and different operations are involved
in it’ (Humphrey 1953, 199), Humphrey wants to claim that ‘our purpose of scientific
investigation is exactly to discover whether they all involve common principles or not; that
is to say, to find theoretical rules by which the practice of thinking works’ (Humphrey
1953, 199).
Behind this difference of opinion lies a difference in their views on science and
philosophy. Ryle would reply that ‘to find theoretical rules by which the practice of
thinking works’ is impossible before philosophy first defines the concepts which are
relevant, for instance the concept of ‘thinking’. And this project of defining thinking
constitutes, according to Ryle, the main problem. Science will never be able to determine
by means of scientific research whether ‘thinking’ denotes in the way ‘Fido’ denotes Fido.
The (stock) use of concepts is the domain of philosophy and it partly sets the conditions for
scientific research, determining for example the specific category the instances of which are
considered to qualify as ‘thinking’.
Criticisms
Since Ryle’s later papers are neglected in the literature, I have chosen first to describe
rather than critically discuss his views. This neglect may be due to the fact that he
continued on the same tracks after The Concept of Mind. Although Ryle refined his
thoughts, made several important qualifications and later changed his focus to the thinking
of Le Penseur, his method remains largely the same. He continued to regard philosophical
problems as conceptual tangles which could only be dissolved by conceptual tools, and
started to repeat himself, inventing ever new examples to illustrate his views on philosophy.
But cognitive scientists and philosophers were interested in discussions on a different level;
they were interested in the contents of theories and ideas on thinking rather than in meta-
philosophical discussions.
The lack of attention for Ryle’s later writings may also have resulted from the
critical attitude towards post-war analytic philosophy in general. As Peter Hacker has
suggested, there were various objections to analytic philosophy, for example its neglect of
metaphysics, its defence of common sense and its commitment to the paradigm case
argument. Other objections against post-war connectivist analysis are:
first, that (…) the subject-matter of philosophy is ordinary language rather than the nature of
things; secondly, that it held that the problems of philosophy arise exclusively from ordinary
language or from the ordinary use of words; thirdly, that it invites investigations of language for
their own sake, investigations that belong more properly to linguistic theory than philosophy;
fourthly, that it encourages philosophical relativism (…), the view that (…) almost every
philosophy is really right, inasmuch as it brings out some kind of insight. (Hacker 1996, 232)
Critics of a Rylean type of philosophy objected to the view that ordinary language cannot
be improved upon and to the view that this ought to be the language in which science and
mathematics are to be conducted. They also protested against – what they considered to be
– a dogmatic defence of common sense against advanced science.
Ryle was frequently criticized by his reviewers on these accounts. Disagreement
with his meta-philosophical views seems to underlie at least some of their comments.
Sibley, for example, criticizes Ryle for not looking for any candidates of essential
ingredients of thinking in his later papers on thinking. (Sibley 1970, 82-3) But Ryle’s aim,
we may say, was not of such a nature – to look for essential features of thinking – but rather
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of a linguistic-conceptual kind: what we mean by thinking. His purpose is not ontological

but concerns the meaning, or use, of our words. And the way in which we use ‘thinking’ –
according to Ryle – does not require, or even suggest, even one essential ingredient of
thinking. Relevant for philosophical purposes is not whether or not thinking is something
but that ‘thinking’ has a meaning, that is, use. This is why Ryle persuades rather than
proves, and why he uses his everyday life examples rather than scientific theories, and why
he talks about concepts rather than brain processes.
Sibley and others also expressed criticisms similar to those that were given by the
reviewers of Dilemmas: ‘Unfortunately, the vagueness and variety of his locutions make it
impossible to say what exactly his view is, while providing some easily demolished straw
men.’ (Sibley 1970, 98) And in 1979, in his review of On Thinking Bernard Williams
claims that:
many of the arguments here fail, because they rest on no coherent conception of the relation
between mental phenomena and the language that describes them. (…) The mannerisms seem to
have provided a substitute for the theoretical backing which he [Ryle] was so reluctant to give
his arguments. (…) His (…) philosophy came increasingly to depend on an idiosyncratic
rhetoric. (Williams 1979, 6)
He holds that Ryle’s later papers are rather ‘mannered, empty and unconvincing’ (Ibid., 6),
also compared to his earlier papers.
Sibley draws attention to what is often considered to be a problem for Ryle:
the occurrence, and manner of occurrence, of my relevant and sequential x-ings seem to be the
outcome of my trying, controlling and guiding; and the continuance or dismissal of my x-ings is
the result of my assessings of what I call up. It therefore sounds decidedly odd to try to equate or
identify these tryings and controllings, which are responsible for and explanatory of the manner
of x-ing in certain circumstances, with the manner of x-ing in those circumstances. (Sibley 1970,
89)
Ryle’s reply would probably be that this is to mix up thinking in the sense of the result, i.e.
a thought, and thinking in the sense of a trying to achieve something, of ‘path-finding’. He
might also have wanted to argue that this problem only exists when one employs a causal-
mechanistic view on thinking. Since thinking is a higher order concept, the simple
terminology of cause and effect will not do.
Gareth Matthews, in his review of On Thinking, blames Ryle for not taking into
account recent views on thinking in philosophy and cognitive science:
perhaps the most dated feature of these discussions is their total innocence of the possibilities of
computational functionalism as a sophisticated philosophy of mind (…). And his only
consideration of mental representation, an exciting topic in very recent philosophy of
psychology, comes in his dismissive treatment of (alleged) introspectibles. (Matthews 1981, 444)
He was right that Ryle neglected these views when writing his later papers on thinking.
However, what Matthews did not know, and probably could not have known, when he
wrote his review in 1981 is that Ryle had written a letter to Daniel Dennett a few months
before his death on 22 February 1976, in which he did discuss Fodor, Dennett and mental
representationalism (Ryle 1976d).
This letter was part of the correspondence between Dennett and Ryle between 1968
and Ryle’s death in 1976, which mainly concerned personal and non-philosophical issues.
This last letter was an exception. Ryle comments on Dennett’s review of Fodor and
117
Dennett’s papers ‘Law of Effect’ and ‘Toward a Cognitive Theory of Consciousness’.

About the third he says that he hopes – but doubts – that ‘“inner life” for you [Dennett] just
equates with what is done by the adverbs “consciously”, “wittingly”, “guiltily” etc., & has
no special tie to what now and then goes on “in my head”.’ (Ryle 1976d) And Ryle’s
remarks on ‘Law of Effect’ express his appreciation for the fact that Dennett avoids both
reductionism and duplicationism. His comments on Dennett’s review of Fodor express
Ryle’s incomprehension of internal representations, or at least of their relevance to thinking
(in the sense of trying to get somewhere). Ryle critically wonders what these
representations would be representations of, for example when one tries to solve a puzzle,
as well as what ‘internal’ here means. Is it literally internal or merely metaphorically? If the
latter, it does not seem to add anything; if the former it seems to be ‘a bogus notion’ which
is simply postulated. (Ryle 1976d)
Not all scholars consider Ryle to be outdated and unfit to stand up to
computationalism, functionalism (or a combination). In a recent paper on Ryle’s Le
Penseur, Jeff Coulter, for example, defends the view that:
(…) in laying out many of the dimensions of the geography of these concepts, his [Ryle’s] work
can today still be appealed to profitably in resisting the temptations of computationalist and
functionalist philosophies of mind. Far from elucidating the nature of the phenomena of thinking
and of thought, contemporary analogies with computing machinery only obscure from us the rich
multi-facetedness of these aspects of our lives which Ryle so powerfully illuminated. (Coulter
2003, 78)
According to Coulter – as opposed to someone like Matthews – Ryle does have a role to
play in philosophy of mind and cognitive science of the twenty-first century.
Concluding Remarks
Because the theoretical claims which Ryle had presented in his earlier papers could not
fully carry the weight of the method of The Concept of Mind (1949a), in the late 1950s and
early 60s Ryle wrote additions to his ‘old’ theoretical account of how to do philosophy.
Ryle also wrote Dilemmas (1954a) in which he attempted to show how we are prone to be
misled by ‘the delusions’ of language. He continued to reject the idea of a denotational
theory of meaning, preferring a heterogeneity of use, and still focused on informal logic and
the idea that philosophical problems are of a different nature than scientific ones and cannot
be solved piecemeal. Newly introduced elements in Ryle’s theoretical papers were his
instructions for interpreting ‘the ordinary use of the expression x’, namely that ‘use’ should
be interpreted in a logical rather than in a philological sense and that ‘the ordinary use of an
expression’ is not the same thing as ‘the use of ordinary expressions’. Furthermore, Ryle
found the need to distinguish between language and speech and between words and
sentences. Language is what we say things in – e.g. in French or English – whereas speech
is used to indicate what we say in them. Speech involves language but cannot be reduced to
it. And words are the atoms of a language whereas sentences are the units of speech. He
warned us to be careful not to confuse speech with language, and not to treat words and
sentences in the same way, since we would not want to end up with a philosophy that is
mere philology, any more than that we want to turn philosophy into an enterprise of
discovering platonic entities. Also new – in terminology though not in spirit – was Ryle’s
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description of philosophy as an interlevel-activity. This is exactly what constitutes the

difference between philosophy and the sciences.
We have seen that Ryle’s later writings on thinking deal primarily with what it
precisely means to say that our descriptions of thinking are higher-level descriptions of
processes. If the thinking Le Penseur is doing is (merely) the way in which processes are
managed, then what kind of processes are we talking about? His answer was that although
no one specific autonomous X-ing exists for the thinking of Le Penseur, purely as a matter
of logic, we do seem to need a non-adverbial – or at least partly non-adverbial – verb for
the adverbs to attach to. I showed that Ryle mainly sharpened and strengthened his earlier
position from 1949, without radically changing it. By using what I have called ‘higher-
order’ concepts Ryle tried to show that a description of the thinking of Le Penseur is not a
description of complex processes, but rather a complex (or higher-order) description of
processes, which enabled him to reject both dualism and behaviourism, which both
(mistakenly) take for granted that all descriptions are treated as if they were names and
directly refer to processes or things. He showed us that a description of our thoughts could
not be done merely in bottom-level sequences but needed higher-order concepts too; these
higher-order concepts, however, do not imply the existence of an extra category of being.
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120
Ryle and Collingwood: Their Correspondence and its Philosophical Context
Chapter 5
Ryle and Collingwood: Their

Correspondence and its
Philosophical Context
In this chapter the only recently published and hardly studied correspondence between
Gilbert Ryle and R. G. Collingwood (1889-1943) will be discussed and placed in its
historical and philosophical context.85 Ryle and Collingwood are not commonly associated
with each other. From Ryle’s autobiographical essay (1970) we know that he saw
Collingwood as an exact personification of pre-war Oxford: stuffy, hermetically closed off
and philosophically dull. And, as did most of his analytically minded colleagues in
philosophy, Ryle regarded Collingwood’s philosophy to be a relic of past metaphysical
theory. 86 Collingwood, in turn, never paid any particular attention to Ryle’s philosophical
writings, except on one occasion in 1935 when Ryle and Collingwood discussed their
philosophical views with one another.87 At the time, Ryle was a lecturer at Christ Church
College in Oxford and was already regarded as a promising philosopher; Collingwood was
University lecturer in Philosophy and Roman History and became Waynflete Professor of
Metaphysical Philosophy in 1935, probably just after the correspondence. The tone in their
brief correspondence was often biting and chilly, and the two philosophers seemed to
disagree about almost everything.
On the other hand, a few striking similarities between Ryle and Collingwood have
been brought to our attention by Collingwood scholars such as Alan Donagan, David
Boucher, W. J. van der Dussen and Giuseppina D’Oro. These philosophers pointed at
similarities between Ryle and Collingwood with respect to their rejection of Cartesian
dualism and their idea of intelligence as ‘knowing how’. As Donagan writes:
All theories of the relation between body and mind betray a philosophical misconception. Body
and mind are not two related substances: they are man as investigated in two different ways,
physiologically and historically. There is no conflict between physiology and history. (…) Here
Collingwood strikingly anticipated Gilbert Ryle’s view as expressed in The Concept of Mind
(New York, 1950). (Donagan 1967, 143)
Boucher notices the following resemblance between the two philosophers:
85
An earlier version of this chapter was published in The British Journal for the History of Philosophy (Vrijen
2006).
86
Collingwood’s philosophical writings are now more appreciated than they were during his lifetime. This is
probably due to a radical shift in the interpretation of his philosophical work. Generally, modern interpreters
regard Collingwood’s ideas as, broadly speaking, analytical instead of embracing the traditional view of
Collingwood as a Hegelian Idealist.
87
I studied the manuscript of the Ryle-Collingwood Correspondence, which is kept at the Bodleian Library in
Oxford. At the time I wrote this chapter the correspondence was still unpublished, but it has recently been
published as part of a new edition of Collingwood’s An Essay on Philosophical Method (Oxford, 2005) by two
Collingwood scholars, James Connelly and Giuseppina D’Oro. I shall give reference to the original manuscript as
well as to this new edition.
121
Ryle like Collingwood was avowedly anti-Cartesian. (…) In The New Leviathan, like Ryle,
Collingwood traces the problem back to Descartes. Collingwood argues that the mind does not
inhabit a body as a person inhabits a house. (Boucher 1995, 9) 88
Ryle was not the only philosopher to whom Collingwood was compared. In an attempt to
represent Collingwood’s philosophical ideas as more akin to modern analytic approaches
rather than metaphysical in a Hegelian sense, Collingwood’s name has also been bracketed
with that of philosophers such as Wittgenstein and Kuhn. As Van der Dussen writes:
The relevance of Collingwood’s views is increased, moreover, by the fact that it is realized more
and more that many of them are remarkable anticipations of influential modern theories.
Donagan and Hayden White, for instance, have pointed out similarities between the views of
Collingwood and Wittgenstein, Mink and Toulmin have noted those between the theory of
“absolute presuppositions” and Kuhn’s theory of “paradigms”, while Mink has also referred to
Collingwood’s affinities with pragmatism and existentialism. I would add to this list the
similarity of Collingwood’s view of science as “problem-solving” (using the “logic of question
and answer”) to Popper’s theory of science, as well as the use by both of an idea of “situational
analysis” in historical explanation. These modern interpretations of Collingwood differ sharply
from the traditional ones, which consider him primarily an idealist and a follower of Hegel or
Croce. (Van der Dussen 1981, 2-3)
In this chapter I shall argue that whereas remarks of this sort on the similarities between
Ryle and Collingwood are useful in developing a more analytic interpretation of
Collingwood, they nonetheless run the risk of seriously misrepresenting the philosophical
relation between the two men. The similarities which Collingwood scholars have detected
sometimes even suggest that the two philosophers were striving for the same philosophical
cause. But the Collingwood commentators, whose main aim was to acquire a better
understanding of Collingwood’s position, have systematically neglected Ryle’s point of
view. I shall maintain that there are indeed similarities between Ryle and Collingwood, but
that qualifications need to be made, primarily with respect to Ryle’s views. The aim of this
chapter is twofold: to show that, on the one hand, it is not correct to maintain the view that
Collingwood’s and Ryle’s positions were polar opposites, and, on the other, equally
mistaken to argue that the two philosophers were striving for the same cause. Instead I shall
develop a reading which recognizes convergence as well as divergence.
In the first part of this chapter I shall discuss the correspondence between Ryle and
Collingwood, which took place in 1935 and consists of three comprehensive letters with a
total of over forty pages. My main aim is to analyse the disagreements between Ryle and
Collingwood, showing that some of them were merely a question of definition, while others
were based on more fundamental issues, such as their differences in method and their views
on philosophy in general. My discussion will show that their philosophical positions are not
so far apart as they might seem on a first, one-dimensional, reading of the Correspondence
88
Cf. Donagan 1962, D’Oro 2003 and Van der Dussen 1981. With respect to Collingwood’s rejection of Cartesian
dualism and his claim that body and mind are only indirectly related, Donagan argues that ‘Ryle, who in The
Concept of Mind approached the mind-body problem in much the same way, described Collingwood’s pioneer
work very justly in his Inaugural Lecture.’ (Donagan 1962, 292) D’Oro argues that ‘the reason why Collingwood’s
contribution to the philosophy of mind has been neglected is due to the fact that his philosophy of mind is widely,
even if mistakenly, regarded as the target of Ryle’s attacks on the dogma of the ghost in the machine’. She tries to
undermine the assumption that Collingwood is a twentieth century adherent of Cartesian dualism. Collingwood,
like Ryle, rejected Cartesian Dualism. (D’Oro 2003) Van der Dussen remarks with respect to Collingwood’s
review of Spearman’s The Nature of ‘Intelligence’ and the Principles of Cognition (London 1923) that ‘It is
further a striking anticipation of Ryle’s description of intelligence as “knowing how”, as developed in The
Concept of Mind.’ (Van der Dussen 1981, 367)
122
and that the context of the Correspondence must be taken into account in order to reach a
more accurate and comprehensive interpretation.
Until now only a few Collingwood scholars have touched upon it in discussing
Collingwood89, but they have focused on placing the Correspondence in the context of
Collingwood’s complete philosophical oeuvre. Therefore, they (unfortunately but
understandably) neglected Ryle’s point of view. Giuseppina D’Oro gives a more
comprehensive treatment of the Correspondence90, but she too does not say much about
Ryle. Since the Correspondence has only recently been published, it is not surprising that it
has not yet attracted attention from Ryle scholars.
In the second part of this chapter, I shall discuss some similarities between Ryle
and Collingwood, as mentioned by Donagan, Boucher and Van der Dussen. They describe
Collingwood as an anticipator of Ryle with respect to the rejection of Cartesian dualism and
the idea of intelligence as ‘knowing how’. D’Oro thinks that both philosophers reject
Cartesian dualism, but claims that their positions are very different. She regards
Collingwood’s approach as a promising non-reductive one, whereas Ryle is depicted as a
logical behaviourist and semantic reductivist. I shall suggest that the remarks of these
Collingwood scholars should be qualified, thus offering, I hope, a more accurate and
complete interpretation of Ryle’s hitherto neglected point of view.
Part 1: The Ryle-Collingwood Correspondence:

Misinterpretation and Structural Disagreements
In their correspondence and in the papers that preceded it Ryle and Collingwood disagreed
on almost everything, and gave vivid expression to their disagreement, and sometimes
despair:
I shall find it hard to condense within reasonable limits my objections to this argument. (Ryle
1935a, 111)
I am sorry that I have not made it clear to you; the fact is that (perhaps unreasonably) I expected
the reader of ch. VI to remember ch. V (…). (Collingwood 1935a, letter 1, 5 = eds. Connelly and
D’Oro 2005, 259)
In the course of their correspondence, Ryle and Collingwood failed to convince each other
on any point whatsoever. Moreover, they did not even understand each other’s position.
And yet Ryle and Collingwood asked each other questions, begged for clarification, and
revealed their definitions. How can it be that all of this failed to contribute to a mutual
understanding of each other’s position?
My answer to this question is that their clarifications and quarrels did not touch the
essence of their fundamentally different views of philosophy. As we shall see, Ryle and
Collingwood discussed the various different kinds of propositions: universal, particular,
categorical and hypothetical propositions. They attacked each other’s definitions and
89
For example, Rubinoff 1970 (pp. 200-208). It is remarkable that no thorough analysis of Collingwood’s An
Essay on Philosophical Method (1933) was available until the appearance of Rex Martin’s paper, ‘Collingwood’s
Essay on Philosophical Method’ in 1974. Not even prominent interpreters of Collingwood’s writings such as Alan
Donagan, Louis O. Mink and Lionel Rubinoff had done more than to give a brief survey of An Essay on
Philosophical Method. See Rik Peters 1998 (p. 391).
90
Giuseppina D’Oro, ‘On Collingwood’s Rehabilitation of the Ontological Argument’, Idealistic Studies 30
(2000), and her chapter ‘Collingwood’s ‘rehabilitation’ of the ontological proof’, in D’Oro 2002.
123
quarrelled about the Ontological Argument, but at bottom they were – to use Wittgenstein’s
language – playing different games. The only way to mutual understanding would have
been an attempt to grasp the game the other one was playing. On a few occasions Ryle and
Collingwood tried to do this, but even then they only looked at some of the rules of the
other’s game, which they then rejected; they failed to look at the underlying structure.
Collingwood begged Ryle several times to stop judging him by the Rylean rules, which he
did not want to follow in the first place. Ryle, on the other hand, was unable to do so
because of Collingwood’s (in my view) idiosyncratic and sometimes obscure use of
language. Thus, Ryle had no other option than to judge Collingwood by his own
terminology.
First, I shall provide some background to the Correspondence. Second, the
definitions upon which Collingwood and Ryle based their arguments will be discussed,
focussing on types of propositions, the Ontological Argument and the idea that philosophy
is self-reflexive. Finally, I will try to evaluate Ryle’s and Collingwood’s arguments both in
their own right and with respect to one another.
Historical Background
Being colleagues in Oxford from 1924 until Collingwood’s resignation in 1941, Ryle and
Collingwood found themselves in each other’s company on various occasions, such as Sub-
Faculty Committee meetings and at the so-called ‘Thursday Teas’91. But they hardly had
any contact, either personally or professionally.
I surmise that he [Collingwood] had quite early been lacerated by the Joseph-Prichard treatment,
but lacked the resilience to retaliate; and that he then, very unwisely, deemed all philosophical
colleagues to be unworthy. When, in 1935, I launched in Mind an unconciliatory criticism of the
version of the Ontological Argument in his Essay on Philosophical Method, I had never heard
him say a word on this or any contiguous matter; and though my article resulted in some
correspondence between us, I am pretty sure that we never met to reduce or to liquidate our
differences. If I knew his Christian name, it certainly never tripped off my tongue, even behind
his back. (Ryle 1970, 13)
The correspondence between Ryle and Collingwood was occasioned by the publication of
Collingwood’s An Essay on Philosophical Method in 1933. One of its chapters was entitled
‘Philosophy as Categorical Thinking’. This chapter, together with Ryle’s fierce attack on it
in the journal Mind (1935a), led to the correspondence between Ryle and Collingwood in
the same year. Ryle challenged Collingwood to respond to his attack publicly.
Collingwood, however, replied in the form of a letter, starting with an apology and
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justification for his refusal to publish it.
(…) this letter, incomplete and desultory as it is, already runs twice the length of the paper itself,
and is a document which no editor of a journal would dream of publishing. (Collingwood 1935a,
letter 1, 1 = eds. Connelly and D’Oro 2005, 254)
91
The ‘Thursday Teas’ was a weekly tea gathering of teachers of philosophy dominated by the senior lecturers. At
the end of the 1920s Ryle and a few of the other younger philosophers started their own discussion group, which
they called the ‘Wee Teas’.
92
Someone who did take up the challenge was Errol Harris. His reply, ‘Mr. Ryle and the Ontological Argument’,
was printed in Mind in 1936. Ryle responded with his ‘Back to the Ontological Argument’ (Ryle 1937a). Harris’
second reply to Ryle was refused by Mind.
124
This letter, dated 9 May 1935, was the first, and by far the longest, of the three letters of
which the Ryle-Collingwood Correspondence consists. Ryle’s response is dated 21 May
1935. The last letter was written by Collingwood on 6 June 1935.
Collingwood’s chapter ‘Philosophy as Categorical Thinking’ should be considered
in the light of the main aim of An Essay on Philosophical Method (1933), which was to
determine what philosophy is by focussing on the similarities and differences between
philosophy and science. In this chapter Collingwood tried to show that, by contrast with
scientific propositions, philosophical propositions (which in his view are universal) are ‘not
merely hypothetical’ but, as he calls it, ‘in essence categorical’. As will be argued below,
Collingwood’s claim that philosophical propositions are in essence categorical must be
understood against the background of his general approach towards philosophy. He wanted
to formulate a metaphysics which is concerned with the presuppositions of our different
scientific disciplines and different ways of doing research, and which does not remain as
abstract and intangible as, for example, Hegel’s metaphysics.
The chapter is divided into three parts; in the first Collingwood maintains that
philosophy as categorical thinking has been present in philosophies of all times, from the
systems of Plato and Aristotle to those of Kant and Hegel, and beyond. In the second part,
he focuses on Anselm’s Ontological Argument, using this ‘famous argument which has
stood in the forefront of metaphysical discussion for nearly nine hundred years’
(Collingwood 1933, 124) as another and (because of the important role this argument
played in the history of philosophy) more fundamental illustration of the presence of the
93
idea of philosophy as categorical thinking in the history of philosophy. The history of
philosophy is crucial to Collingwood, who saw his own work as building upon the
philosophical achievements of the past. In the third part of the chapter, Collingwood argues
that philosophical propositions are not merely hypothetical but in essence categorical
because all philosophical propositions are both normative and descriptive.
Thus, the three distinctions that play a key role in Collingwood’s chapter are the
distinction between universal and particular, between hypothetical and categorical and
between descriptive and normative propositions. I will mainly discuss Collingwood’s
central claim that philosophical propositions are both universal, and in essence categorical,
and address the question as to whether he was justified in using the Ontological Argument,
because the Ryle-Collingwood Correspondence is primarily about these issues. The third
distinction between descriptive and normative propositions will only briefly be touched
upon.
Ryle attacked Collingwood’s arguments in his Mind article, and his most important
claims are: first, that there are no universal categorical statements; and, second, that
Collingwood ignored the criticisms of the Ontological Argument made by philosophers like
Hume, Kant and Russell. Many years later, in 1971, when he wrote the introduction to the
first volume of his Collected Papers, Ryle recalled the fierceness of his attack on
Collingwood.
The vehemence of my onslaught on Collingwood came partly from a local patriotism. We

Oxford philosophers were, I thought, by the mid-thirties, sufficiently abreast of the century’s
advances in logic and meta-philosophical theory to have the right to dissociate ourselves from
93
That Collingwood had a longstanding interest in the Ontological Argument is evident from his unpublished
‘Lectures on the Ontological Proof of the Existence of God’ from 1919, in which he tried to show that the
Ontological Proof is not out of date, but is, on the contrary, of great importance. Collingwood provides a detailed
historical discussion of the proof, from Plato to Descartes, Kant and Hegel, concluding with a discussion of the
contemporary Realists’ treatment of the argument.
125
the Ontological Argument that Collingwood had recently exhumed. We were not ex officio
dedicated to this lost cause. (Ryle 1971a, vol. 1, viii)
Definitions, the Ontological Argument and Self-reflexivity

The differences in opinion between Ryle and Collingwood in their correspondence can
partly though not completely be explained by their competing definitions of the terms
universal, particular, categorical and hypothetical proposition. As we shall see below, their
interpretations of the Ontological Argument and their differing views on the self-reflexivity
of philosophy also played a crucial role.
The Universal-Particular and the Categorical-Hypothetical Distinction

For Collingwood, universal propositions are general propositions which are not empirical
generalisations. Thus, although its form suggests otherwise, ‘All people in this room have
blond hair’ is not a universal proposition. It is a general proposition, but also an empirical
generalisation and therefore it is particular rather than universal. According to
Collingwood, propositions such as ‘Mind exists’ are universal propositions, since they are
general propositions and not empirical generalisations. He claims that all philosophical
propositions are universal ones.
Ryle does not agree with Collingwood. He believes that particular and existence-
94
propositions are the same thing. Therefore ‘Mind exists’, which is clearly an existence-
proposition, is a particular proposition. Ryle further claims:
By an universal proposition I mean one which is not (and is not a compound of) of the form
‘This is…’ or ‘This is not…’, or ‘Something is…’ or ‘Something that is…is not…’ or ‘There is
a…’. Nor yet is an universal proposition a compound of such singular or particular
95
propositions.
Instead, an universal proposition is one of the form ‘Whatever is …is …’96 or ‘Any x is y’ or ‘If
something is x, it is y’ or ‘Nothing is both x and y’ or ‘Being x involves being y’. (Ryle 1935b,
letter 2, 35 = eds. Connelly and D’Oro 2005, 306)
Therefore, propositions such as ‘Mind exists’, which for Collingwood are universal
propositions, are for Ryle particular and not universal.
With respect to the second distinction, the one between categorical and
hypothetical propositions, Collingwood claims that whereas hypothetical propositions are
indifferent to the existence of their subject-matter, categorical propositions are not. An
example of a hypothetical proposition is: ‘All triangles have three sides’. The truth of this
proposition does not depend on the existence of actual triangles. For Collingwood, ‘Mind
exists’ is a categorical proposition because its truth does depend on the existence of mind,
which is its subject-matter. He claims that all philosophical propositions are not merely
hypothetical97, but in essence categorical, that is, they presuppose the existence of their
subject-matter; their essence involves existence.
94
‘Existence-proposition’ is the term used by Ryle and Collingwood in the Correspondence.
95
Singular propositions are of the form ‘That man yonder is a red-haired cardinal’. They entail (but are not quite
equivalent to) particular ones, such as ‘a red-haired cardinal exists’ but not vice versa.
96
The original phrase was ‘Whatever is, …is, ….’, but I removed the two commas for the sake of clarity.
97
It seems rather strange that Collingwood first makes a clear distinction between categorical and hypothetical
propositions and subsequently partly annuls this distinction by using the word ‘merely’ in his claim that
philosophical propositions are not merely hypothetical, but in essence categorical. More on this in the section ‘the
nature of philosophy’. For now, I shall ignore the word ‘merely’, which is what Ryle generally did in the
Correspondence.
126
Ryle agrees that ‘Mind exists’ is categorical, but his distinction between
categorical and hypothetical propositions is based on different criteria than Collingwood’s
distinction. Ryle claims that by definition categorical propositions are particular, singular or
a combination of both. Because Ryle also considers propositions such as ‘Mind exists’ to
be particular ones, he does not argue against Collingwood’s claim that ‘Mind exists’ is
categorical. As mentioned before, Ryle does dispute both Collingwood’s particular claim
that ‘Mind exists’ is universal, and the general claim that universal categorical propositions
are possible. ‘‘No universal propositions are categorical’ is, therefore, as I use these terms,
a pure verbal tautology.’ (Ryle 1935b, letter 2, 35 = eds. Connelly and D’Oro 2005, 306).
The Role of the Ontological Argument

How did Collingwood employ the Ontological Argument to support his conclusion that
philosophical propositions are in essence categorical, that is, that they are not indifferent to
the existence of their subject-matter? He does not use the Ontological Argument as
originally formulated by Anselm, in which the existence of God is deduced from a
98
consideration of the concept ‘that than which nothing greater can be thought’ . Instead,
Collingwood uses a revised non-theological version of the Argument.
Divesting this argument [the Ontological Argument] of all specially religious or theological
colouring, one might state it by saying that thought, when it follows its own bent most
completely and sets itself the task of thinking out the idea of an object that shall completely
satisfy the demands of reason, may appear to be constructing a mere ens rationis, but in fact is
never devoid of objective or ontological reference. (Collingwood 1933, 124-125)
He strips Anselm’s Ontological Argument of its theological implications and formulates

what he considers to be the essential truth of the argument, namely that in metaphysics (and
in philosophy in general) essence implies existence. Philosophy is not indifferent to the
existence of its subject-matter and is therefore in essence categorical.
Reflection on the history of the Ontological Proof thus offers us a view of philosophy as a form
of thought in which essence and existence, however clearly distinguished, are conceived as
inseparable. On this view, unlike mathematics or empirical science, philosophy stands
committed to maintaining that its subject-matter is no mere hypothesis, but something actually
existing. (Collingwood 1933, 127)
According to Collingwood, this essential core of truth in the Ontological Argument plays a
large role in philosophy, and was never successfully refuted. In line with Collingwood’s
revised version of the Ontological Argument, the metaphysical proposition ‘Mind exists’ is
categorical in the sense that it is not indifferent to the existence of its subject-matter.
As mentioned above, Ryle criticises Collingwood for ignoring important
developments in the history of philosophy. Kant, Russell and others had already shown that
an a priori argument, such as the Ontological Argument, cannot be used to establish the
existence of particular matters of fact. For Ryle, Collingwood’s updated version of the
Ontological Argument, devoid of theological implications, is still an a priori argument
which wrongly purports to establish the truth of an existence-proposition. Ryle simply
cannot accept this and does not understand why Collingwood does not recognise the force
of the criticisms made by Russell and the others. Perhaps it is, as Ryle suggests ironically:
98
Anselm, Proslogion, Chapter 2.
127
‘((…) because it [Russellian logic] happens to use Greek letters for some of its symbols
instead of the canonised S, M and P.)’ (Ryle 1935a, 106)
The Self-reflexivity of Philosophical Judgements

In the last part of his chapter Collingwood claims that all philosophical judgements are both
descriptive and normative. Logic, for instance, cannot be merely descriptive, because then
it would be a psychology of thinking; and it cannot be merely normative because then it
would not be self-reflexive, that is, it would not be about itself. For Collingwood believes
that, by contrast with the exact sciences, logic is in a way about itself.
(…) whereas in geometry, for example, the subject-matter is triangles, &c., and the body of the
science consists of propositions about triangles, &c., in logic the subject-matter is propositions,
and the body of the science consists of propositions about propositions. In geometry the body of
the science is heterogeneous with its subject-matter; in logic they are homogeneous, and more
than homogeneous, they are identical; for the propositions of which logic consists must conform
to the rules which logic lays down, so that logic is actually about itself; not about itself
exclusively, but at least incidentally about itself. (Collingwood 1933, 129)
In the Correspondence Collingwood explains this as follows:
Logic not only discusses, it also contains, reasoning; consequently, whenever a logician argues a
point in the theory of inference, he is producing an instance of the thing under discussion; and,
since he cannot discuss without arguing, he cannot discuss any point in the theory of inference
without doing so. Consequently, in so far as it necessarily contains reasoning, the theory of
reasoning cannot be indifferent to the existence of its own subject-matter (…) For example, if a
logician could believe that no valid reasoning anywhere existed, he would merely be disbelieving
his own logical theory. (Collingwood 1935a, letter 1, 11-12 = eds. Connelly and D’Oro 2005,
269)
As Ryle rightly remarks, this boils down to saying that logic is necessarily self-reflexive. In
doing logic we are producing an actual instance of logic and we cannot practise logic
without doing so. Not just logical judgements, but all philosophical judgements are not only
99
normative but also descriptive according to Collingwood. They are self-reflexive and this
self-reflexivity of philosophical judgements, their being instances of themselves, provides
an argument for Collingwood’s claim that all philosophical propositions are categorical.
Philosophical propositions cannot be indifferent to the existence of their subject-matter
because they are instances of themselves; that is, they cannot be indifferent to their own
existence.
Against Collingwood, Ryle holds that there is no such thing as ‘propositions in
general’, but only this kind of proposition and that kind of proposition. And it is possible to
talk about a certain kind of proposition without using that kind of proposition. Ryle does
not give any examples, but one may think of the following one. One of Ryle’s claims is:
‘Singular propositions entail particular propositions but not vice versa.’ (Ryle 1935b, letter
2, 35 = eds. Connelly and D’Oro 2005, 306) This claim can serve as an example of talking
about singular propositions without using that kind of propositions (Ryle used a universal
proposition to talk about a singular proposition). Ryle claims that there is no self-reflexivity
in philosophy that differs from the accidental self-reflexivity in disciplines such as grammar
99
Another example Collingwood provides is moral philosophy, which he also considers to be self-reflexive. He
claims that moral philosophy ‘is both normative and descriptive; it describes, not actions as opposed to ideas about
actions, but the moral consciousness [how people think they ought to behave]; and this it is forced to describe as
already being in some sense what it ought to be.’ (Collingwood 1933, 132)
128
or poetry; in other words, it is not necessary that logical propositions instantiate the
principles which they themselves propound. Philosophical propositions are not necessarily
self-reflexive because (at least sometimes) one kind of proposition can be used to talk about
another kind of proposition, just as grammar is not necessarily self-reflexive: one may write
about Latin grammar in English.
Collingwood’s reply is that in philosophy, by contrast with, for example, grammar,
the different kinds of propositions are interrelated. An individual proposition can only be
assented to in a logical context, and this context is a necessary one.
The context is not (may I say?) a merely psychological context, consisting of anything else that
we may happen to be thinking at the time; it is a logical context, consisting of other things which
if we didn’t think we couldn’t think what ex hypothesi we are thinking. (Collingwood 1935a, let
1, 17 = eds. Connelly and D’Oro 2005, 277)
The context of an individual proposition is not a psychological one in the sense that it
contains anything that we accidentally associate with that specific proposition (for example
our association of ‘he gave her a rose’ with ‘red’ and ‘love’), but it is a logical context,
consisting of all the kinds of propositions (that is, element-types) which together determine
what is assented to when we assent to an individual proposition.
Collingwood regards his own theory as building upon the idea which originated
from ‘old-fashioned formal logic’ (Collingwood 1935a, letter 2, 18 = eds. Connelly and
D’Oro 2005, 278) that there were four element-types, viz. quality, quantity, relation and
modality; and many varieties on these element-types. Kant modified this doctrine to a
theory of twelve element-types. Collingwood himself is unable to determine how many
element-types exist, admitting that he cannot give an exhaustive enumeration of them.
His idea of logical context remains rather abstract. He claims that the logical
context of an individual proposition has a certain logical structure that always contains all
element-types. A few examples of element-types Collingwood mentions are: affirmative
and negative elements, categorical and hypothetical elements, and propositional and
inferential elements. He claims that these elements are always present in real thinking (this
does not mean that they are all expressed in words). Collingwood would claim that in
Ryle’s universal proposition ‘Singular propositions entail particular propositions but not
vice versa’, a singular element is present as part of the necessary logical context of the
proposition assented to, as well as the more obvious universal element. Therefore, in
talking about this kind of proposition (in the example: singular propositions), we are always
using this kind of proposition (in the example: singular propositions), at least as part of the
logical context of the proposition, so we cannot use only that kind of proposition (in the
example: universal propositions). In contrast to Ryle, Collingwood maintains that the self-
reflexivity of philosophy is necessary and essentially differs from the accidental self-
reflexivity of, for example, grammar.
Ryle thinks that even if Collingwood is right that logical propositions are
necessarily self-reflexive, he is still wrong about the necessary existence of the subject-
matter of logical propositions.
(…) I’ll grant (again for the sake of the argument) that the enquiry called logic can’t be done
properly save in arguments which exemplify the forms of implication to be studied – and still I
say that this is no case of Essence involving Existence100 – it is only a case of a big hypothetical
100
Collingwood claimed that in the case of philosophical propositions ‘Essence involves Existence’, in the sense
that their essence involves that they are not indifferent to the existence of their subject-matter.
129
proposition implying a smaller hypothetical proposition. We are saying ‘the Essence of

Implication involves that any logical enquiry into it would have such and such a character’ which
is exactly parallel to ‘the Essence of triangularity involves that the internal angles of a triangle
are equal to two right angles’. (Ryle 1935b, let 2, 37 = eds. Connelly and D’Oro 2005, 311-12)
For Collingwood, the difference between the case of mathematics and the case of logic is
that mathematics does not presuppose that triangles exist ‘in reality’, whereas logic does
presuppose the existence of logical arguments ‘in reality’. In fact, logic is constantly
construing these logical arguments itself. In the following section I will show that Ryle’s
claim that ‘it is only a case of a big hypothetical proposition implying a smaller
hypothetical proposition’ can be reconciled with Collingwood’s position. I shall use it as an
illustration of how the differences in their use of language and their different basic
assumptions led to misunderstandings and the rejection of each other’s position.
The Essence of the Matter

So far, the differences in opinion and misunderstandings between Ryle and Collingwood
concern their definitions of categorical, hypothetical, universal and particular propositions,
their different views on the Ontological Argument and the self-reflexivity of philosophy.
These are primarily the issues which were discussed in the Correspondence. I shall now
argue that these and other disagreements and misunderstandings arise from their differing
uses of the concept of ‘existence’ and their views on the nature of philosophy in general.
First, I turn to ‘existence’. What does Collingwood mean by this concept? And
what does Ryle think Collingwood means? It is clear from Ryle’s arguments that he
101
considers ‘Mind exists’ to be a strong ontological claim and assumes that Collingwood
does so as well. And on various occasions, Collingwood’s use of language certainly
suggests a strong ontological import to his claims. For example, he answers Ryle’s question
as to what he means by ‘essence involves existence’ as follows: ‘The slogan, “essence
involves existence” of course means that the essence of something x involves the existence
of x.’ (Collingwood 1935a, letter 1, 9 = eds. Connelly and D’Oro 2005, 266)
However, recent interpretations of Collingwood’s work suggest that ‘existence’, as
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he used it, should not be interpreted in such a strong ontological sense. The
Correspondence seems to confirm these more recent interpretations. For example,
Collingwood’s interpretation of Anselm’s Ontological Proof seems to be a rather unusual
and, at most, a weak ontological one.
Whereas Anselm’s argument is commonly thought of as reaching the strong
ontological conclusion ‘God exists’, Collingwood describes the argument as follows: ‘(…)
that in conceiving a perfect being we are conceiving a subject possessed of all positive
103
predicates, including that of existence, so that to think of this is already to think of it as
existing (…).’ (Collingwood 1933, 125). He claims that Anselm’s view amounts to the
following: ‘(…) in the special case of metaphysical thinking the distinction between
101
By a strong ontological claim I mean an absolute claim about reality; about the nature of things. In my opinion,
Collingwood is merely making weak ontological claims, which are relative to certain structures of knowledge. See
below, section ‘The Nature of Philosophy’.
102
See D’Oro 2000, D’Oro 2002, Martin 1995 and Tariq Modood 1995. D’Oro is the only scholar who explicitly
claims that Collingwood is not making strong but merely weak ontological claims in his An Essay on
Philosophical Method (1933). The arguments of Martin and Modood, although they do not explicitly state it as
such, support a position such as D’Oro’s: certainly their claims are incompatible with a strong ontological
interpretation of Collingwood’s claims.
103
Italics are mine.
130
104
conceiving something and thinking it to exist is a distinction without a difference.’
(Collingwood 1933, 125). Thus, Collingwood refers to our ‘thinking that x exists’, rather
105
than to the existence of x itself. If he had wanted to make a strong ontological claim, it
would have made more sense for him either to preserve this ontological aspect of Anselm’s
argument, or simply not to use the argument.
But how should Collingwood’s arguments in the Correspondence be understood if
they cannot be interpreted in a strong ontological sense? And what about Ryle’s response?
In order to answer this question we must look at their views of philosophy in general.
The Nature of Philosophy

To Collingwood, philosophy is a second order activity which has as its subject-matter the
domains of enquiry of first order disciplines such as history and natural science. In other
words: philosophy is about history and natural science. Without going into Collingwood’s
complicated ideas on history, we may say that, according to Collingwood, history is the
study of mind and therefore ‘Mind exists’ is a philosophical proposition; it has mind, which
is the domain of enquiry of history, as its subject-matter.106 Philosophy has as its task to
reveal the nature of the presuppositions of the first order disciplines.107
Collingwood’s idea of philosophy sheds light on how we should interpret his claim
that all philosophical propositions are categorical, in the sense that they are not indifferent
to the existence of their subject-matter. Philosophy has as its subject-matter, or, is about,
the domains of enquiry of first order disciplines. This means that the subject-matter of
philosophy is present as a presupposition of the first order disciplines. The subject-matter of
the philosophical proposition ‘Mind exists’, which is mind, exists, not in a strong
ontological sense, but as a presupposition of history. Collingwood’s philosophical
propositions are therefore not absolute claims about reality itself, but they are relative to
certain structures of knowledge, e.g. historical knowledge. 108 It appears that Collingwood’s
claim that all philosophical propositions are categorical is not a strong ontological claim,
but a much weaker one, which seems perhaps even trivial. (I cannot imagine that anyone
who was willing to accept Collingwood’s ideas on philosophy and history could disagree
with him about his claim that ‘Mind exists’, as a presupposition of the domain of enquiry
called history.)
It is important to note that Collingwood does not hold that philosophical
propositions are categorical and therefore not hypothetical. What he does claim is that
philosophical propositions are not merely hypothetical, but in essence categorical. This
104
Italics are mine.
105
This interpretation is supported by Collingwood’s discussion of the proposition ‘God exists’, in An Essay on
Metaphysics (1940). Collingwood argues: ‘(…) his [Anselm’s] exchange of correspondence with Gaunilo shows
beyond a doubt that on reflection he regarded the fool who ‘hath said in his heart, There is no God’ as a fool not
because he was blind to the actual existence of un nommé Dieu, but because he did not know that the
presupposition ‘God exists’ was a presupposition he himself made.’ (Collingwood 1940, 189) See also
Collingwood’s unpublished ‘Lectures on the Ontological Proof of the Existence of God’ from 1919.
106
‘Matter exists’ is also a philosophical proposition, since, on Collingwood’s view, matter is the domain of
enquiry of the empirical sciences.
107
This description of the task of philosophy is not yet present in Collingwood’s An Essay on Philosophical
Method (1933), and first occurred in Collingwood’s An Essay on Metaphysics (1940), as a description of
metaphysics. Although Collingwood had, by the time of the correspondence, begun to expound views close to his
later account of metaphysics as the uncovering of presuppositions, it is unlikely that Ryle would have been aware
of this.
108
Henceforth, I will refer to these kinds of ‘ontological’ claims, the ones Collingwood is making, as ‘weak
ontological’ claims.
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seems to mean that philosophical propositions are in a way both categorical and
hypothetical. But, how is this possible? The answer to this question must be found in
Collingwood’s idea of an overlap of classes in philosophy.
For Collingwood, in philosophy – in contrast to exact and empirical science – the
specific classes of a genus do not exclude each other, but overlap. For example, in
mathematics the classes ‘straight’ and ‘curved’, into which the genus line is divided, do not
overlap.
A line is either straight or curved; these are the two species into which the genus line is divided,
and they are exclusive and exhaustive: no line can be both, and there is no third species.
(Collingwood 1933, 29)
These rules of classification and division do not apply to philosophical statements. For
example, when we classify our actions into those done from duty and those done from
inclination, instances of the one are in a way instances of the other as well. It all depends on
the particular features of actions we wish to emphasise. In the same way, categorical and
hypothetical constitute separate classes in non-philosophical judgements, but in
philosophical judgements they overlap. Collingwood explains this overlap as follows:
(…) if the body of philosophical knowledge consists of categorical judgements it must at least be
surrounded, as it were, by a scaffolding of hypotheticals; I mean that in order to decide that a
certain theory is true, our affirmation of this theory must be supported by considering what the
consequences would have been, had any of the alternative theories been true. In this sense the
working-out of conclusions from purely hypothetical premisses is a very necessary part of
philosophical thinking, though a subsidiary part. (Collingwood 1933, 133)
In the light of Collingwood’s account of philosophy and the overlap of classes, Ryle’s
objection to Collingwood’s claim that philosophy is categorical because it is self-reflexive
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seems misdirected. Collingwood does not claim that the subject-matter of logical
propositions exists absolutely (in the sense of the existence of particular matters of fact),
but only that it exists as a presupposition of logic. Perhaps this could, as Ryle argues,
indeed be reformulated into what Ryle calls a hypothetical proposition, but this is irrelevant
to Collingwood, since he does not deny that (some) logical propositions are hypothetical.
What he denies is that they are merely hypothetical. They are in essence categorical, in the
sense that their subject-matter exists as a presupposition of the domain of enquiry called
logic. And this claim is not refuted by Ryle, at least not in the argument quoted. Ryle could
of course still reject Collingwood’s argument by withdrawing his assent (which, after all,
he gave only for the sake of the argument) to Collingwood’s claim that logic can only be
done properly in arguments which exemplify the forms of implication to be studied.
The nature of Ryle’s arguments against Collingwood can be explained partly by
Ryle’s claim that all existence-propositions are systematically misleading. As is well-
known, at the time according to Ryle one of philosophy’s major tasks is to discover what is
really meant by so-called systematically misleading expressions and to reformulate them
into expressions which are not systematically misleading. In his paper ‘Systematically
Misleading Expressions’ from 1932 Ryle discusses existence-propositions and other
systematically misleading expressions. A systematically misleading expression is one
which has a syntactical form improper to the fact recorded. Although such expressions may
function perfectly well in everyday life, when we start philosophising they create problems
109
Ryle 1935b, let 2, 37 = eds. Connelly and D’Oro (2005), 311-12, already quoted above, see section ‘The self-
reflexivity of philosophical judgements’.
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and muddles. An example of a systematically misleading expression is: ‘Satan does not
exist’. Grammatically ‘Satan’ denotes the thing of which ‘exists’ is a predicate, but when
we look at the meaning of the expression it does not. For if I assert ‘Satan does not exist’,
supposing that my assertion is true, I cannot really be talking about Satan (at least not in the
sense in which ‘I am sleepy’ is about me), because Satan does not exist. Ryle suggests that
the phrase ‘Satan does not exist’ should be reformulated as ‘nothing is both devilish and
alone in being devilish’, or ‘‘Satan’ is not the proper name of anything’. Thus, Ryle claims
that all existence-propositions are systematically misleading and should therefore not be
used in philosophy.
In the Correspondence Ryle did not discuss Collingwood’s idea that there is an
overlap of classes in philosophy, but in his 1935 Mind paper he clearly expressed his
suspicions: ‘I fear that the principle of the overlap of Classes will be brought in to give us
carte blanche to have it both ways when it suits our convenience!’ (Ryle 1935a, 105). For
Ryle, ‘particular’, ‘universal’, ‘categorical’ and ‘hypothetical’ are formal properties of
propositions. These cannot overlap; no matter in which discipline they are used to classify
propositions. He probably was not against the basic idea that underlies Collingwood’s
overlap of classes; the idea that particular actions can be classified in different classes
(which would be exhaustive and mutually exclusive outside philosophy) depending on
which features of these actions we wish to emphasise. But Ryle would describe it
differently. He would not describe it in terms of an overlap of classes, since he would
probably consider this to be an instance of misleading language. Why would one claim a
proposition to be categorical and hypothetical, if what one really wants to say is that the
proposition in question is categorical if we emphasise aspect X of the proposition and
hypothetical if we emphasise aspect Y of the proposition? The claim that a proposition is
both categorical and hypothetical implies that it is both categorical and hypothetical, with
the proposition being used in the same sense in both cases, which is nonsense. If the
proposition is not used in the same sense in both cases, the formulation ‘proposition Q is
both categorical and hypothetical’ is misleading and should be reformulated.
Lionel Rubinoff attempts to show that Ryle’s and Collingwood’s different
attitudes towards an overlap of classes in philosophy, and their misunderstandings of each
other’s position, are rooted in their different philosophical and logical aims. He explains the
difference between Ryle and Collingwood as follows: Collingwood aimed at a logic which
could ‘adequately regulate the various ways of enquiring into the nature of the dialectical
processes of mind’ (Rubinoff 1970, 204), whereas Ryle mistakenly treated Collingwood’s
enterprise as a search for a logic that can best describe the world of externally related facts.
(Rubinoff 1970, 204). Collingwood looks at the various ways of enquiring and notices that
whereas each way of enquiring has its own point of view (its own questions), philosophy is
about all these points of view. This is why he needs an overlap of classes in philosophy. For
example, something can belong to class X according to one way of enquiring and to class Y
according to another way of enquiring, but because philosophy is about these various ways
of enquiring, in philosophy the thing in question belongs to both classes; to class X
according to one way of enquiring and to class Y according another way of enquiring.
More important than saying that Ryle misjudged Collingwood’s project is to show
the cause of his misinterpretation. As we have seen, this is at least in part due to
Collingwood’s particular use of concepts such as ‘ontological’ and ‘existence’, which on a
natural reading imply that he was making strong ontological claims – which he was not.
Not surprisingly, Ryle was misled by Collingwood’s language, and mistakenly treated
Collingwood’s enterprise as a search for a logic as an instrument to describe external
matters of fact.
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Furthermore, Ryle’s rejection of an overlap of classes in philosophy is not

sufficiently explained by Rubinoff’s distinction between the different kinds of logic Ryle
and Collingwood were aiming at. It is not the case that if Ryle had only understood that
Collingwood was not aiming to develop a logic which described the world of externally
related facts, but one which could account for our various ways of enquiring, he would have
accepted Collingwood’s overlap of classes. The different roles of logic in Ryle’s
philosophy and Collingwood’s metaphysics are relevant as well. Collingwood’s historical
metaphysics of course needs logic (in the way in which all our arguments need logic) but he
regards logic as (at least in part) peculiar to particular domains of enquiry, whereas for Ryle
logic – for it to be logic at all – holds good for all domains of enquiry. Ryle views logic as a
science with its own rules, not as a science of which the rules change depending on which
area or discipline it is used in. Ryle’s commitment to a logic which is applicable in all
disciplines and his continuous attempt to unmask systematically misleading expressions do
not leave him any room for a Collingwoodian overlap of classes.
Philosophical Method
Ryle’s and Collingwood’s approaches to method were in many ways quite different.
Collingwood tended to adopt what might be broadly viewed as an Hegelian or dialectical
approach. This implies a commitment to the history of the subject and explains his wish to
retain the philosophical insights of the past (suitably modified) in the present. Thus,
Collingwood reformulates the old metaphysics into a modern one and therefore, in a way,
his improved metaphysics encapsulates the old one. The same goes for his use of the
Ontological Argument; he radically reformulates the famous argument, but still considers
his version of the Ontological Argument to be built on the achievements of Anselm and
others. Ryle, on the other hand, generally does not pay any particular interest to the history
of philosophy, at least when tackling philosophical problems in a systematic way. Although
Ryle certainly was interested in the history of philosophy, he always tried to separate these
two interests.
This difference in method can be used to explain how and why Collingwood used
the Ontological Argument, and why this was incomprehensible from Ryle’s point of view.
Whereas Ryle judges arguments by their validity and clarity, Collingwood attaches great
importance to the influence of particular arguments throughout the history of philosophy.
He considers Anselm’s Ontological Argument to have played an important role through the
ages and therefore prefers not to simply ignore or reject it, but rather to adjust it in order to
rid it of its theological implications. Ryle, on the other hand, dismisses the argument right
away on Russellian grounds and does not take into account its ‘historical value’.
In their styles the two philosophers were also extremely different at the time of the
Correspondence, though Collingwood’s later style became more accessible. He started
using more examples – even common-sense examples – and his use of language became
less technical and abstract, especially in The New Leviathan (1942). Consider the following
example in which Collingwood refers to the grammatical differences between ‘I see a blue
colour’ and ‘I kick a bad dog’ in order to explain why according to Descartes the question
‘Are sensa mind-dependent?’ would have been nonsensical.
(…) Descartes denied the blue colour to be the object of a transitive verb to see, as a dog may be
the object of a transitive verb to kick. It means that for Descartes the grammar of the sentence ‘I
see a blue colour’ is not like the grammar of ‘I kick a bad dog’ but like the grammar of ‘I feel a
transient melancholy’ or ‘I go for a fast walk’. The colour, the melancholy, the walk, are not
objects of an action, they are modes of an action; their names have an adverbial function in the
sentences in which they occur. If the Cartesian answer is right, the question which Berkeley
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answered in one way (‘sensa are mind-dependent’) and Moore, like so many others in the present
century, in the opposite way (‘sensa are not mind-dependent’) is a nonsense question: a question
to which no possible answer is right because it arises logically from an assumption that is not
made. (Collingwood 1942, 30-31)
The role of grammar in this passage bears some resemblance to the famous methods of
Wittgenstein and Ryle. Ryle often used the clues of grammar to determine whether or not
two expressions belonged to the same category. Collingwood only started using this
method at the end of his career, e.g. in The New Leviathan (1942), a work which has been
relatively neglected by Collingwood scholars.
Ryle’s and Collingwood’s different ways of practising philosophy contributed to
their disagreement and misunderstandings. They had different starting-points and were
unable to appreciate each other’s philosophical methods. Their dispute about the
Ontological Argument in the Correspondence can almost entirely be blamed upon these
methodological differences and resulting terminological confusions.
Pre-Humean versus Collingwoodian Metaphysics

I have mentioned a few possible reasons why Ryle misinterpreted Collingwood’s enterprise
as a strong ontological one, such as Collingwood’s terminology. Something else that may
have played a role is the fact that Collingwood’s project was aimed at re-establishing
metaphysics, whereas Ryle firmly rejected the possibility of metaphysics. Considering the
fact that at the time of the Correspondence Ryle was under the influence of the Vienna
Circle and Wittgenstein, it is not surprising that he was not sympathetic towards
Collingwood’s project. According to the Vienna Circle, the task of philosophy was logical
analysis. Traditional philosophy and metaphysics were to be replaced by the investigation
of the logical syntax of the language of science. By clarifying meaningful concepts and
propositions, the Circle wanted to lay the foundations for science and mathematics. The
principle of verification, the principle that the meaning of a proposition is its method of
verification, played a large role in the Circle’s work. Although – as he mentioned in his
‘Autobiographical Essay’ (Ryle 1970) – Ryle had soon started to think that the Circle’s
dichotomy ‘Either Science or Nonsense’ did not leave enough room for nuances, the
Circle’s influence was still clearly present at the time of the Correspondence.
Collingwood’s attempt to breathe new life into metaphysics could have been one
of the reasons leading Ryle to think that he was making strong ontological claims. Is that
not what all metaphysics does after all? Does not all metaphysics make claims about
reality? On closer inspection, Collingwood does not defend the kind of metaphysics Ryle
rejects; their conception of metaphysics is entirely different. Because Collingwood’s ideas
on metaphysics found only full expression in An Essay on Metaphysics from 1940110, it is
not surprising that Ryle misunderstood Collingwood’s project of re-establishing
metaphysics.111
Collingwood was not trying to rehabilitate the pre-Humean metaphysics which
Ryle (and the Vienna Circle) critically attacked, but his aim was to set the conditions for a
110
In 1934 Collingwood did deliver two lectures on metaphysics, ‘The Permanent Problems of Metaphysics’ and
‘The Special Problems of Modern Metaphysics’, opening a course of 16 lectures on the subject by various
speakers. And in 1935 he read the paper ‘Method and Metaphysics’ before the Jowett Society (henceforth to be
referred to as Collingwood 1935b). However, neither the paper nor the lectures express Collingwood’s ideas on
metaphysics as clearly as his later An Essay on Metaphysics (1940).
111
For the view that Collingwood’s thought did not undergo a radical change between his An Essay on
Philosophical Method (1933) and his An Essay on Metaphysics (1940), see Martin 1995 (p. 236).
135
modern metaphysics, which was to be freed from the perplexities and obscurities of the old
metaphysics. Collingwood’s metaphysics was to be a ‘historical science’112, its main goal
being: ‘to find out what absolute presuppositions have actually been made by various
persons at various times in doing various pieces of scientific thinking.’ (Collingwood 1940,
60) He claimed that: ‘The problems of metaphysics are historical problems (…). We must
have no more nonsense about its being meritorious to inhabit a fog. A metaphysician is a
man who has to get at facts.’ (Collingwood 1940, 62).
Collingwood rejects the traditional idea that metaphysics is a science without
presuppositions, that it is a ‘deductive’ science – in the sense in which mathematics is a
deductive science – and that a metaphysician should aim at system-building.
(…) the idea got about that metaphysics must be a science with no presuppositions whatever, a
science spun out of nothing by the thinker’s brain. This is the greatest nonsense. If metaphysics
is a science at all it is an attempt to think systematically, that is, by answering questions
intelligently disposed in order. The answer to any question presupposes whatever the question
presupposes. And because all science begins with a question (for a question is logically prior to
its own answer) all science begins with a presupposition. (…) The attempt at a metaphysics
devoid of presuppositions can only result in a metaphysics that is no science, a tangle of
confused thoughts whose confusion is taken for a merit. Not only has metaphysics quite definite
presuppositions, but every one knows what some of them are, for as metaphysics is an historical
science it shares the presuppositions of all history; and every one, nowadays, has some
acquaintance with the principles of historical thought. (Collingwood 1940, 63-64)
Collingwood’s revised metaphysics does have presuppositions, but not in the way in which
mathematics has presuppositions. He claims that the historical character of his metaphysics
prevents it from being a deductive, quasi-mathematical science:
The ambition of ‘deductive’ metaphysics is to present a constellation of absolute presuppositions

as a strainless structure like a body of propositions in mathematics. That is all right in
mathematics because mathematical propositions are not historical propositions. But it is all
wrong in metaphysics. A reformed metaphysics will conceive any given constellation of absolute
propositions as having in its structure not the simplicity and calm that characterize the subject-
matter of mathematics but the intricacy and restlessness that characterize the subject-matter, say,
of legal or constitutional history. (Collingwood 1940, 76-77)
Metaphysics is systematic in the sense in which all historical thought is systematic. Its task
should be to provide a clear and orderly way of stating and solving problems, but not in the
sense of dealing with all of the problems, that is of building a system. The problems do not
form a ‘closed repertory’ (Collingwood 1940, 65) and therefore the idea that metaphysics
should deal with all the problems is to be rejected. According to Collingwood, aiming at
system-building is the ‘purest illusion’ (ibid.).
Ryle’s critique of metaphysics had therefore practically the same object as
Collingwood’s critique: metaphysics as an absolute deductive science, aimed at system-
building and completeness. Ryle criticised the idea of philosophy as a deductive science in
his paper ‘Taking Sides in Philosophy’ from 1937:
112
I use the notion ‘historical science’ because this is the notion Collingwood himself employed. However, I do
not intend to suggest that after his Essay on Philosophical Method (1933) Collingwood collapsed philosophy into
history. I think that Collingwood does not historicise philosophy but considers his metaphysics to be historical in
the sense that it is an enquiry into the logical grounds of knowledge, its conclusions being judged against what we
find in experience and what their explanatory value is in helping us to understand our experience. However, this is
not the place to enter the debate on whether or not Collingwood historicises philosophy. For the interpretation that
Collingwood does not, see Connelly 1990 and 2003, Modood 1989, Oldfield 1995 and Martin 1995.
136
Philosophical argument (…) is not demonstration ordine geometrico. (…) For we have no agreed
or evident axioms to start with. In the sense of the word ‘presupposition’ in which philosophy is
concerned with presuppositions, the goal of its labours is to reveal them. They are not the
premisses of its arguments. (Ryle 1937b, 162)113
In my opinion, Ryle would have interpreted Collingwood’s chapter ‘Philosophy as

Categorical Thinking’ differently had he fully recognised that Collingwood was not
attempting to re-install a pre-Humean kind of metaphysics, but rather to reformulate
metaphysics as a modern ‘historical science’.
Concluding Remarks
The fundamental differences between Ryle’s views and those of Collingwood were neither
about the Ontological Argument, nor about the way in which this argument can be used to
show that philosophical propositions are categorical. Whereas an important part of Ryle’s
attack was aimed at the presumed strong ontological aspect of Collingwood’s version of the
Ontological Argument, there was in fact no such strong ontological aspect there to be
attacked. Collingwood did not aim at establishing the existence of particular matters of fact
by means of an a priori argument, but tried to show that there is a set of concepts which is
explanatorily, rather than ontologically necessary. That is, there is a set of concepts
necessary for explaining how a given area of knowledge or experience is possible.
As has become clear, many of the differences between Ryle and Collingwood can
be traced back to their fundamentally different views about the nature of philosophy and
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logic, the nature of metaphysics and the definition of a universal proposition. Essential is
the difference between Collingwood’s overlap of classes in philosophy and Ryle’s idea of
one general logic being applicable in all disciplines. In addition, Collingwood was
committed to a belief in the value of the history of philosophy as a part of philosophy itself,
whereas Ryle always tried to separate the two; further, Ryle’s concern with systematically
misleading expressions does not have a counterpart in Collingwood.
It is therefore not surprising that the Correspondence did not bring much mutual
understanding and enlightenment. Ryle and Collingwood had radically different positions,
methods and terminology. In particular Collingwood’s use of terms was idiosyncratic and
was not ideally suited to the position he was in fact trying to maintain, leading Ryle to
interpret it in a strong ontological sense.
113
Whereas Ryle and Collingwood both argue that philosophy is not a deductive science, they attribute different
roles to empirical evidence in philosophy. Ryle rejects the idea of philosophy as an inductive science on the
following grounds: ‘Both the premisses and the conclusions of inductions can be doubted or denied without
absurdity. Observed facts and plausible hypotheses have no more illustrative force in philosophy than is possessed
by fictions or guesses. Nor have either facts or fancies any evidential force in the resolution of philosophical
problems. The evidential force of matters of fact is only to increase or decrease the probability of general or
particular hypotheses and it is absurd to describe philosophical propositions as relatively probable or improbable.’
(Ryle 1945, 196) Collingwood’s historical metaphysics suggests that empirical evidence does play a role, in the
sense that a philosopher’s conclusions are judged against what we find in experience and whether they explain or
help us to understand our experience.
114
Their discussion on what universal propositions are was one of the rare occasions in which the discussion
between Ryle and Collingwood was in fact about fundamental differences in opinion.
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Part 2: Ryle and Collingwood: Similarities Revisited

So far we have mainly looked at the differences between Ryle and Collingwood. What
about the similarities which Collingwood scholars have detected? In the second part of this
chapter I shall argue that there are indeed similarities between Ryle and Collingwood, but
that Collingwood scholars in their attempt to cast a different, ‘modern analytic’, light on
Collingwood, have neglected Ryle’s position and thus misconstrued the similarities
between the two philosophers. I shall discuss the similarities concerning their rejection of
Cartesian dualism and their idea of intelligence as ‘knowing how’ which were noticed by
Donagan, Van der Dussen and Boucher, as well as D’Oro’s views. In addition, I will show
that there are important resemblances with respect to a ‘logic of question and answer’.
This part does not directly concern the Correspondence, since the similarities I
discuss come mainly from the later writings of Ryle and Collingwood, such as Ryle’s The
Concept of Mind (1949a), Collingwood’s An Essay on Metaphysics (1940) and his The New
Leviathan (1942), but my discussion will indirectly contribute, I hope, to a better
understanding of the Correspondence. The most fundamental differences I analysed in the
first part of this chapter, such as Collingwood’s and Ryle’s different approaches to logic,
will play an important role again in the second part.
Refuting Cartesian Dualism

Several Collingwood scholars have pointed to the rejection of Cartesian dualism which
Ryle and Collingwood seem to have in common.115 This in itself is interesting enough
because, as D’Oro writes, ‘many of Ryle’s contemporaries were quick to identify
Collingwood as a twentieth century adherent of the dogma [of the ghost in the machine]’
(D’Oro 2003). She rightly argues that it is a mistake to regard Collingwood’s position as a
dualist one and therefore also a mistake to see Collingwood as the target of Ryle’s attack on
dualism. However, she subscribes to an influential interpretation according to which Ryle is
a logical behaviourist and a semantic reductivist. But this interpretation does not do justice
to Ryle’s philosophy which is better characterised as a semantic non-reductive one. With
this interpretation in hand, a rather different picture emerges of Ryle and Collingwood,
suggesting far more similarities between their positions than D’Oro’s interpretation does.
Let me start with a comparison between the refutation of Cartesian dualism by
Collingwood and Ryle, after which I shall discuss D’Oro’s interpretation. Finally, I will pay
attention to Donagan’s claim that Ryle’s and Collingwood’s rejection of Cartesian dualism
had the same form, that is, that they tried to refute it in similar ways.
Ryle and Collingwood described the dualism they rejected as follows.
A person (…) lives through two collateral histories, one consisting of what happens in and to his
body, the other consisting of what happens in and to his mind. The first is public, the second
private. The events in the first history are events in the physical world, those in the second are
events in the mental world. (Ryle 1949a, 13)
Most people, probably, have thought of man’s mind as inhabiting his body somewhat as he
inhabits a house. (Collingwood 1942, 8)
As we have seen in Chapter 3, Ryle claims that Cartesian dualism – which he also
mockingly referred to as ‘the ghost in the machine’ – is a philosopher’s myth. Dualism
115
See above, footnote 88.
138
makes the mistake of representing the facts of mental life as belonging to one logical
category, whereas in fact they belong to another. In other words: mind-body dualists make
a category-mistake. They wrongly assume that statements about mind and those about body
belong to the same category, or: they mistakenly treat mental concepts as names.
According to Collingwood, dualism is a very childish belief, since ‘nothing can
inhabit a house made of matter except something else made of matter’ (Collingwood 1942,
8). It is a belief that can only survive by ignorance of its subject-matter; it can have no
scientific interest, and therefore Collingwood calls it an ‘old wives’ tale’, a description
which resembles Ryle’s ‘Cartesian myth’. He claims that there is only an indirect relation
between body and mind and not a direct one, and that ‘The problem of the relation between
body and mind’ is a bogus problem which cannot be stated without making a false
assumption.’ (Collingwood 1942, 10). This false assumption is that man is partly body and
partly mind, and that mind acts on body and body on mind, which Collingwood considers
to be another ‘old wives’ tale’. He denies that body and mind are two different substances:
they are one and the same thing, namely man himself, as known in two different ways.
Donagan claims that, put in Rylean terms, the idea that mind and body are two different
substances is the category-mistake from which Collingwood’s ‘old wives’ tale’ derives.116
Not a part of man, but the whole of man, is body in so far as he approaches the problem of self-
knowledge by the methods of natural science. (…) Not a part of man, but the whole of man, is
mind in so far as he approaches the problem of self-knowledge by expanding and clarifying the
data of reflection. (…) The ‘indirect relation between body and mind’ is the relation between the
sciences of body, or natural sciences, and the sciences of mind; that is the relation inquiry into
which ought to be substituted for the make-believe inquiry into the make-believe problem of ‘the
relation between body and mind. (Collingwood 1942, 11)
Both approaches, natural sciences and sciences of mind, are valid according to
Collingwood. Each has its own problems and must solve them by using its own methods.
One has to avoid what Collingwood calls the ‘fallacy of swapping horses’. If you are trying
to solve a problem in the science of mind, you cannot halfway decide to ‘swap your horse’
for the one called natural science.
In his inaugural lecture Ryle credits Collingwood for his understanding of the
relation between natural science and human studies, that is, sciences of mind.117 He saw
that Collingwood denied the existence of a feud between the objectives of the natural
sciences and those of the sciences of mind; and further, that he showed that these enquiries
were not giving ‘rival answers to the same questions about the same world’ (Ryle 1945,
195), nor ‘separate answers to the same questions about rival worlds’ (Ibid.). According to
Collingwood natural sciences and sciences of mind were ‘giving their own answers to
different questions about the same world.’ (Ibid.)118
So far, it seems that there are striking similarities between Ryle’s and
Collingwood’s rejection of dualism. However, D’Oro in her paper ‘Collingwood and Ryle
on the Concept of Mind’ (2003), showing that Collingwood was not a modern adherent of
116
Donagan 1962 (pp. 290-291)
117
Cf. Donagan 1962 (p. 292)
118
In Dilemmas, Ryle tries to unravel dilemmas which originated from the committing of fallacies similar to
Collingwood’s ‘fallacy of swapping horses’. ‘There often arise quarrels between theories, or, more generally,
between lines of thought, which are not rival solutions to the same problem, but rather solutions or would-be
solutions of different problems, and which, none the less, seem to be irreconcilable with one another. A thinker
who adopts one of them seems to be logically committed to rejecting the other, despite the fact that the inquiries
from which the theories issued had, from the beginning, widely divergent goals.’ (Ryle 1954a, 1)
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the dogma attacked by Ryle, drives a wedge between the two philosophers by
characterising Ryle’s philosophical position as logical behaviourism and semantic
reductivism, and Collingwood’s position as a non-reductive one. Whereas D’Oro still
depicts the Ryle of 1949 as being heavily influenced by logical positivism, Stout rightly
argues that by that time ‘he [Ryle] wanted to distance himself from the positivistic thought
that we should restrict our description of the world to a description of those phenomena that
can be determinately measured by scientific instruments’ (Stout 2003, 40). D’Oro suggests
that while both philosophers refuted Cartesian dualism, their final positions did not have a
lot in common. Against this I argue that there is greater similarity between their positions
than she maintains. This conclusion is based upon my claim from Chapter 3 that Ryle
should not be interpreted as a reductive logical behaviourist, that is as someone (to use
D’Oro’s definition) committed to maintaining the position that ‘statements describing
mental phenomena can be translated, without loss of meaning, into statements describing
behavioural phenomena’ (D’Oro 2003, 19).
According to D’Oro’s interpretation Collingwood is ‘anti-Rylean’ because he does
not allow the semantic reduction of statements about mind to statements about behaviour.
Following Park’s nonbehaviouristic interpretation, I would say that in this sense Ryle was
‘anti-Rylean’ himself. The wedge D’Oro creates between the two philosophers does not in
fact exist. She claims that Collingwood’s motivation for his rejection of the semantic
reduction ‘is to be found in his rejection of logical positivism and its adoption of
(empirical) verifiability as a condition of meaning’ (D’Oro 2003, 26). But by 1949 Ryle
had abandoned these views as well. And the idea that the logical structure of action
explanations is different from the logical structure of event explanations, which D’Oro
attributes to Collingwood, could also be ascribed to Ryle. Thus, there are more similarities
between Ryle’s and Collingwood’s refutation of Cartesian dualism than D’Oro’s
interpretation of Ryle leaves room for.
Of course there are important differences as well. Donagan claims that
Collingwood’s idea that body and mind are not two different substances and are only
indirectly related through natural sciences and the sciences of mind, was used by Ryle in
The Concept of Mind in much the same way for refuting Cartesian dualism. The same is
true of Collingwood’s idea that the enquiry into the problem of the relation between body
and mind should be replaced by an enquiry into the relation between natural sciences and
the sciences of mind: ‘Ryle (…) in The Concept of Mind approached the mind-body
problem in much the same way (…)’ (Donagan 1962, 292). This claim, however, needs to
be qualified, as becomes clear when we look at what Ryle was in fact doing in The Concept
of Mind (1949a).
The idea that mind and body are not two different substances, and that explanatory
descriptions in terms of mind and body are two different explanatory descriptions of one
activity is indeed present in The Concept of Mind.
He is bodily active and he is mentally active, but he is not being synchronously active in two
different ‘places’, or with two different ‘engines’. There is the one activity, but it is one
susceptible of and requiring more than one kind of explanatory description. (Ryle 1949a, 50)
However, Ryle nowhere refers to the idea of the relation between sciences as an indirect
relation between body and mind, and, secondly, the passage quoted above is the only place
in The Concept of Mind where Ryle actually mentions explanatory descriptions.
Throughout the book he tries to show that when we describe someone’s action in terms of
mental conduct terms we are not claiming that this person is actually performing two
140
actions, one bodily and one mental action. Ryle uses everyday examples and does not refer
to scientific explanations at all. One of his examples is that of a clown tripping on purpose.
The clown who trips on purpose differs from a clumsy man, who cannot help tripping, in
that the clown has a certain skill which the clumsy man lacks. It is not the case that the
clown who trips on purpose performs one bodily action, namely tripping, and another
mental action, namely doing it on purpose. There is one action in which an ability is put
into practice. The clumsy man also performs one action, but without an ability being put
into practice.
Ryle would probably have agreed with Collingwood’s arguments against Cartesian
dualism which were based on the nature of scientific explanations, but he did not in fact use
these kinds of arguments in The Concept of Mind. (If he had done so, the book would
probably have been misinterpreted less often than has been the case. Ryle has been most
frequently misinterpreted as a behaviourist.119) Ryle’s approach was different; he used
common sense examples and tried to show that Cartesian dualism led to absurdities. For
example, acceptance of the dualist’s claim that we can only have knowledge, viz.
introspective knowledge, of our own mental states leads to absurdity, since then we would
not be able to know whether another person is intelligent, sad, angry etc. This is absurd,
because in everyday life we know perfectly well how to attribute mental concepts to our
friends, family and colleagues. Whereas Collingwood starts his argument against dualism
by looking at the relations between different kinds of scientific methods and explanations,
Ryle starts at the level of what we already know in our everyday life.
This book offers what may with reservations be described as a theory of the mind. But it does not
give new information about minds. We possess already a wealth of information about minds,
information which is neither derived from, nor upset by, the arguments of philosophers. The
philosophical arguments which constitute this book are intended not to increase what we know
about minds, but to rectify the logical geography of the knowledge which we already possess.
(Ryle 1949a, 9)
The similarities between Collingwood’s refutation of Cartesian dualism and Ryle’s

rejection of it in The Concept of Mind, are not, then, as straightforward as Donagan seems
to suggest.
An important similarity between the two philosophers – not observed by
Collingwood scholars – is their attempt to refute dualism without making ontological
claims. Their approach to the study of mind is a telling example. They both speak about
mind in terms of what it does, without being willing to make strong ontological claims.
A study of mind on the historical method involves two renunciations. First (…) It does not ask
what mind is; it asks only what mind does. (…) Secondly, it renounces all attempt to discover
what mind always and everywhere does, and asks only what mind has done on certain definite
occasions. (Collingwood 1942, 61)
Collingwood does not claim that what mind is and what it does are one and the same thing:
You can have your cake and eat it too by holding that mind is ‘pure act’, so that the question
what mind is resolves itself without residue into the question what mind does; but whether this is
defensible I shall not ask. (Collingwood 1942, 61) 120
119
Cf. Park 1994 (p. 265)
120
In The New Leviathan Collingwood deliberately does not commit himself to the strong ontological claim to
which he seems to have committed himself earlier, e.g. in his early Religion and Philosophy (1916, 34). In this
work he claimed that the mind is what it does, that is, that mind is pure act. Some scholars, e.g. Connelly (1995)
141
Ryle does more or less the same thing. For example, in The Concept of Mind (1949a) he
wants to provide a logical geography of the different concepts of mind, which amounts to a
thorough and detailed description of what the mind does. Like Collingwood, Ryle refrains
from making ontological claims about the mind.
Intelligence and ‘Knowing How’ versus ‘Knowing That’

Another example of an alleged similarity between Ryle and Collingwood is the distinction
between ‘knowing how’ and ‘knowing that’. For Ryle, this distinction is of great
importance in attacking dualism. ‘Knowing that’ refers to theoretical knowledge and
‘knowing how’ to an ability, a competence. Ryle claims that ‘knowing how’ is the primary
one and does not necessarily require ‘knowing that’, that is, theorising.
Efficient practice precedes the theory of it; methodologies presuppose the application of the
methods, of the critical investigations of which they are the products. It was because Aristotle
found himself and others reasoning now intelligently and now stupidly and it was because Izaak
Walton found himself and others angling sometimes effectively and sometimes ineffectively that
both were able to give to their pupils the maxims and prescriptions of their arts. It is therefore
possible for people intelligently to perform some sorts of operations when they are not yet able
to consider any propositions enjoining how they should be performed. Some intelligent
performances are not controlled by any interior acknowledgements of the principles applied in
them. (Ryle 1949a, 31)
Ryle criticises what he sees as the two basic assumptions of Cartesian dualism, viz. the idea
that ‘knowing that’ is the primary activity of the mind, and the assumption that theorising is
intrinsically a private and internal operation. He claims that ‘knowing how’ is the primary
activity of minds, instead of ‘knowing that’. His strongest argument against the dualists is
the following reductio ad absurdum (Ryle 1949a, 31):
Suppose 1) that every intelligent performance is preceded by the consideration of

propositions. (This is the dualist’s claim.)
2) The consideration of propositions is itself an operation the execution of which can be
more or less intelligent.
3) This leads to an infinite regression of consideration of propositions.
4) This is absurd. Therefore, (1) is rejected.
Ryle’s idea of intelligence as ‘knowing how’ has been linked by Van der Dussen to
Collingwood’s concept of intelligence as used in his review (Collingwood 1923) of
Spearman’s The Nature of ‘Intelligence’ and the Principles of Cognition (1923). Van der
Dussen remarks: ‘It is further a striking anticipation of Ryle’s description of intelligence as
“knowing how”, as developed in The Concept of Mind.’ (Van der Dussen 1981, 367). Here
Van der Dussen refers to Collingwood’s rejection of the usefulness of intelligence-tests.
Intelligence-tests are meant to test intelligence, and intelligence, as Professor Spearman’s

opening chapter shows, is not scientifically definable. The word denotes not a scientific concept
but a vaguely-defined and fluctuating mass of attributes which we wish to find in persons who
are to be entrusted with certain vaguely-defined responsibilities. To pretend, in such inquiries, to
scientific accuracy is like trying to plot the edge of a fog with a theodilite. We can see, normally,
and H. S. Harris (1995), have argued that Collingwood still subscribed to the ontological claim that mind is what it
does later in his career. Be that as it may, it is in any case clear that in 1942 Collingwood does not use this
ontological claim to refute dualism.
142
when we are in a fog and when we are not; so we can, after ordinary experience of a person, tell
whether he is or is not a person of ‘intelligence’, and suitable for positions of responsibility.
(Collingwood 1923, 425-426)121
This passage, however, does not unambiguously support Van der Dussen’s claim that
Collingwood considered intelligence to be ‘knowing how’ in a Rylean sense. The quotation
is about the fact that intelligence does not have well-defined criteria, and therefore
intelligence-tests are useless. It is not about whether theorising plays a fundamental role in
intelligent performances. Moreover, when we consider Collingwood’s claim, made many
years later in The New Leviathan (1942), that thought is both theoretical and practical and
that it is primarily practical, it seems plausible that different distinctions are at stake. At
first sight, Collingwood’s theoretical and practical thinking seem to resemble Ryle’s
‘knowing how’ and ‘knowing that’. However, a closer study of the examples Collingwood
provides of practical thinking suggests differently.
Man’s mind is made of thought. (…) thought is both theoretical and practical. Theoretical
thought is, for example, thinking about the cold, or thinking about the difference between cold
and hot, or thinking that yesterday was even colder than to-day. Practical thought is, for example,
thinking whether to light a fire or thinking that you will go to bed, or thinking: ‘Why should I
have the window open?’ (…) thought is primarily practical (…). (Collingwood 1942, 5)
Ryle’s ‘knowing how’ refers to an ability to do something, whereas ‘knowing that’ refers to
theoretical knowledge. Collingwood, however, seems to argue that theoretical thinking and
practical thinking are both forms of theorising in the Rylean sense of considering
propositions – one is theorising in science and the other is theorising in everyday life. One
of Ryle’s most important goals in The Concept of Mind was to try to show that theorising
(i.e. considering propositions) is not the primary activity of the mind, whereas Collingwood
merely seems to claim that scientific theorising (or ‘theoretical’ theorising) is not the
122
primary activity of the mind.
Logic of Question and Answer

There is another similarity – hitherto undiscussed by other scholars – between Ryle and
Collingwood, which Ryle himself refers to in his Inaugural Lecture. His tone is strikingly
positive, compared to that of the early Correspondence.
Professor Collingwood saw more clearly, I think, than did his most eminent predecessors in the
philosophy of history that the appearance of a feud or antithesis between Nature and Spirit, that
is to say, between the objectives of the natural sciences and those of the human studies, is an
illusion. These branches of inquiry are not giving rival answers to the same questions about the
same world; nor are they giving separate answers to the same questions about rival worlds; they
are giving their own answers to different questions about the same world. Just as physics is
neither the foe nor the handmaid of geometry, so history, jurisprudence and literary studies are
neither hostile nor ancillary to the laboratory sciences. Their categories, that is, their questions,
methods and canons are different. In my predecessor’s word, they work with different
presuppositions. To establish this point it is necessary to chart these differences. This task
121
See Van der Dussen 1981 (p. 367).
122
This is not to deny that practice does indeed play an important role in Collingwood’s writings. Collingwood
does state that practice precedes theory, e.g. ‘But in using such language I do not mean to imply that a philosopher
can first of all work out certain rules of method and then go on to apply them, as a ready-made instrument, to fresh
problems. It is only by working at problems, of whatever kind, that one can learn the way to handle them (…).’
(Collingwood 1935b, 1) But ‘practice’ here has a different meaning than ‘practical thinking’.
143
Professor Collingwood died too soon to complete but not too soon to begin. He had already
made that great philosophic advance of reducing a puzzle to a problem. (Ryle 1945, 195)
The importance of questioning was already recognised by Collingwood at an early stage in

his career. In rejecting what he called the doctrine of propositional logic (that truth or
falsehood belongs to propositions as such), he developed his ‘logic of question and
answer’. In his autobiography he claimed that his work in archaeology had shown him the
importance of the ‘questioning activity’ (Collingwood 1939, 30) in knowledge. He
considered question and answer as strictly correlative. According to Collingwood’s logic of
question and answer, only complexes consisting of questions and answers could be true or
false, not propositions as such.
The current logic maintained that two propositions might, simply as propositions, contradict one
another, and that by examining them simply as propositions you could find out whether they did
so or not. This I denied. If you cannot tell what a proposition means unless you know what
question it is meant to answer, you will mistake its meaning if you make a mistake about that
question. (…) No two propositions, I saw, can contradict one another unless they are answers to
the same question. It is therefore impossible to say of a man, ‘I do not know what the question is
which he is trying to answer, but I can see that he is contradicting himself’. (Collingwood 1939,
33)
Consider the following example:
Suppose, instead of talking about the world, the metaphysician were talking about the contents of
a small mahogany box with a sliding top; and suppose he said, ‘The contents of this box are both
one thing and many things’. A stupid critic may think that he is offering two incompatible
answers to a single question, ‘Are the contents of this box one x or many x’s?’ But the critic has
reconstructed the question wrong. There were two questions: (a) Are the contents of this box one
set of chessmen or many sets? (b) Are the contents of this box one chessman or many chessmen?
There is no contradiction between saying that something (…) is one, and saying that it is many.
Contradiction would set in only if that something were said to be both one x and many x’s.
(Collingwood 1939, 41)
Collingwood’s idea that philosophical propositions could be properly understood only in

the light of the questions to which they were answers, does not seem so remote from Ryle’s
idea in The Concept of Mind (1949a) that philosophers should be looking at the logical
geography of concepts, that is, they should determine the set of ways in which it is logically
legitimate to operate with them. One could argue that in order to determine the logical
geography of a philosophical proposition we have to look at what questions they are proper
answers to. This method could help to lay bare a considerable part of a concept’s logical
geography.
He [Descartes] had mistaken the logic of his problem. Instead of asking by what criteria
intelligent behaviour is actually distinguished from non-intelligent behaviour, he asked ‘Given
that the principle of mechanical causation does not tell us the difference, what other causal
principle will tell it us?’ (Ryle 1949a, 23)
Ryle tried to lay bare the logical geography of Cartesian mind-body dualism by showing to
what question it was a proper answer. And in his early paper ‘Negation’, he claimed:
By a genuine proposition I mean one which is an answer (the true answer or a false one) to a real
question. And by a real question I mean one which can be known necessarily to have an answer,
though the answer may not be known. (Ryle 1929, 3)
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Ryle generally does not explicitly use the logic of question and answer in his writings, in
the sense that he tries to determine the logical geography of a proposition by searching
explicitly for the questions to which this proposition is a proper answer. However, his
method can often be reformulated into one which does make use of a logic of question and
answer, for example when he discusses the logic of dispositional statements in The Concept
of Mind.
When a cow is said to be a ruminant, or a man is said to be a cigarette-smoker, it is not being

said that the cow is ruminating now or that the man is smoking a cigarette now. To be a ruminant
is to tend to ruminate from time to time, and to be a cigarette-smoker is to be in the habit of
smoking cigarettes. (Ryle 1949a, 113)
In other words: ‘this man is a cigarette-smoker’ is not an answer to a question of the type
‘is this man smoking now?’, but to a question of the type ‘is this man in the habit of
smoking cigarettes?’
However, Ryle did not agree with Collingwood’s claim that propositions cannot be
true or false on their own, that is, that only complexes of questions and answers can be true
or false. Their different notions of logic and Ryle’s battle against systematically misleading
expressions can, once more, serve as an explanation. Let us take the example of the small
mahogany box again. Collingwood describes the situation in which the metaphysician says,
‘The contents of this box are one thing and many things’ as follows. Nothing is wrong with
the metaphysician’s expression. The critic who thinks he is offering two incompatible
answers to a single question reconstructs the question in the wrong way. The critic did not
realise that there were two questions. The answer ‘one thing’ concerned the question ‘are
the contents of this box one set of chessmen or many sets?’, and ‘many things’ was an
answer to the question ‘are the contents of this box one chessman or many chessmen?’.
Ryle, on the other hand, would have described the situation differently. He presumably
would not have blamed the critic but would have accused the metaphysician of a
misleading use of language. Logic should not adjust to misleading and ambiguous
language, but the other way around. Nevertheless, the basic idea they share, viz. that in
order to understand philosophical propositions we should consider to which questions they
are answers.
Conclusion
Ryle’s and Collingwood’s different approaches to logic and to the history of philosophy
have been shown to be crucial to the argument developed in this chapter. These differences,
together with Collingwood’s sometimes idiosyncratic terminology, which was not ideally
suited to the position he was in fact trying to maintain, led in the Correspondence to various
misinterpretations – such as Ryle’s interpretation of Collingwood’s project as a strong
ontological one – and disagreements. We cannot properly interpret their dispute about the
Ontological Argument if we do not have access to its underlying structures. The same is
true of their disagreement about ‘existence-propositions’.
I hope that, through sketching the broader philosophical context and drawing out
some of its implications for a proper understanding of the points at issue, my account has
contributed to the formulation of a more accurate and comprehensive interpretation of the
Correspondence. On the surface, the Correspondence deals with many disagreements
without ever discussing the underlying, more fundamental, issues between Ryle and
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Collingwood. In the first part of this chapter I tried to uncover these fundamental issues.
The second part was meant, on the one hand, to provide part of the philosophical context of
the Correspondence, and, on the other hand, to unmask some of the misleading
comparisons that Collingwood scholars have made between Ryle and Collingwood in their
attempts to cast a different and more analytic light on Collingwood. I have shown that,
whilst there are crucial differences between the two philosophers, nonetheless after
disentangling and removing misunderstandings it can be seen that their views are not so far
apart as they might first appear. At the same time, I have tried to temper the claims made by
those who, like Donagan, Van der Dussen and Boucher, tend to argue for a closer
resemblance between Collingwood and Ryle than can be sustained by the texts.
146
Ryle and Wittgenstein
Chapter 6
No substantial research has been done on the intellectual and philosophical relationship
between Ryle and Wittgenstein. This may be explained by the fact that Ryle did not publish
much on Wittgenstein and Wittgenstein did not write anything on Ryle. However, the
resemblances between the two which have been noted by philosophers such as Peter
Hacker, Rom Harré, O. K. Bouwsma, Waismann, Von Savigny and John Shosky make it a
topic worth investigating. Because of the scarcity of published comments by Ryle and
Wittgenstein on each other’s philosophical ideas, I will largely rely on unpublished sources.
This chapter will focus on their similarities and differences, which will illuminate, I hope,
aspects of their philosophies.
I shall start by giving a historical sketch of their friendship and professional
relationship, showing that Wittgenstein indeed played a large role in Ryle’s philosophical
life, and – although less obvious – that until a certain time Wittgenstein greatly appreciated
Ryle’s ideas as well. Secondly, I will discuss Ryle’s interpretation of Wittgenstein.
Important sources here are three papers which Ryle wrote about Wittgenstein and the ‘Ryle
Collection’, which is kept at Linacre College Oxford (see appendix 2). The remainder of
this chapter aims at further illuminating similarities and dissimilarities between the two
philosophers, using for the first time material from the Ryle archives. Obviously, this is a
huge theme, and I have limited myself to some general lines of thought and interpretations
without pretending in any way to give a complete and detailed account of Wittgenstein’s
views and different Wittgenstein interpretations.
Historical context
Ryle became interested in Wittgenstein’s philosophical ideas around 1925, when he was a
junior lecturer at Christ Church. At that time Oxford was still, as Ryle would say,
philosophically dull and hermetically closed off. His colleagues were in general not
interested in what people outside Oxford had to say. The influence of great philosophers
such as Russell and Wittgenstein on Oxford philosophy was therefore negligible. Ryle,
however, put his mind to their writings and developed a great interest in Wittgenstein’s
ideas.
Alfred J. Ayer recalled in his autobiography that Ryle had introduced him to the
philosophical thoughts of Wittgenstein (Ayer 1977). In Ayer’s last term as an
undergraduate (probably Spring term 1932) he read a paper on Wittgenstein’s Tractatus to
the Jowett Society. In his Part of my Life (1977) Ayer wrote: ‘I believe, however, that I am
right in thinking that this was the first occasion in Oxford on which there had been any
public discussion of Wittgenstein’s work.’ (Ayer 1977, 119)
As we have already seen in Chapter 1, at one of the Joint Sessions of the
Aristotelian Society, Ryle met Wittgenstein and they became friends. During the 1930s
they occasionally went on walking holidays together. In a conversation with Bryan
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Magee123, Ryle’s answer to Magee’s question whether he would consider his own and
Wittgenstein’s work as belonging to the same movement was: ‘(…) certainly I wouldn’t
regard myself as independent of Wittgenstein. I was trying to, from say 1925 onwards, to
learn whatever I could from him.’ (interview with Magee, 2) And Wittgenstein must have
appreciated Ryle’s work as well. In 1942 he answered the question how many people he
thought understood his philosophy by saying: ‘Two – and one of them is Gilbert Ryle.’124
(Monk 1990, 436).
In his autobiographical essay (Ryle 1970) Ryle describes his occasional visits to
the Moral Sciences Club at Cambridge and says that these meetings were totally devoted to
Wittgenstein. Ryle thought this total rejection of the thoughts of all other people extremely
unhealthy for the students and for Wittgenstein himself.
Ryle made further reservations about Wittgenstein. As he writes in 1957:
He was like Socrates in rigidly separating the philosopher from the sophist; unlike Socrates in
shunning the market-place; like Socrates in striving to convert his pupils; unlike Socrates in
feeling the need to conserve his genius by insulation. He was hermetic, ascetic, guru and Führer.
(…) He loathed being connected with academic philosophers, and he avoided academic chores.
After 1929 he attended no conferences; he did no reviewing for journals; only once did he attend
a philosophical meeting in Oxford; he was inaccessible to visiting philosophers; he read few, if
any, of the philosophical books and articles that came out during his last 25 years. (Ryle 1957b,
259)
One of this visiting philosophers was Ayer, who was introduced to Wittgenstein by Ryle in
1932. As Ayer recalls:
They were personal friends though they had their differences, one of them arising from Gilbert’s
refusal to admit that it was inconceivable that there should ever be a good British film. (…) I do
not think that they often discussed philosophy, in which their style was very different although
their thoughts were later to run on rather similar lines. (Ayer 1977, 120)
It sounds odd that Ryle and Wittgenstein would not have discussed philosophical issues
much, but this is the picture suggested in Ayer’s autobiography and Monk’s biography of
Wittgenstein. At a symposium on Ryle in November 2002 at Linacre College, Oxford,
Stuart Hampshire, who was one of Ryle’s colleagues in philosophy in Oxford, claimed that
Ryle and Wittgenstein certainly must have had philosophical discussions.
Next to his personal contact with Wittgenstein, in 1932-33 Ryle’s other source of
Wittgenstein’s thinking was Ayer who, on Ryle’s suggestion, spent his two lecture-free
terms in Vienna to learn about the Vienna Circle, as hardly anything was known about the
Circle in England. Ayer attended Schlick’s lectures on the philosophy of science at the
University of Vienna. He also attended the Vienna Circle meetings, held once a fortnight on
Thursday, which Wittgenstein refused to attend. However, Wittgenstein regularly met
Schlick and Waismann to discuss philosophical matters, and communicated with the Circle
through them.
After World War II, the friendship between Ryle and Wittgenstein became less
warm, after Ryle had written a positive article on one of Karl Popper’s essays, in which
123
I found a typescript of this conversation at the Philosophical Centre in Oxford. Unfortunately, I have been
unable to trace its exact source. Asked by me, Magee could not remember when and where the conversation took
place and suggested it may have been taped by a student.
124
Naomi Wilkinson, a cousin of Gilbert Ryle, asked Wittgenstein this question. Miss Wilkinson organized
gramophone recitals at the hospital. Wittgenstein regularly attended these and he and Miss Wilkinson became
friends.
148
Popper had been rather negative about Wittgenstein (Popper 1945). Wittgenstein could not
appreciate this. Furthermore, Wittgenstein later accused Ryle of ‘borrowing other men’s
thoughts’, a type of accusation which was not uncommon of Wittgenstein.125
He [Wittgenstein] spoke of Gilbert Ryle. Ryle had been good when he was young. Now he just
borrowed other men’s thoughts. I [Bouwsma] suggested that this was due to the burden of
administrative duties. But W. said it was much worse. (Bouwsma 1986, 50)126
Ryle later described Wittgenstein’s tendency to suddenly break off all connections with
someone as follows: ‘He remorselessly excommunicated persons of whom he disapproved.’
(Ryle 1957b, 259)
Ryle did not boast about knowing Wittgenstein personally, either to his colleagues
or his students. Harré – a former student and colleague of Ryle – writes: ‘At that time no
one, so far as I can tell, knew much if anything of the fairly close personal relations that had
once existed between Ryle and Wittgenstein.’ (Harré 1999, 39) In fact, he was rather
secretive about it, perhaps because of his dislike of disciple-like inclinations Wittgenstein
provoked. Harré recalls feeling ‘a sense of having been short changed’ (Harré 1999, 45)
upon finding out from Monk’s biography how well Ryle in fact knew Wittgenstein.
Ryle and Wittgenstein met during the year in which Wittgenstein started to lecture
at Cambridge about ideas which differed from the views expressed in his Tractatus. In
1933-34 he dictated lecture notes, and during 1934-35 he dictated another longer
manuscript, this time privately to Frank Skinner and Alice Ambrose. These dictations
became to be called respectively the Blue Book and the Brown Book, because of the
colours of their wrappers. It is likely that Ryle was one of the first Oxford philosophers to
have access to the typescripts of The Blue and Brown Books.127 Apart from The Blue and
Brown Books, The Tractatus and Philosophical Investigations128, it is difficult to determine
to which of Wittgenstein’s other writings Ryle had access and at what stage of his career.
Below I will argue that Ryle also read Wittgenstein’s very early and at the time relatively
unknown ‘Notes on Logic’ (September 1913), his ‘Lectures on the foundations of
Mathematics’ (1939), his Notebooks, 1914-1916, and his letters to Russell.
Ryle’s Interpretation of Wittgenstein

During his philosophical career Ryle only wrote three papers on Wittgenstein: two rather
general ones, ‘Ludwig Wittgenstein’ (Ryle 1951c) and ‘Review of Ludwig Wittgenstein:
Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics’ (Ryle 1957b), and a more specialized one
which was published posthumously, ‘Ontological and Logical Talk in Wittgenstein’s
Tractatus’ (Ryle 1993). When Ryle wrote his first published paper on Wittgenstein, which
was an obituary in Analysis, Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations had not yet been
published, but Ryle already referred to Wittgenstein’s work postdating the Tractatus. Most
125
Cf. Hacker 1996 (p. 313), footnote 98 and Bouwsma 1986 (p. 50).
126
This conversation between Bouwsma and Wittgenstein took place in October 1949.
127
Cf. Ray Monk 1990 (pp. 336-37); Antony Flew 1999 (p. 15); Flew 1998 (p. 194); Ben Rogers 2000 (p. 159);
Hacker 1996 (p. 86).
128
I have found no indications that Ryle also had access to early, unpublished versions of the Investigations,
although in theory it is possible that he had early access to the first 188 remarks of the later Investigations (mainly
written during the autumn of 1936 and 1937), 37 remarks of which can be traced back to earlier manuscripts from
1930-1934, and 24 to the attempted revision of the brown book (in German) in 1936 (further: 23 to a notebook
from 1936, 13 to manuscript writings from 1937-38, and one to 1945.) (Luckhardt 1979, 142).
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likely, these remarks were mainly based on the Blue and Brown Books and Lectures on the
Foundations of Mathematics, at that time still unpublished though circulating. The title of
Ryle’s second paper, ‘Review of Ludwig Wittgenstein: Remarks on the Foundations of
Mathematics’, suggests that it is a review of Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics.
But since a review of this work would have been too specialized for the general reader of
Scientific American, the editors had asked Ryle to provide a more general interpretation of
Wittgenstein. By that time Philosophical Investigations had been published and when
speaking about Wittgenstein’s philosophical thought after the Tractatus Ryle mainly had
this work in mind.
Other sources I shall be using in my discussion of Ryle’s interpretation of
Wittgenstein are Ryle’s heavily annotated copies of the Tractatus129 and his, less heavily,
annotated copy of Philosophical Investigations130, a transcription of Rom Harré’s notes of
Ryle’s lectures on Wittgenstein during his course ‘History of Theories of Meaning’ (1954-
55), and several unpublished documents which are kept in the so-called ‘red box’ at Linacre
College: a typed comment on Wittgenstein’s early ‘Notes on Logic’ (1913), (lecture) notes
on the structure of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus131, and a bibliography which was probably
intended for students studying the Tractatus.132 The annotations reveal Ryle’s extensive
study of Wittgenstein’s thought and make it all the more regrettable that he did not publish
more about Wittgenstein. From what he did publish and from the unpublished material in
the ‘Ryle Collection’ I shall try to construe Ryle’s ‘Wittgenstein’.
Wittgenstein’s ‘Overriding Worry’

In the introduction to the first volume of his Collected Papers Ryle writes about his
intentions in studying other philosophers:
Not all, but most of these Critical Essays issue from a common exegetic policy (…). Through
nearly all (…) runs a common strategy, or, it may be, a common idée fixe. From the time of the
Tractatus the question had been a live and insistent one: – what sort of an enquiry is philosophy
as distinct from Natural Science, Mental Science, Mathematics, Theology and Formal Logic?
What, if any, is its proprietary subject-matter? What, if any, is its peculiar method? (…) To
elucidate the thoughts of a philosopher we need to find the answer not only to the question ‘What
were his intellectual worries?’ but, before that question and after that question, the answer to the
question ‘What was his overriding Worry?’ (viii-ix)
According to Ryle, Wittgenstein’s overriding worry – the central question running through
all of his writings – was: ‘What can philosophers and logicians do, and how should they do
it?’ (Ryle 1951c, 251) Ryle claims that except for some incidental discussions, the question
what philosophy is, or how it differs from science began seriously to worry philosophers
only after the publication of the Tractatus. Wittgenstein’s important role in the rise of
discussions about the nature and methods of philosophy cannot be underestimated.
129
The ‘Ryle Collection’ contains three different editions of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus (London Routledge &
Kegan Paul LTD 1922, 1951 and 1969). The second oldest is most heavily annotated; the most recent one hardly
so.
130
Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein, trans. Anscombe, Basil Blackwell Oxford 1953. Another version of
Philosophical Investigations also owned by Ryle has disappeared from Linacre Library.
131
See Appendix 3.
132
If the notes on the Tractatus are written around the same time as the bibliography, which was presumably
meant as a reading-list for students studying the Tractatus, they are to be dated between 1955 and 1957; for in his
bibliography Ryle refers to Wittgenstein’s ‘Notes on Logic’, which was published in the Journal of Philosophy in
1957, as ‘unpublished’, and he already mentions Moore’s articles in Mind on ‘Wittgenstein’s teaching in
Cambridge, 1930-33’, which were published in 1954-1955.
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The Tractatus
Because Wittgenstein’s initial interest was in the philosophy of logic as inspired by
Russell’s and Frege’s logicistic programme regarding the foundations of mathematics, he
tended to put all meaningful expressions in the mould of the logic of mathematical
expressions, thus Ryle. His logical-mathematical terminology – by which Ryle does not
only mean that Wittgenstein occasionally uses mathematical formulas, but also his
apodictic and aphoristic style – makes the Tractatus a very difficult work, and for
understanding it one must first master its terminology. Ryle considers the two main aims of
the Tractatus to be: 1) showing what philosophy is and what it is not, and 2) showing what
Formal Logic is. Because of Ryle’s lack of interest in the formal logical part of the
Tractatus, and perhaps also his unfamiliarity with its technical details, he mainly focuses on
its first aim, claiming that in Wittgenstein’s later writings the question of the status of logic
disappeared to the background. It was rather ‘philosophy (…) that is pestering him
[Wittgenstein] for justice’ (Ryle 1957b, 265).
Ryle tries to make the Tractatus more accessible by proposing chapter headings
and section titles, something Wittgenstein most likely would not have approved of. The
‘red box’ at Linacre College contains a sheet of (lecture) notes on the structure of the
Tractatus (see Appendix 3), suggesting treating the whole numbers as chapters and the
single decimal numbers as sections. In his paper from 1957 Ryle argues that ‘the Tractatus
consists of a chain of sentences or short paragraphs, prefaced by numerical and decimal
index-numbers signalling both the train of the argument and the relative weights in it of the
successive items.’ (Ryle 1957b, 265) However, the sheet found in the ‘red box’ makes it
clear that Ryle did not always consider this to be the case: ‘Certainly sometimes a very
important thing is said in a paragraph or sentence with a very fiddling number of decimals
in its number, e.g. in 4.0312.’ (Ryle, Appendix 3)
Apart from explaining Wittgenstein’s main aims and method, in his papers Ryle
also makes an attempt to place Wittgenstein’s ideas in their historical context. In his paper
from 1951, for instance, he traces Wittgenstein’s use of the dichotomy sense-nonsense back
to Russell. When Russell investigated the logical principles which were the foundations of
mathematics, he ran into trouble. He could not avoid the construction of expressions with
the unpleasant habit of being true if and only if they were false, and vice versa. In other
words: he ended up with paradoxes. Russell’s solution was to recognize a distinction more
fundamental than the one between true and false, namely the one between significant and
nonsensical expressions. Both true and false expressions are significant, but there is also a
class of expressions which are neither true nor false: the class of nonsensical expressions.
According to Ryle, Wittgenstein generalised Russell’s distinction in the Tractatus. For
Wittgenstein:
All logic and all philosophy are enquiries into what makes it significant or nonsensical to say
certain things. The sciences aim at saying what is true about the world; philosophy aims at
disclosing only the logic of what can be truly or even falsely said about the world. This is why
philosophy is not a sinister science or a parent science; that its business is not to add to the
number of scientific statements, but to disclose their logic. (Ryle 1951c, 252)
Already in the Tractatus Wittgenstein started to free himself from what Ryle called ‘the
denotationist camp’ (Ryle 1957a, 363), that is, the idea that meaning is naming. He
realised, as did Frege, that logical and philosophical questions ‘are not questions about the
properties or relations of the denotata, if any, of the expressions which enter into the
sentences whose logic is under examination.’ (Ryle 1957a, 363-4) Logical constants, such
151
as ‘all’, ‘not’, ‘is’, ‘and’, do not stand for objects. They have the meanings they have by
virtue of the contributions they make to the structures ‘of the unitary senses of the
sentences in which they function’ (Ryle 1962d, 187), not by virtue of designating extra
objects or terms.133 This is why philosophers and logicians cannot construct significant
sentences – that is, sentences which are either true or false – about the meaning of logical
constants.
Wittgenstein maintained not just that sentences about logical constants could not
be constructed significantly, but thought that, more in general, everything philosophy
wanted to say could not be said (at least not significantly).
The conditions of significant (true-or-false) assertion could not be the topics of significant
assertions. That sentences of different sorts observe or break the rules of significance can be
shown but not stated or explained. (Ryle 1950, 247)
Ryle suggests that Wittgenstein’s claim of the ineffability of philosophy was, perhaps,
derived from the idea central to Russell’s Theory of Types that a proposition cannot be
about itself, or a sentence cannot convey a truth or falsehood about what it itself says (‘this
sentence is false’).
Another important move away from denotationist theory, additional to the idea that
logical constants do not function as names, was the tractarian idea that sentences are not
names but expressions of thoughts.
He [Wittgenstein] saw, too, that all the words and phrases that can enter into sentences are
governed by the rules of what he called, slightly metaphorically, ‘logical syntax’ or ‘logical
grammar’. These rules are what are broken by such concatenations of words and phrases as
result in nonsense. Logic is or includes the study of these rules. (Ibid.)
Ryle later claims to have learned from Wittgenstein that philosophical problems are
problems of a special sort and not ‘problems of an ordinary sort about special entities’
(Ryle 1971b, vii).
In his papers and lectures Ryle does not pay attention to Wittgenstein’s thoughts on
the relations between logic and mathematics and between logic and mechanics, although he
does acknowledge their importance for showing the positive nature of logic. Instead he
points to philosophy as opposed to logic and science, discussing the problem that whereas
we can talk sense ‘we cannot talk sense about the sense that we talk’, and this is exactly
what we are required to do in philosophy.
The truths of the natural sciences are factual truths, while those of logic are purely formal. Their
truth is neutral between the world as it is and as it might have been. (…) Thus logic is
unconcerned with the actual truth or falsity of the factual statements which can be draped on its
skeletons. Nonetheless logic is essentially concerned with the truth-or-falsity of these statements,
since it has to work out how the truth or falsity of one would follow, if another were true or were
false. (Ryle 1957b, 260-261)
Ryle tries to explain what this truth-or-falsehood of a statement is by referring to our

understanding of the proposition ‘It is raining’. Even when we do not know whether the
133
Of course this is by no means a new theory. In medieval times one called words such as ‘all’, ‘none’, etc.
‘syncategorematic terms’, i.e. terms which do not have a meaning by themselves, but derive their meaning from
their connection to ‘categorematic terms’ (‘all’ does not have a meaning when taken on its own, but does have
meaning when added to ‘man’). However, later movements had started to treat them in the same way again as
categorematic terms. This mainly in order to be able to maintain logical realism and anti- psychologism.
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statement is true or not, we do understand its meaning. In grasping the meaning of ‘It is
raining’ ‘you are getting not what the state of the weather is, but what-it-is-being-presented-
as-being’ (Ryle 1957b, 261), or ‘what it would be like if it were a fact-stating sentence’
(Harré 1999, 47), as Ryle explained during one of his lectures on the Tractatus in 1954-55.
The next question in need for an answer is how an expression means something for
Wittgenstein. It means something in much the same way as a map represents, truly or
falsely, the relative positions and distances of different towns.
A sentence has a meaning if its syntax could be the structural analogue of an actual state of
affairs, even though, when false, it actually has no such factual counterpart. Ceasar did not kill
Brutus, but ‘Ceasar killed Brutus’ makes sense, since there is, so to speak, room in reality,
though unfilled room, for this uncommitted murder. (Ryle 1957b, 262)
A truth-or-falsehood, then, is an organized complex of symbols representing, by analogy of

structure, a counterpart actual-or-possible state of affairs. It is, for example, a sentence, ‘in
its projective relation to the world’. To find out whether it is actually true or actually false
we have to match it against its should-be counterpart state of affairs in the world.134
This idea, together with the fact that this matching could only be done by
observations and experiments, led, according to Ryle, to the verificationist refutation of
metaphysical, theological and moral statements as nonsensical by logical positivists and by
Wittgenstein. They claim that these statements ‘have no anchorage in facts and so say
nothing; they are nothing but disguised gibberish’. (Ryle 1957b, 262) But then, what about
truths of logic? It is true that these are factually empty, they are tautological, but it is not the
case that they are of no use to us. They show us, ‘by evaporation of content’, how our
ordinary statements are organized.
A more detailed discussion of the Tractatus is presented in Ryle’s posthumously
published ‘Ontological and logical talk in Wittgenstein’s Tractatus’135. René Meyer dates
the paper to the late thirties, though he does not give an argument, and it might equally well
have been written many years later. As we know from his annotated copies of the
Tractatus, Ryle seems to have been intrigued by this philosophical work and kept reading it
over and over again.
As the title already suggests, in this paper Ryle tries to explain the relation between
the ontological and the logical claims of the Tractatus, speaking of, respectively, the
‘ontological story’ and the ‘propositional story’. Ryle takes it that the remarks with index-
number 1 tell the ‘ontological story’, the ones numbered 2 the ‘picturing story’ and the ones
numbered 3 the ‘propositional story’. In his notes on the Tractatus in the ‘Red Box’ Ryle
categorizes the remarks numbered 4-7. See Appendix 3.
Ryle discusses three different ways of explaining the relation between the
ontological and the propositional story: (1) what he calls the ‘Euclidean’ interpretation: the
propositional story is a complex conclusion following from the ontological story as a
complex premise; (2) the so-called ‘reversed Euclidean’ interpretation: the ontological story
can be inferred from the propositional story. An example of a ‘reversed-Euclidean theory’
is Russell’s idea that simples are found inferentially as the limit of analysis; (3) the ‘Aesop’
interpretation: Wittgenstein considered the ontological and the propositional story to be the
same story, the first being an allegory told in the ‘material mode’ and the second the same
134
Ryle’s description of Wittgenstein’s ideas on how an expression has a meaning closely resembles the
description he gave of his own views in Ryle 1930. (See also Chapter 2, pp. 37-40.) He may well have been
influenced by Wittgenstein on this point.
135
The title is René Meyer’s. See Meyer 1993 (p. 6).
153
story told in the ‘formal mode’. Or: ‘that the ontological story [stands] to the propositional
story as an Aesop’s fable stands to the corresponding ethical doctrine.’ (Ryle 1993, 102)
Ryle thinks that, if pressed, Wittgenstein would have opted for the ‘Aesop’ interpretation.
Ryle’s most important argument against interpretation (1) and (2) is that whereas
Wittgenstein uses formal concepts, i.e. category-words (‘object’, ‘substance’, etc.), as if
they were proper concepts, i.e. ordinary words, in his ontological story, from 4.126 on he
makes clear that using formal concepts as proper concepts generates nonsense. Thus, ‘he
cannot then have thought that the ontological story was a legitimate premise or a legitimate
conclusion in an inference to or from the propositional story.’ (Ryle 1993, 103) Ryle
suggests that Wittgenstein left it in for another purpose: as ‘a sort of prefatory parable’
(Ryle 1993, 104) and not either as a premise or as a conclusion – as ‘something that would
not do, as a lead in to saying something that would do or nearly do’ (Ryle 1993, 104). This
he considers to be the most charitable interpretation.
I think that for nearly every seemingly factual statement Wittgenstein makes about objects,
simples, complexes, etc., in the ontological story, we could find a corresponding meta-statement
about propositions in the propositional story. I suggest that this correspondence is not that of
premisses to conclusions or conclusions to premisses, but of nursery-statements to grown-up
statements. (Ryle 1993, 105)
Ryle does not discuss the role of the picturing story in the Tractatus, but claims that his
interpretation needs to be extended to include this role, showing the place of the picturing
story between the ontological and the propositional one:
Before we can talk about caricatures and maps, we have to be able to talk about faces and
terrains. So Wittgenstein had to produce some seemingly descriptive talk about things and facts
before he could say anything about caricatures and maps being true or false. (Ryle 1993, 105)
From the Tractatus to the Philosophical Investigations

Ryle considers the break between the Tractatus and the Philosophical Investigations less
radical than most traditional interpreters do, although he does support the idea that
Wittgenstein later broke with some of the claims of the Tractatus. He claims for example
that at the time of the Tractatus, although ‘one foot was already free’, ‘Wittgenstein still
had one foot in the denotationist camp’ (Ryle 1957a, 363). He already realized that logical
constants do not stand for objects and do not have the meanings they have qua designating
objects, and that sentences are not names and should not be treated as if they are. According
to Ryle, only after the Tractatus Wittgenstein removed his other foot, ‘consciously’ and
‘deliberately’, from the denotationist camp when he started to ask for the use instead of the
meaning. The use of an expression, like a piece of chess, is the role which it plays, ‘not any
thing or person or event for which it might be supposed to stand’ (Ryle 1957a, 364).
Another difference was that the later Wittgenstein no longer forces all meaningful
expressions into the mould of the logic of mathematics and even develops a general
aversion against moulds.
Philosophical elucidation is still inspection of expressions, but it is no longer inspection through

the slots of a logician’s stencil or through the prisms of a scholastic classification-system. His
diction has reverted from that of a Russell discussing esoteric matters with mathematicians to
that of a Socrates discussing everyday ideas with unindoctrinated young men. Like Moore, he
explores the logic of all the things that all of us say. (Ryle 1951c, 255)
154
According to Ryle, after the Tractatus Wittgenstein quickly realized that not everything we
say is a truth or a falsehood, since not everything we say is an assertion. Other sayings are
for example: questioning, promising, reassuring, joking, warning and praising.
In the Tractatus we were told, in effect, that only those sentences made positive sense which
could be premisses or conclusions of a bit of natural science. In the Philosophical Investigations
the door is opened to anything that anyone might say. We are home, again, in the country of real
discourse. (Ryle 1957b, 266)
Whereas the Tractatus was primarily about written sentences, the Investigations is about
what sentences normally are: ‘things said, not written’ (Ryle 1957b, 266). In other words:
‘in contrast to the passive character of the Tractatus which depicts a listener’s or hearer’s
world, in the Philosophical Investigations people use expressions when they want to say
things.’ (Ryle in Harré 1999, 51)
In the Tractatus only stages and patterns of compositionality counted as
distinction-criteria, while in his later work much more distinctions are possible. ‘There is
no limit to the number of different sorts of sentences.’ (Ryle in Harré 1999, 51)
Correspondingly, the rather static notion of sense has developed into a more elastic one.
Both in the Tractatus and in the Philosophical Investigations Wittgenstein avoids
general statements about the nature of philosophy. In the Tractatus this would have been
saying what cannot be said. In the Philosophical Investigations it is because generalisations
bring along unclarity. The nature of philosophy is such that it can only be taught by
producing examples. We can show what makes a philosophical puzzle a puzzle by showing
how it is solved, not by telling it; by teaching an ability, not by dictating a doctrine. Ryle’s
descriptions of Wittgenstein’s philosophical method closely resemble his own
philosophical ideas. As Ryle says about the Philosophical Investigations:
A crude generalization of Wittgenstein’s new account of sense or meaning is that the meaning of
an expression is the rules for the employment of that expression; that is, the rules licensing or
banning its co-employment with other expressions, those governing its effective employment in
normal and abnormal communication-situations, and so on. The dynamic notion of rules to be
mastered has replaced the notion of an imposed structural congruence. (Ryle 1957b, 267)
Ryle further mentions several differences in method and style between the two works:
The Tractatus consists of a chain of sentences or short paragraphs, prefaced by numerical and
decimal index-numbers signalling both the train of the argument and the relative weights in it of
the successive items. Each sentence seems to be the product of an almost Chinese process of
pruning and recasting. Many of them mystify, but the reader cannot get them out of his head. In
many stretches the Tractatus presupposes familiarity with mathematical logic. The Philosophical
Investigations is more like a conversation. It is a dialogue between the author and his own
refractory self, and it presupposes no technical sophistication. It is split into relatively long
paragraph-sections, the continuities between which are often hard to see. Indeed, they are not
always there. Unfortunately the book contains no aids to the reader in the shape of table of
contents, index or cross references. (Ryle 1957b, 265)
The last sentence of this quotation brings us to an important difference in method, to which
I will come back below. Wittgenstein generally considered it to be harmful to try to present
philosophical thoughts in the conventional form of deductive order. In order to avoid this
he once even proposed to order the sentences of a philosophical work alphabetically.136 He
136
See Max Black 1964 (p. 2).
155
would not have appreciated Ryle’s suggestion to add a table of contents and an index.137
Ryle made his own, private index by using the last page both of the Tractatus and The
Philosophical Investigations to list important subjects and names with their corresponding
pages.
In his annotations of the Philosophical Investigations Ryle regularly showed his
discontent with the place of certain remarks, i.e. with the way in which the remarks were
put together. He suggests for example that 54 is out of place and should follow 56, and 55
should be placed next to 41, so that 56 should come right after 53 which is about the
various possibilities a particular simple language-game has and the fact that a rule of a
language-game may have very different roles in the game. Ryle suggests placing 56 right
after 53 because 56 starts with the continuation of an example from 53. The paragraphs in
between are more appropriate to follow 56. Ryle further wonders whether the example
‘Moses did not exist’ in 79 should be placed near 58. Remark 86, at least the last part of it,
has to be removed to 143. Other suggestions are that the beginning of 88 and 71 should be
placed together, just as 114 and 134; 116 and 133; 181 and 183; and 182 and 138.
Ryle thinks that the method of showing that a certain analogy is carried through too
far is one of the most important methods of the Philosophical Investigations. Wittgenstein
‘would show how striking similarities may go with important but ordinarily unremarked
differences, and how we are tempted to lean too heavily on their similarities and hence to
be tripped up by their latent differences.’ (Ryle 1951c, 255)
Despite the differences between the Tractatus and the Philosophical Investigations,
Wittgenstein’s ‘overriding Worry’ remained the same: ‘What can philosophers and
logicians do, and how should they do it?’ (Ryle 1951c, 251), although his focus changed
from logic to philosophy.
Moreover, a great deal of the Tractatus survives, both in the later Wittgenstein and in us too. It
comes natural to us now – as it did not 30 years ago – to differentiate logic from science much as
Wittgenstein did; it comes natural to us not to class philosophers as scientists or a fortiori as
super-scientists; it comes natural to us to think of both logic and philosophy as concerned not
with any ordinary or extra-ordinary kinds of things, but with the meanings of the expressions of
our thoughts and knowledge; and it is beginning to come natural to us, when we reflect about
sense vs. nonsense, to take as the units of sense what is conveyed by full sentences, and not what
is meant by isolated words, that is, with what is said, and not with what is, for example, named.
(Ryle 1957b, 265)
Ryle obviously held Wittgenstein responsible for great progress in philosophy. He writes:
Wittgenstein has made our generation of philosophers self-conscious about philosophy itself. (..)
We no longer try to use for our problems the methods of arguing which are the right ones for
demonstrating theorems or establishing hypotheses. In particular we have learnt to pay deliberate
attention to what can and cannot be said. What had, since the early days of this century, been the
practice of G.E. Moore has received a rationale from Wittgenstein; and I expect that when the
curtain is lifted we shall also find that Wittgenstein’s concrete methods have increased the
power, scope and delicacy of the methods by which Moore has for so long explored in detail the
internal logic of what we say. (Ryle 1951c, 256-257)138
137
Ryle himself did not add an index to his Collected Papers (contrary to his earlier The Concept of Mind, which
did contain one). In the introduction to the second volume he tries to justify the lack of an index as follows: ‘I have
refrained from charging myself or any colleague with the labour of compiling an index. Such an index would
expedite the studies only, I like indolently to think, of those who will be writing Doctoral Dissertations; and for
them the chore of rummaging for themselves will be more rewarding than would be their inheritance of the
proceeds of other people’s rummagings.’ (Ryle 1971b, viii)
138
‘When the curtain has lifted’ possibly refers to the large bulk of unpublished writings by Wittgenstein.
156
Ryle’s writings on Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations remained limited to the

following: ‘Review of Ludwig Wittgenstein: Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics’
(Ryle 1957b), which is of a very general nature; some loose critical remarks in On Thinking
(Ryle 1979d) and Collected Papers (Ryle 1971a and 1971b); and a critical discussion of
Bouwsma’s interpretation of Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations (Ryle 1972d).
Ryle’s critique of Bouwsma’s Wittgenstein interpretation, which will be discussed in the
second part of this chapter, will help to bring out his own interpretation of Wittgenstein’s
Philosophical Investigations.
Ryle’s Critical remarks

In ‘Systematically Misleading Expressions’, Ryle felt the need to make it clear that this
paper should not be regarded as supporting the Wittgensteinian idea that what makes an
expression formally proper to a fact is some real and non-conventional one-to-one picturing
relation between the composition of the expression and that of the fact.
For I do not see how, save in a small class of specially chosen cases, a fact or state of affairs can
be deemed like or even unlike in structure a sentence, gesture or diagram. For a fact is not a
collection – even an arranged collection – of bits in the way in which a sentence is an arranged
collection of noises or a map an arranged collection of scratches. A fact is not a thing and so is
not even an arranged thing. (Ryle 1932b, 59)
But Ryle did not like the alternative either, viz. that an expression’s being formally proper
to a fact is a purely conventional matter. He did believe that it was more a matter of
convention than of nature.139
The startling conclusion that all philosophical talk is nonsensical, which Ryle
identified as the main problem for Wittgenstein in the Tractatus140 was due, according to
Ryle, to Wittgenstein being overinfluenced by his analogies between saying things and
drawing maps. Since in order to tell the difference between significant and nonsensical
propositions one would have to cross the boundary between them; it cannot be expressed in
significant propositions. Ryle maintains that whereas it is indeed the case that a nurse can
only depict the course of a patient’s temperature and cannot on a second paper depict the
rules for representing his temperature, there is no reason to argue that in the same way the
philosopher cannot say (that is significantly) ‘what it is that makes things said significant or
nonsensical’ (Ryle 1951c, 254).141
Just as the nurse can tell, though not depict, how the temperature chart represents or
misrepresents the patient’s temperature, so the philosopher can tell why, say, a scientist’s
statement makes or does not make sense. What alone would be absurd would be a sentence
which purported to convey a comment upon its own significance or meaninglessness. (Ryle
1951c, 254)
139
Cf. Chapter 2, pp. 45.
140
See the famous words in Tractatus 6.54: ‘My propositions are elucidatory in the following way: he who
understands me finally recognises them as senseless, when he has climbed out through them, on them, over them.
(He must so to speak throw away the ladder, after he has climbed up on it.)’
141
In his paper from 1957 Ryle does not really take a stand, but makes the more neutral comment: ‘Critics quickly
pointed out that Wittgenstein managed to say many important and understandable things. So perhaps the language
of maps has limitations from which the language of words is exempt; and perhaps the notion of sense is wider than
the notion of truth-or-falsehood to empirical fact.’ (Ryle 1957b, 264)
157
Closely related to Ryle’s criticism of Wittgenstein’s idea that all philosophical talk is
nonsensical are his annotations to 4.121 ‘That which mirrors itself in language, language
cannot represent’ and 4.1212 ‘What can be shown cannot be said’. Ryle wonders in both
cases: ‘why not?’ He claims that after the Tractatus Wittgenstein realized that his
comparison between saying things and mapping things could not be pressed too far.
Wittgenstein later retained the use of the analogy of mapping but because he felt no longer
bound to put all elements of saying things in the rigid mould of mapping things, he was no
longer forced to hold on to the idea that all philosophical talk is nonsensical.
As a tradition of scholarship has demonstrated, it is far from easy to interpret
Wittgenstein’s early talk of sense and significance.142 Since the exact details are not
relevant to my discussion I will not attempt to fully explain them. What is of importance is
that Ryle struggled with interpreting this difficult subject as well. As Rom Harré already
showed, Ryle notes in his 1922 copy of the Tractatus, 3.21: ‘W. confused about sense =
significance sense = direction’. In the same copy of the Tractatus Ryle further asks himself
in the margin at 3.144 ‘(Names resemble points; propositions resemble arrows: they have
sense)’ whether this sense is to be interpreted as direction. In his 1951 copy he points again
at this confusion by showing that whereas Wittgenstein in 4.461 says: ‘Tautology and
contradiction are without sense. (Like the point from which two arrows go out in opposite
directions.)’, in 4.4611 he seems to claim the opposite: ‘Tautology and contradiction are,
however, not nonsensical’. Ryle takes Wittgenstein to mean that they are without direction
(sense), but not without significance.
Ryle must have been thinking that Wittgenstein tried (but perhaps failed) to explain
how propositions had sense (were true or false) in virtue of their having sense qua direction.
In general a meaningful proposition has to have some structure or organization, as opposed
to a name or a set of names. A typical form of organization would be determinacy as to
sense qua direction – bRa rather than aRb is one example. This could lead to truth or falsity
according to its correspondence (or lack of it) with the sense of the corresponding fact.
Originally the sense of an arrow (in 3.144) is determined by the poles a and b, as can be
found in ‘Notes on Logic’ (Wittgenstein 1913). If a proposition says that things go in the
direction from a to b, and if they actually turn out to go in the b to a direction then the
proposition is false. It is having polarity that marks out the proposition. Polarity and bi-
polarity (being definitely either true or false) go together.143 This is what Wittgenstein may
have tried to convey and Ryle possibly felt that the appeal to direction was
unsatisfactory.144
Ryle presents another, more specific, objection in his ‘Ontological and logical talk
in Wittgenstein’s Tractatus’, claiming that there are certain things we can say which cannot
be analysed in terms of the truth-functions of their component propositions.
A question that we shall have to debate is whether all compound propositions are simple
resultants or truth-functions of their components propositions, i.e. whether we could in principle
say everything sayable, using for our conjunctions only ‘and’, ‘or’ and ‘not’. I think this doctrine
142
As Harré testifies, this is ‘exactly one of the points at which the lack of physics misled at least some
Wittgenstein scholars. The point was exactly the adoptation by Wittgenstein of the second sense from physics. The
sense of a vector is its direction, thus AB and BA are the same in magnitude but differ in sense (that is direction).’
(Harré 1999, 42)
143
Wittgenstein’s sense is not like Frege’s but he does think with Frege that there is a difference between a
‘beurtheilbarer Inhalt’ and an object: Julius Caesar cannot be asserted. Only Wittgenstein puts this by saying that
‘Caesar’ has Bedeutung and ‘Brutus killed Caesar’ has sense.
144
Professor Brian McGuinness was so kind as to explain to me the origins and implications of Wittgenstein’s
remarks of sense as direction, some of which are also mentioned in Harré 1999.
158
is false. (…) If I am right, then there are lacunas in Wittgenstein’s logical alphabet. He has not
allowed himself the equipment with which to say certain sorts of sayable things. (Ryle 1993,
107)
Examples Ryle gives of propositions which cannot be analysed into merely p’s, q’s, and’s,
or’s and not’s are: ‘If p then q’145 and ‘q, because p’. Neither does he belief that all general
propositions – which are compound propositions as well – can be analysed into
conjunctions or disjunctions of non-general propositions. Ryle’s objection is aimed at the
idea Wittgenstein expresses in 3.3441: ‘We can, for example, express what is common to
all notations for the truth-functions as follows: It is common to them that they all, for
example, can be replaced by the notations of “~p” (“not p”) and “pvq” (“p or q”).
(Herewith is indicated the way in which a special possible notation can give us general
information.)’
With respect to Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations Ryle was sceptical of
Wittgenstein’s ‘hinted diagnosis’, although greatly appreciating his method of locating
philosophical problems.
I do not think that anybody could read the Philosophical Investigations without feeling that its
author had his finger on the pulse of the activity of philosophizing. We can doubt whether his
hinted diagnosis will do; not that he has located, by touch, that peculiar and important
intellectual commotion – philosophical puzzlement. (Ryle 1957b, 267)
I shall return to this point in the second part of this paper.

During his lectures Ryle tried to expose or at least qualify some of the analogies
Wittgenstein used in his later writing, such as the famous ones between using language and
playing a game, and between learning to use language and learning to use a box of tools,
the different tools sometimes looking or feeling the same though their jobs are very
different. Ryle considers well used expressions to be more than tools. He claims that
technical expressions such as ‘H2O’ are more like tools than ‘water’, ‘pipe’ or ‘shoe’, since
the latter have become part of our personal life. And with respect to the analogy between
using language and playing a game Ryle writes the following:
Wittgenstein’s own favoured example of game-playing (though he unfortunately stressed the

noun rather than the verb) seems to me a clear case of an adverbial verb being misdiagnosed as
itself a highly hospitable verb of doing. The report that during a certain period John was playing
is not, as Wittgenstein seems to have thought, just vague, unspecific, elastic or disjunctive; it is
unfinished. For it to be true there must have been a positive, concrete, or per se something that
he was doing with a name and a description of its own, like wheeling a wheelbarrow or hitting a
ball. (Ryle 1966-1967, 20)146
Ryle considers ‘playing’ to be an adverbial verb which needs a verb of doing, whereas he
believes that Wittgenstein saw it as a vague verb of doing. Ryle also thought the analogy to
be misleading in the sense that many readers seem to think that language is some kind of
game. But the whole idea behind the tag ‘language-games’ is the notion of rules. The stress
should have been more on rules and less on games in order to avoid misunderstandings.
145
This example may sound odd, since by using truth-tables ‘if p then q’ can be analysed into merely p’s, q’s,
and’s, or’s and not’s. This, however, is only true of material implication. Ryle must have aimed at a non-material
notion of ‘if p then q’ which cannot be analysed into the components mentioned above.
146
Kolenda does not explicitly date Ryle’s posthumously published paper ‘Adverbial Verbs and Verbs of
Thinking’, but suggests that it was written during the last years of his life, after ‘Thinking and Reflecting’
(Kolenda in Ryle 1966-67).
159
In On Thinking (1979) Ryle fully develops his idea of adverbial ascriptions and
here he also criticizes Wittgenstein’s notion of ‘family resemblance’ as applied to adverbial
descriptions. The thinking of le penseur is an example of an adverbial notion. According to
Ryle, there can be no such thing as thinking (at least the thinking of le penseur) per se;
something positive or concrete must be done. And the difficulties we have with this notion
of thinking is precisely that there is no homogeneous doing (X-ing) such that for a person to
be thinking he must be X-ing. There are many considerably different things someone who
is thinking may be doing – in fact, they differ too much to justify the use of the notion of
family resemblance: ‘How multifarious and how patchy or thinly spread can family-
likenesses between these postulated actions become, before the action-family itself
evaporates into thin air?’ (Ryle 1979a, 21) Since adverbial ascriptions are not pointing to
any separable doings, it would be a mistake to look for ‘family resemblance’ features.
In his lectures on the later Wittgenstein in 1954-55, transcribed by Rom Harré,
Ryle criticises Wittgenstein’s speaking of ‘using words and learning rules for using them;
and using sentences and learning rules for them. And people speak of using sentences just
like using words.’ (Harré 1999, 52) According to Ryle, using sentences is different from
using words. First of all, we learn words and we make up sentences. There are no
dictionaries of sentences. Second – and connected with the first objection – ‘when we say
the meaning of a word is its rules of use or employment we cannot say the same for
sentences.’ (Harré 1999, 52) Ryle here seems to refer to compositionality: if the meaning of
a word lies in its rules of use, and if, additionally, sentences are made up out of words, the
meaning of a sentence cannot be something like its rules of use (that is, if ‘rules of use’ is
used in the same sense). (We could also argue – as Ryle does not – that the meaning of a
sentence is its rule of use, but then the meaning of a word can no longer be – at least not in
the same sense – its rules of use.) Third, there is a difference between words and sentences
in that a word can be and is ‘used or misused in some sentence’ (Harré 199, 52), whereas
this cannot be said about sentences. (But a sentence can be said to be used or misused in a
greater context of sentences.) Finally, Ryle thinks that Wittgenstein cannot account for
sentences which are being misused as clichés. He claims, in contrast to Wittgenstein, that
the meaning of a word is principally different from the ‘meaning’ (sense) of a sentence.
A sentence differs from a word because it is the fact that someone has tried to employ words in
such and such an order to say such and such a thing. A sentence is a different sort of abstraction
from what a word is. It follows that ‘meaning of a sentence’ does not147 have the same sense as
‘meaning of a word.’ A sentence has a sense, and a word has meaning. (Harré 1999, 52)
Some of the objections concerning the Tractatus were, at least according to Ryle, later
recognised by Wittgenstein himself. The others show Ryle’s disagreement with some of the
ideas of Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations. But in general he greatly appreciated
Wittgenstein’s philosophical thought and acclaimed the great progress Wittgenstein
achieved for philosophy.
Ryle’s attempt at tracing the origins of Wittgenstein’s thoughts

Apart from Ryle’s many corrections to Ogden’s translation of the Tractatus, which will be
discussed below, Ryle’s annotations to the Tractatus and Philosophical Investigations
consist mainly of attempts to trace Wittgenstein’s thoughts back to other philosophers. In
his copies of the Tractatus there are many references to Russell and Frege, but there are
147
‘Not’ is not in Harré’s transcription, but in personal communication he confirms that this is a mistake.
160
also references to Plato’s Sophist and Theaetetus, Bergson, Kant, Ernst Mach, Heinrich
Hertz (1857-1894), Fritz Mauthner (1849-1923) (who was a student of Mach), Chomsky,
Husserl and Meinong (especially to J. N. Findlay’s study of Meinong).
Thus, Ryle wondered whether Wittgenstein had derived his interest in negation
from Meinong – from 2.02331 until 2.11 almost every remark is accompanied by a
reference to Meinong. And he thought that 5.641 (‘Thus there really is a sense in which
philosophy can talk about the self in a non-psychological way’) and 4.1121 (‘Psychology is
no nearer related to philosophy, than it is to any other natural science’) resembled Husserl’s
philosophical position. Ryle attributes Wittgenstein’s ‘primitive propositions’ to Frege.
In his paper on Ryle and the Tractatus, Harré mentions Ryle’s agreement with
Harré’s suggestion of a Hertzian origin of the Tractatus. This claim is supported by Ryle’s
inclusion of Hertz’s Principles of Mechanics in a Tractatus bibliography he compiled for
his students, adding in the side-line: ‘(esp. introduction)’, and the comment he wrote on the
last page of his copy of the Tractatus (1922 edition, 5th impression 1951): ‘Hertz (esp for
Picture Theory?)’. And Ryle’s annotations include references to Hertz at 4.04, where Hertz
is referred to by Wittgenstein himself, and 6.34. This link is thoroughly discussed by Harré
in the first part of his paper ‘Wittgenstein: Science and Religion’ (2001). In opposition to
the common view that the Tractatus is an extremely refined version of logical atomism,
Harré argues that: ‘more of the Tractatus than has yet been realized can best be understood
as a generalization of a number of important theses and doctrines developed in the writings
of Helmholtz, Hertz and Boltzmann, a propos of the nature of physics as a way of creating a
symbolic representation of the world.’ (Harré 2001, 211)148
Not only do Ryle’s annotations, once again, show his wide knowledge of the
history of philosophy, but also his extensive study of Wittgenstein. His annotations contain
references to the Tractatus, the early ‘Notes on Logic’ (1913), Wittgenstein’s Notebooks,
lecture notes (Ryle probably meant The Blue and Brown Books) and to his letters to
Russell. For example, Ryle suggests that 2.0201 (‘Every statement about complexes can be
resolved into a statement about their constituents and into the propositions that describe the
complexes completely’) is present in the Notebooks as well and is later criticised in The
Philosophical Investigations. And he also traces 4.0312 (‘My fundamental idea is that the
“logical constants” are not representatives; that there can be no representatives of the logic
of facts’) back to Wittgenstein’s Notebooks (Dec 1914, p. 37). He wonders why 6.113 (‘It
is the characteristic mark of logical propositions that one can perceive in the symbol alone
that they are true; and this fact contains in itself the whole philosophy of logic (…)’)
148
I illustrate the resemblances between Hertz and Wittgenstein which were suggested by Ryle by quoting three
passages from Hertz’s introduction to his The Principles of Mechanics (1899). (1) We form for ourselves images
or symbols of external objects; and the form which we give them is such that the necessary consequents of the
images in thought are always the images of the necessary consequents in nature of the things pictures. In order that
this requirement may be satisfied, there must be a certain conformity between nature and our thought. (Hertz 1899,
1) (2) We shall denote as incorrect any permissible images, if their essential relations contradict the relations of
external things (…). (Hertz 1899, 2)
The following quotation will show a remarkable resemblance between the Hertzian method of dealing with meta-
scientific questions and Wittgenstein’s (and Ryle’s as well) views on the nature of philosophical method: (3) ‘But
we have accumulated around the terms “force” and “electricity” more relations than can be completely reconciled
amongst themselves. We have an obscure feeling of this and want to have things cleared up. Our confused wish
finds expression in the confused question as to the nature of force and electricity. But the answer which we want is
not really an answer to this question. It is not by finding out more and fresh relations and connections that it can be
answered; but by removing the contradictions existing between those already known, and thus perhaps by reducing
their number. When these painful contradictions are removed, the question as to the nature of force will not have
been answered; but our minds, no longer fexed, will cease to ask illegitimate questions.’ (Hertz 1889, 8)
The first two quotes are also given in Harré 2001, to which I also refer for additional quotations and arguments.
161
appeared in Wittgenstein’s Letters to Russell but not in his ‘Notes on Logic’. Ryle further
traces Wittgenstein’s use of ‘primitive propositions’ back to Letters 19 and 20 from 1913.
He refers several times to letter 20, which he obviously considers to be an important
testimony of Wittgenstein’s early development. The letter contains Wittgenstein’s answers
to some questions by Russell on Wittgenstein’s ‘Notes on Logic’. Ryle refers to it in his
annotations to 1.1 and to 5 and 6 (5.472 and 5.476, 5.556, 6.113, 6.1232 and 6.1271 –
which Ryle takes to concern the totality of facts, the function and application of logical
operation-signs, and the propositions of logic).
Ryle’s references to Russell’s Theory of Knowledge and Wittgenstein’s own ‘Notes
on Logic’, which are to be found in Ryle’s annotations of the Tractatus, are numerous and
he clearly considered both writings of great importance to Wittgenstein’s early
development. Therefore, Ryle’s ideas of their influence on Wittgenstein’s Tractatus will be
discussed below in two separate sections.
In Ryle’s annotations of the Philosophical Investigations, there is naturally less
stress on tracing Wittgenstein’s thoughts back to Russell and Frege and more on pointing at
similarities to Husserl and Moore. He refers also to Plato, Augustine, Kant, Schopenhauer,
Ramsey and James. Ryle, for example, recognizes Moore in part 2 of the Investigations,
paragraph 217e: ‘Meaning is as little an experience as intending’, and in 218e: ‘Meaning is
not a process which accompanies a word. For no process could have the consequences of
meaning’. Husserl – though always accompanied by question marks – is also often referred
to. Ryle, for example, wonders whether the following part of paragraph 437 can also be
found in Husserl:
A wish seems already to know what will or would satisfy it; a proposition, a thought, what
makes it true – even when that thing is not there at all! Whence this determining of what is not
yet there? This despotic demand? (“The hardness of the logical must.”)
And a remark which Ryle partly traces back to Husserl can be found on page 217 (part 2):
But what distinguishes them [meaning and intending] from experience? – They have no
experience-content. For the contents (images for instance) which accompany and illustrate them
are not the meaning or intending.
Furthermore, in his Collected Papers Ryle several times refers to a similarity between
Husserl and Wittgenstein with respect to their use of ‘logical grammar’ and ‘logical
syntax’, e.g. (Ryle 1957a, 363-64 and 1961a, 413)
Many of Ryle’s annotations in the Investigations contain references to the
Tractatus. Ryle noted that the target of some of Wittgenstein’s remarks in the
Investigations had been his own Tractatus, e.g. of 23:
But how many kinds of sentences are there? Say assertion, question, and command? – There are
countless kinds: countless different kinds of use of what we call “symbols”, “words”,
“sentences”. And this multiplicity is not something fixed, given once for all; but new types of
language, new language-games, as we may say, come into existence, and others become obsolete
and get forgotten. (Wittgenstein 1953, 23
He also mentioned other remarks which were not aimed at rejecting the Tractatus but
which could be traced back to it, or to Wittgenstein’s lecture notes (probably The Blue and
Brown Books). For example, Ryle traces 236 – ‘Calculating prodigies who get the right
answer but cannot say how. Are we to say that they do not calculate? (A family of cases.)’
– back to Wittgenstein’s lecture notes.
162
Russell’s Theory of Knowledge

Ryle’s copy of the 1961 translation of The Tractatus contains many references to Russell’s
Theory of Knowledge, which was at the time Ryle wrote these annotations still a (partly)
unpublished manuscript, written by Russell in the spring and summer of 1913. The first six
chapters had been published in The Monist in the period January 1914-April 1915 but then,
after being heavily criticised by Wittgenstein, Russell decided not to publish the rest of it.
The (complete) manuscript was discovered in 1968 upon transferring Russell’s papers to
McMaster University, Hamilton, where they are still kept, and was published in 1983 in
Volume 7 of The Collected Papers of Bertrand Russell. David Pears recalls requesting a
photocopy in 1972 and providing Ryle with a copy.149 In Ryle’s first comment in his copy
of the 1969 edition of the Tractatus, he refers to the availability of part of Russell’s Theory
of Knowledge in Xerox, probably the copy he had received from Pears. Pears claims that in
his earlier seminars Ryle said that he suspected a Russellian origin of Wittgenstein’s
remark in the Tractatus 4.441: ‘There are no logical objects’, but was never able to
determine it exactly. According to Pears, the typescript of Russell’s Theory of Knowledge
vindicated Ryle.150
Ryle’s annotations to the Tractatus betray a thorough familiarity with Russell’s
early typescript. They suggest that Wittgenstein was influenced by it both positively and
negatively. Ryle claims, for example, that in his Theory of Knowledge Russell already
talked about logical forms of complexes and logical propositions – meaning propositions of
logic. But he was also frequently the target of Wittgenstein’s attacks. Some of the positive
influences concern similarities in examples or expressions which Wittgenstein and Russell
both used – e.g. propositions of the form ‘aRb’ frequently occur in Wittgenstein and in
Russell’s manuscript, as well as the proposition ‘b is a successor of a’ which, for example,
appears in 4.1273. Other observations concern the possibility of tracing back some of
Wittgenstein’s basic statements to Theory of Knowledge. Ryle asks himself for example
whether 2.222 (‘The agreement or disagreement of its sense with reality constitutes its truth
or falsity’) and parts of 4.023 (‘A proposition must restrict reality to two alternatives: yes or
no’) and 4.024 (‘To understand a proposition means to know what is the case if it is true
(One can understand it, therefore, without knowing whether it is true)’) can already be
found in Russell’s Theory of Knowledge. The same question is asked about 4.121
(‘Propositions cannot represent logical form: it is mirrored in them’). And ‘elementary
propositions’, for example in 4.21, is similar to Russell’s ‘atomic propositions’. In addition,
Ryle wonders whether in his Theory of Knowledge Russell was talking about ‘the general
propositional form’ and the general form of a truth-function, which can be found in the
Tractatus 4.5, 5.47 and 6. Last but not least, Ryle noticed that ‘sense=direction’ was
already present in Russell’s early work151, which suggests that Wittgenstein might have
borrowed the idea from Russell.
Something in which Wittgenstein was not influenced by Theory of Knowledge was
his notion of formal concepts (e.g. in 4.126). As I mentioned above, Ryle considered
Russell, and more specifically Russell’s Theory of Knowledge to be the target of
Wittgenstein’s remark in 4.441 and 5.4: ‘There are no logical objects’. But this was not the
only criticism which Ryle found to be aimed at Russell. The question that according to
149
Personal communication with Pears in 2003 and 2004.
150
Ibid.
151
Ryle suggests in his 1922 copy that the idea that sense is direction originated from Bertrand Russell’s Nature of
Truth and chapter 27 of Principles of Mathematics; in his 1951 copy he suggests that the idea originated from
chapter 27 of Principles of Mathematics and chapter 12 of The Problems of Philosophy (1912). In his 1969 copy
he traces it back to Russell’s Theory of Knowledge.
163
Wittgenstein ‘cannot be asked’ in 4.1274, namely: ‘Are there unanalysable subject-

predicate propositions?’ was, according to Ryle, asked in Russell’s Theory of Knowledge.
And in Ryle’s view, Wittgenstein’s reference in 5.4731 to the notion of self-evidence about
which Russell talked so much could be to the Theory of Knowledge, in which he devoted a
complete chapter to self-evidence. Finally, Ryle considers Wittgenstein’s criticism to
Russell in 5.5422 – viz. that his theory did not satisfy the criterion of explaining the form of
the proposition ‘A makes the judgement p’ in such a way that ‘it shows that it is impossible
to judge a nonsense’ – to be aimed at Russell’s Theory of Knowledge. This seems indeed
plausible when taking into account Wittgenstein’s letter to Russell from June 1913. At the
time of Wittgenstein’s letter Russell was still working on his Theory of Knowledge.
Wittgenstein wrote:
I can now express my objection to your theory of judgement exactly: I believe it is obvious that,
from the prop[osition] “A judges that (say) a is in the Rel[ation] R to b”, if correctly analysed,
the prop[osition] “aRb. V .~ aRb” must follow directly without the use of any other premiss. This
condition is not fulfilled by your theory. (Wittgenstein 1974, R.12)152
Notes on Logic
Both in his 1951 copy of the Tractatus and in a short unpublished typescript – which is kept
in the ‘Red Box’ in Linacre College Library and wrongly catalogued as ‘Notes on the
Investigations’ – Ryle pays attention to Wittgenstein’s ‘Notes on Logic’ from 1913. In
Ryle’s unpublished comments on ‘Notes on Logic’, which have not been discussed so far,
he mainly draws parallels between this work and the Tractatus, which was written a few
years later.
‘Notes on Logic’ exists in several different versions. The so-called ‘Russell
Version’ (catalogued as 201a-1 of the Wittgenstein Nachlass and first published in 1979)
consists of a summary dictated by Wittgenstein in English and four ‘Manuscripts’ which
Russell had translated into English himself. The ‘Costello Version’ (catalogued as 201a-2
and first published in 1957) – copied by Harry T. Costello from Russell when the latter
came to Harvard as a visiting lecturer in the spring of 1914 – is a subsequent rearrangement
of the text by Russell.153 These versions consist of several items which were written at
different times, which makes it plausible that there have been more than these two versions.
And it has been established that a typescript of the ‘Russell Version’ which does not match
item 201a-1 of the Nachlass (nor item 201a-2), is kept at the Wittgenstein Archives at the
University of Bergen.154
Ryle’s annotations, which mainly concern Wittgenstein’s remarks concerning the
nature of philosophy, theory of knowledge and logic, seem not to be based on either
version.155 His reference to specific pages in the ‘Notes on Logic’ does not correspond to
the pages in either the ‘Russell Version’ nor the ‘Costello Version’. For example, 4.111
says: ‘The word “philosophy” must mean something which stands above or below, but not
beside the natural sciences.’ Ryle sees close resemblances with a remark on page 15 of
‘Notes on Logic’, but the only resemblance I can find is with ‘The word “philosophy”
152
Again, the exact details are not relevant to my discussion and I will not attempt to fully explain them.
153
See G. H. von Wright, Wittgenstein (Oxford 1982), 54, and Brian F. McGuinness, ‘Bertrand Russell and
Ludwig Wittgenstein’s “Notes on Logic”’, Revue Internationale de Philosophie 26, 1972.
154
In his working paper ‘Editing Wittgenstein’s “Notes on Logic”’, Michael A.R. Biggs refers to this typescript as
TSx, which is the title I will use as well. He kindly sent me the typescript to check it with Ryle’s references.
155
Ryle’s comments contain a reference to a ‘diagram on the back’, similar to the one in the Tractatus, 6.12. Since
the ‘Costello Version’ does not contain this diagram, but the ‘Russell Version’ does, Ryle most likely used a
further compilation of the Russell-version.
164
ought always to designate something over or under, but not beside, the natural sciences’,
which occurs on page B21 of the ‘Russell Version’ and on page B23 of the ‘Costello
Version’. Similarly, Ryle traces 4.1121 (‘The theory of knowledge is the philosophy of
psychology’) back to page 15. However, the remark corresponds to ‘Epistemology is the
philosophy of psychology’, which occurs on page B21 of the ‘Russell Version’ and page
B22 of the ‘Costello Version’. ‘Philosophy limits the disputable sphere of natural science’
is also traced back to page 15, but cannot be found there. The content of 5.451 (‘If logic has
primitive ideas these must be independent of one another. If a primitive idea is introduced it
must be introduced in all contexts in which it occurs at all’) is found in the ‘Russell
Version’ on page B6 and in the ‘Costello Version’ on page B20: ‘The ways by which we
introduce our indefinables must permit us to construct all propositions that have sense from
these indefinables alone.’ (201a-1 B6 and 201a-2 B20) However, Ryle refers to it as ‘on
page 14’.
Typescript TSx does not match Ryle’s annotations either. This strongly suggests
that Ryle had access to yet another version. It is not unlikely that slightly different copies,
perhaps even different arrangements, of these two versions were circulating in Oxford and
Cambridge at the time.
It is difficult to determine precisely when Ryle first had access to ‘Notes on Logic’,
especially since it is not clear which version he used. David Pears recalls discussing ‘Notes
on Logic’ – or more accurately, the chapter on Logical Objects – with Ryle in the late
1960s and says that he thinks it unlikely that Ryle had already seen ‘Notes on Logic’ in
1948 when he first gave his seminar on Wittgenstein in Oxford. Ryle’s annotations in his
copy of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus which concern ‘Notes on Logic’ have probably been
inserted after 1974. He occasionally talks about the Tractatus and ‘Notes on logic’ in
relation to Wittgenstein’s letters to Russell, which were not published until 1974. Although
the 1960 edition of Wittgenstein’s Notebooks 1914-1916 did contain an appendix with
extracts from Wittgenstein’s letters to Russell, Ryle’s reference to specific letters, such as R
12, indicates that he was using the later edition from 1974.156
Ryle’s references to ‘Notes on Logic’ in his 1951 copy of the Tractatus differ both
in type and in importance. Sometimes Ryle wanted to point at a difference in terminology,
such as that in ‘Notes on Logic’ Wittgenstein used ‘type’ instead of ‘form’ – which was
used in the Tractatus (e.g. in 3.315 and 4.1241) – and ‘denote’ instead of ‘signify’ (used in
the Tractatus). In ‘Notes on Logic’ Wittgenstein used ‘indicate’ or ‘mean’ where he would
later in the Tractatus use ‘designate’, e.g. in 4.063 and 4.111. Ryle also tried to find out
which concepts were already present in ‘Notes on Logic’ and which ones were not. The
concept ‘prototype’ – present in 3.315 – does not occur in ‘Notes on Logic’, neither do
‘picturing’, ‘showing’, ‘logical space’, ‘ethics’, ‘the unsayable’, ‘operations’, ‘world’,
‘Sachverhalt’, ‘mathematics’, ‘logical synthese’, ‘atomic propositions’, ‘colours’,
‘tautology’ (which however did occur in Wittgenstein’s letters to Russell from 1913) and
‘intentionality’. Especially the first category shows Ryle’s preoccupation with language and
precise formulations.
156
However, all three copies of the Tractatus contain the statement by Linacre College Library that Ryle donated
them upon his retirement in 1968. This would mean that Ryle could not have written his comments in the margins
of these books after 1968. This problem can easily be solved. The librarian of Linacre College did not consider it
to be unlikely that although the note in the front cover of the books suggest that they are donated in 1968, they
were in fact part of the second donation, which took place in 1976. Another explanation could be that he did
donate the books in 1968 but later borrowed them from the library – there is evidence that Ryle later borrowed
several of what once used to be his books from the libraries to which he had donated them.
165
It has to be noted that Ryle’s annotations in the Tractatus which refer to

Wittgenstein’s ‘Notes on Logic’, are almost exclusively limited to index numbers 3, 4 and
5. Ryle notices for example that 4.061-4.0621 almost literally contain the remarks on page
2 of ‘Notes on Logic’157. The Tractatus remarks with index number 1, 2, 6 and 7 were not
referred to by Ryle in his attempt to trace part of the Tractatus back to ‘Notes on Logic’.
There is one exception: Ryle namely wonders why 6.113, that ‘it is the characteristic mark
of logical propositions that one can perceive in the symbol alone that they are true; and this
fact contains in itself the whole philosophy of logic’, only occurs in Wittgenstein’s letters
to Russell and cannot be found in ‘Notes on Logic’.
Wittgenstein’s criticism of Russell in 5.5422 ‘The correct explanation of the form
of the proposition “A judges p” must show that it is impossible to judge a nonsense.
(Russell’s theory does not satisfy this condition.)’ – which according to Ryle is probably
aimed at Russell’s Theory of Knowledge – also occurs in ‘Notes on Logic’:
In my theory propositional formula p has the same meaning as propositional formula not-p but
opposite sense. The meaning is the fact. The proper theory of judgment must make it impossible
to judge nonsense. (Wittgenstein 1913, 201a-1; A4)
As Ryle shows, more of Wittgenstein’s criticisms of Russell can also be found – although
sometimes not yet in the same form – in ‘Notes on logic’, such as the one in 4.441 that
there are no logical objects.
The assumption of the existence of logical objects makes it appear remarkable that in the
sciences propositions of the form “p < V> q”, “p < ⊃> q”, etc. are only then not provisional when
“ < V> ” and “< ⊃> ” stand within the scope of a generality sign [apparent variable]. (Wittgenstein
1913, 201a-2; B16)
In his days, Ryle was the only one, or at least one of a very few, who considered ‘Notes on
Logic’ to be important for Wittgenstein’s early development – it was generally neglected.
Today Anthony Palmer, who was a friend and student of Ryle, maintains that ‘Notes on
Logic’ can be used to show that the Russell interpretation of the Tractatus – which is,
according to Palmer, still widely accepted and can partly be held responsible for the idea of
two Wittgenstein’s – is unacceptable. Palmer uses ‘Notes on Logic’ to support the
interpretation of Peter Winch and the ‘New Wittgensteinians’ that there is only one
Wittgenstein.158 Wittgenstein’s early paper is supposed to show that a proposition and the
state of affairs it represents must not be construed as a relation. ‘Propositions by virtue of
sense cannot have predicates or relations.’ (Wittgenstein 1913, 201a-2; B6) Palmer claims
that for Wittgenstein ‘the only things that stand in a relation to each other are the signs ‘a’
and ‘b’ and possibly a and b themselves’ (Palmer 2002, 8), which is supported by
Wittgenstein’s discussion of symbolism: ‘more correctly: that a certain thing is the case in
the symbol says that a certain thing is the case in the world’ (Wittgenstein 201a-2, A7).
This description does not even suggest a relation. This would render the Russell
interpretation of the Tractatus implausible because this interpretation clearly depends on
the idea that Wittgenstein tried to establish a relation between propositions and the world.
157
Which seem to be page B2 and B3 both in the ‘Russell Version’ and in the ‘Costello Version’.
158
Cf. Winch 1969 and Crary and Read 2000.
166
The English Translation of the Tractatus

Both in ‘Ludwig Wittgenstein’ and in ‘review of Ludwig Wittgenstein: Remarks on the
Foundations of Mathematics’, Ryle refers to the unreliability of the English translation of
the first edition of the Tractatus (1922) by Ogden and Ramsey. In addition, Ryle’s
annotated copy of the Ogden-Ramsey translation consists of many alternative translations
of words and sentences. And he considered them important enough to start each class with
dictating his corrections to the translation. (Harré 1999, 41)
Ryle was not so critical of Anscombe’s translation of the Philosophical
Investigations, suggesting only some minor alterations, such as ‘designate’ instead of
‘signify’ (and sometimes ‘mean’ as well) throughout the book, e.g. in paragraph 15. And
several times, he suggests to replace ‘when’ by ‘if’, e.g. in 105 and 577. Ryle would have
preferred ‘intended’ instead of ‘wanted’ in paragraph 76, ‘pattern’ instead of ‘schema’ in
47, and he thinks that ‘without right’ in paragraph 289 can be better expressed by
‘wrongly’. He further suggests to replace ‘with’ by ‘to’ in 248 and in 265 to change ‘into a
word Y’ into ‘by a word Y’. And in the last part of 659 and the first part 660 ‘going’ should
be replaced by ‘meant’. Since Ryle had far more criticisms on the translation of the
Tractatus, in the remainder of this section I shall focus on this earlier work.
Although there are records of Wittgenstein’s own corrections of the English
translation, they were unknown for a long time to philosophers working on the Tractatus.
In 1960 Russell wrote the following to Ogden:
I learn that questions have arisen as to the authenticity and authority of the English version of
Wittgenstein’s Tractatus. I know that this version was sanctioned point by point by Wittgenstein.
There are places where it is not an exact translation of the German. When I pointed this out to
him, he admitted it, but said that the translation as it stood expressed what he wished to say
better than a more exact translation. It is, of course, open to anybody to make a new translation
in a more modern idiom, but it would be misleading to suggest that such a translation gave a
more accurate rendering of Wittgenstein’s thought at the time than that which was published. I
say this from recollection of careful and minute discussion with Wittgenstein as to what he
wished the English version to say. (Russell 1973, 10)
In the absence of contemporary evidence, it is not known when this ‘careful and minute
discussion’ between Wittgenstein and Russell took place.159 However, Russell’s claim that
Wittgenstein sanctioned the English translation and deliberately chose not to make a literal
translation is supported by Wittgenstein’s letters to Ogden in 1922 together with his
comments on early versions of the translation. On 23 March Wittgenstein writes:
The translation as you said, was in many points by far too literal. I have very often altered it such
that now it doesn’t seem to be a translation of the German at all. I’ve left out some words which
occur in the German text or put in others which don’t occur in the original etc. etc. But I always
did it in order to translate the sense (not the words). (Wittgenstein 1922b, 19)
Ryle, like most other philosophers, was probably unaware of the fact that Wittgenstein
himself had worked on the Ogden-translation. He would probably not have made at least
some of his comments if he had known that the English was not meant as a ‘literal’
translation of the German original.
Ryle sometimes criticised precisely those translations that were suggested by
Wittgenstein himself in 1922. For example, in 3.141 Wittgenstein himself had suggested
159
Cf. Von Wright 1973 (pp. 10-11).
167
‘mixture’ instead of ‘medley’ and ‘articulate’ instead of ‘articulated’, translations which

were later criticised by Ryle.
I should propose to put “mixture” instead of “medley”. (…) In the end of that prop[osition]
couldn’t one say “is articulate” instead of “articulated”? I didn’t mean yet to say that the
prop[osition] is articulatED but I used the word “artikuliert” in the sense in which one might say
that a man speaks articulate that is that he pronounces the words distinctly. Or do you in that case
also say “articulated”? If so leave it as it stands, if not you put “articulate”. (Wittgenstein 1922b,
24)
Whereas Ryle suggests to use ‘a priori’ in 4.411, Wittgenstein writes in 1922: ‘“von
vornherein” doesn’t mean “a priori”. It should be something like: “It is probable from the
very beginning that the bringing in of …” or “It seems probable even on first sight…”’
(Wittgenstein 1922b, 29) And in 5.1361 Ryle replaces ‘Superstition is the belief in the
causal nexus’ by ‘Belief in the causal nexus is superstition’.160 Here Ryle, however, is
making a mistake as evidenced by the following quote:
“Belief in the causal nexus is superstition” isn’t right. It ought to be: “Superstition is the belief in
the causal nexus”. I didn’t mean to say that the belief in the causal nexus was one amongst
superstitions but rather that superstition is nothing else than the belief in the causal nexus. In the
German this is expressed by the definite article before “Aberglaube”. (Wittgenstein 1922b, 31)
Interestingly, sometimes both Ryle and Wittgenstein suggest the same (sort of) corrections
of the English translation. Wittgenstein had already criticised the obvious overabundance of
‘the’s’, though not as extensively as Ryle later did. E.g. in 4.464 the original translation
contained ‘the tautology’ and ‘the contradiction’. Wittgenstein changed it into: ‘The truth of
tautology is certain, of propositions possible, of contradiction impossible’ (Wittgenstein
1922b, 30). The same applies to 5.143 and 6. Even after Wittgenstein got rid of several
‘the’s’, Ryle still found many to be thrown out.
In Harré (1999) some of Ryle’s comments concerning the translation were already
mentioned, e.g. the many misplaced ‘only’s’ – e.g. in 6.3611 Ryle suggests ‘possible only’
instead of ‘only possible’. This is also true for Ryle’s annotations concerning issues of
particular relevance for the interpretation of the Tractatus. In 2.03 (1922 and 1951) Ryle
suggests replacement of ‘members’ as a translation of the German ‘Glieder’ by ‘links’. And
he proposes to distinguish between ‘abbilden’ and ‘darstellen’ which are often both
translated with ‘represent’ (by the early Ogden-Ramsey translation as well as the later
Pears-McGuinness one). Ryle suggests the more concrete ‘depict’ for ‘abbilden’ and the
more abstract ‘display’, ‘exhibit’ or ‘convey’ for ‘darstellen’, in order to make the English
text less ambiguous. Some additional interpretative corrections which I found are the
following: in 2.0271 Ryle suggests ‘constant’ instead of ‘fixed’ and ‘mutable’ instead of
‘variable’, and in 4.115 he prefers ‘unsayable’ over ‘unspeakable’.
Most of Ryle’s corrections indeed seem to be improvements. However, he
sometimes contradicts Wittgenstein’s own earlier suggestions. In any case, Ryle’s
annotations on the translation of the Tractatus show an interest in – and eye for – what
Wittgenstein had to say at a remarkably detailed level.
160
See also Harré 1999 (p. 42).
168
Ryle in Relation to Contemporary Wittgenstein Scholarship

It is interesting to note that Ryle’s interpretation of ‘the early Wittgenstein’ seems to be
closer to the interpretation of the ‘New Wittgensteinians’ headed by Conant and Diamond,
than to the standard interpretations of his time, which generally depicted Wittgenstein’s
Tractatus as metaphysical realism and his later work as a rejection of this position. The
‘New Wittgensteinians’ argue that there is only one Wittgenstein rather than two,
attempting to provide an overall coherent interpretation which fits his early as well as his
later writings. They claim that his ontological claims are not really ontological claims and,
following this line of thought, that the picture theory is not a theory but rather a method,
which is – as I have shown above – what Ryle argues too. Ryle’s interpretation of the
ontological story of the Tractatus as some sort of prefatory parable seems to be close to the
view of the ‘New Wittgensteinians’:
the book presents us with metaphysical sentences which lead us to participate in an imaginative
activity of articulating the structure of the illusion of an external standpoint on language – an
imaginative activity through which we can come to recognize that illusion as an illusion. (Crary
and Read 2000, 13)
Like Diamond and Conant, Ryle maintains that Wittgenstein did not aim at providing us
with ontological knowledge, but used his ontological claims for another purpose. Ryle
thought that making us realize that the ontological story will not do was not the only thing
Wittgenstein tried to achieve; he replaced the ontological story with a propositional one
which would do.
However, Ryle would not have agreed with the interpretation of the ‘New
Wittgensteinians’ that Wittgenstein merely provides a therapeutic method and no
arguments. This interpretation is offered not only by the ‘New Wittgenstein’ movement, but
also by more traditional interpreters such as Bouwsma, as we will see in the second part of
this chapter, Baker and Waismann. They make it seem as if there is a strict dichotomy
between therapeutic method and metaphysical claims, with nothing in between. Whereas
the philosophers who believe there are two Wittgensteins think that the first was building a
metaphysical theory and was making claims, and the second was only developing a
therapeutic method without arguing or refuting claims (which I call the traditional
interpretation), the ‘New Wittgensteinians’ argue that there never was a Wittgenstein who
was a metaphysical theory builder. According to this interpretation, Wittgenstein has
always been a therapist. The ‘New Wittgensteinians’ understand Wittgenstein as ‘aspiring,
not to advance metaphysical theories, but rather to help us work ourselves out of confusions
we become entangled in when philosophizing’ (Crary 2000, 1). They regard his method to
be a purely therapeutic one. Ryle, however, agrees with Hacker and others that
Wittgenstein did argue, refute and rectify claims, which does not mean, as we will see later,
that Ryle considers Wittgenstein to be making metaphysical claims in the Tractatus or in
his later writings. The use of reductio ad absurdum arguments is a way of rectifying and
refuting but this does not mean that one makes ontological claims. Wittgenstein’s refutation
of Russell and Frege also supports such an interpretation.
169
A Comparison Between Ryle and Wittgenstein

Though similarities between Ryle and Wittgenstein have been noticed, there is more to be
said on this. Apart from agreeing in their rejection of Cartesian dualism, their development
of a non-denotational concept of meaning, and other similarities which will be mentioned
below, they also frequently use the same examples. Ryle’s well-known example of the
chess-player in The Concept of Mind can already be found in Wittgenstein’s Blue and
Brown Books.161 And his use of engineering examples – such as in ‘Philosophical
Arguments’ (Ryle 1945, 198) where Ryle describes the reductio ad absurdum as having
something in common with the destruction-tests by which engineers discover the strength
of materials – can also be traced back to Wittgenstein.162 Furthermore, Ryle’s description in
‘Philosophical Arguments’ (1945) of the task of philosophy as ‘the charting of the logical
powers of ideas’ and the metaphor he uses for our workaday knowledge of the geography
of our ideas, namely that ‘People often know their way about a locality while being unable
to describe the distances or directions between different parts of it or between it and other
localities’, are reminiscent of the Blue Book (1958, 57).163
In what follows I shall discuss the interpretation of Hacker and Bouwsma who
have examined the relationship between the two philosophers in some detail. I will also
point at the similarities between Ryle’s later writings on thinking and on the nature of
philosophy and Wittgenstein’s views on these subject. It is especially in these papers –
more than in The Concept of Mind or Ryle’s earlier writings – that Ryle comes close to
Wittgenstein.
Peter Hacker: the Main difference Between Ryle and Wittgenstein is

Depth
Hacker claims that Ryle’s interest in the distinction between meaningful and nonsensical
statements originated from studying Wittgenstein’s Tractatus and was probably further
developed by his contact with Wittgenstein. Their conceptions of philosophy bear
recognizable resemblances. Ryle’s conception of philosophy as the mapping of the ‘logical
geography’ and ‘cross-bearings’ of concepts is similar to Wittgenstein’s search for a clear
‘representation of our use of words in a given domain of discourse.’ (Hacker 1996, 168)
Hacker further thought that both philosophers were similar in their detailed methods of
unmasking philosophical confusion by pointing to conceptual differences in previously
assumed uniformities.
Hacker mentions several resemblances between the subjects treated by both
philosophers.
There are numerous parallels between Ryle’s treatment of problems and Wittgenstein’s – for
example, the discussion of intelligent performances and the repudiation of the dual-process
conception of thoughtful, intelligent activity; the analysis of understanding, partial understanding
and misunderstanding; the attack on the myth of volitions; and the repudiation of the traditional
picture of self-knowledge and introspection. (Hacker 1996, 169)
Ryle not merely imitated Wittgenstein but ‘applied these ideas in his own inimitable and
brilliant way’ (Hacker 1996, 170).
161
The example of the chess-player was also used in the Blue Book (Wittgenstein 1958, pp. 7 and 13) and in the
Brown Book (Wittgenstein 1958, pp. 77, 84, 147, 183-4 and 185).
162
Cf. Harré 1999 (p. 42).
163
Cf. Hacker 1996 (p. 149).
170
There are also differences. The most important one, according to Hacker, is a
difference in depth and subtlety, ‘but no deep difference’ (Hacker 1996, 168). He thinks it
is due to Ryle’s ‘superficiality’ that he repudiated the therapeutic aspect of Wittgenstein’s
philosophy and that he did not share Wittgenstein’s aversion against characterizing certain
things philosophers say as true or false. Ryle thought that one could speak of philosophers’
statements being true or false though not in the same sense in which scientific statements
are true or false, just as one can talk about theories in philosophy, as long as one does not
hold that they are similar to scientific ones. This shows, Hacker thinks, that Ryle remained
at the surface and never touched the underlying questions, such as ‘if we deny that a
philosophical proposition could be false, what is our explanation of why this is so?’.
Another difference is what Hacker calls Ryle’s ‘excessive reliance’ (Hacker, 168)
on the idea of a category-mistake in The Concept of Mind, which is not to be found in
Wittgenstein, although the latter does occasionally speak of categories and confusions of
categories.164 Wittgenstein does not, as Ryle does, speak of a general notion of a category-
mistake, but looks from case to case how philosophical confusion arises from applying the
grammar of one concept to that of another. Ryle’s sometimes relatively quick, impatient
and superficial dismissal of the Cartesian myth has no counterpart in Wittgenstein.
Wittgenstein wanted to do justice to the temptations to stick with a certain picture and
could not bring himself to homogenize matters and simply get rid of them. Hacker
interprets Wittgenstein’s only recorded remark on The Concept of Mind – ‘all the magic has
vanished’165 – as a critique on Ryle’s failure to do justice to the temptations of the Cartesian
myth.
As a result of Wittgenstein’s aversion against homogenizing issues, his writings
occasionally contain, as Hacker puts it, ‘bewilderingly truncated arguments’ (Hacker, 169)
as well as opaque counter-moves, which are not found in Ryle. Hacker further shows that
there is no complete overlap of the subjects which Ryle and Wittgenstein discussed.
Wittgenstein’s writings, but not Ryle’s, contain the private language argument as well as a
‘detailed discussion of the asymmetry between the first- and third-person, present-tense
psychological utterances in terms of the absence of criteria in the first-person case and the
need for criteria in the third-person case’ (Hacker, 170). Ryle’s work did not invoke the
notion of a criterion, as Wittgenstein’s did, neither did he pay attention to certain issues of
philosophical psychology that were addressed by Wittgenstein, e.g. aspect perception.
Moreover, Ryle’s work lends itself more easily to a behaviouristic interpretation than
Wittgenstein’s writings. What Hacker calls Ryle’s ‘tendency to drift incautiously towards a
behaviouristic position’ cannot be found in Wittgenstein (some commentators
notwithstanding).166
O. K. Bouwsma: Ryle used Arguments whereas Wittgenstein did not

At a symposium on Ryle in the summer of 1972 O. K. Bouwsma presented his paper ‘A
Difference between Ryle and Wittgenstein’. Roughly, he claims that whereas Ryle’s
164
For example in MS 135 Wittgenstein writes about the problems in philosophical psychology and says: ‘It is a
mixture of categories’. (This remark was written as late as 1947.)
165
This remark can be found in the unpublished version of Bouwsma’s notes on his conversations with
Wittgenstein.
166
While Hacker does not believe that Ryle should be regarded as a logical behaviourist, he thinks that Ryle
himself was partly to blame for this persistent misinterpretation of his work. His ‘strategic error’ (Hacker 1996,
172) was his own characterization of what he was fighting against in The Concept of Mind. His fight against the
‘ghost in the machine’ can easily lead people to think that he was defending the view that all mental predicates
signify behaviour. Cf. Hacker 1996 (p. 170).
171
Concept of Mind provides us with ‘knowledge that’, Wittgenstein’s Philosophical

Investigations is concerned with showing us a method, teaching us ‘knowledge how’, a
skill. Bouwsma thinks that clues for this interpretation can be found in the fact that,
contrary to Ryle, Wittgenstein did not provide proofs, did not use arguments or refutations
and rectifies nothing. The difference in style plays a role as well, The Concept of Mind
being ‘a well-ordered book proceeding from one subject to another in a rational order and
without breaks’, and The Philosophical Investigations a work without a clear beginning or
end; Bouwsma calls it ‘an endless book’ (Bouwsma 1972, 82).
Bouwsma claims that what Ryle calls a mistake, Wittgenstein describes as the
expression of a linguistic confusion. Philosophical problems are caused in particular by two
things, namely: (1) a certain feature of language, namely ‘the presence in our language of
surface analogies between different areas of that language’ (Bouwsma 1972, 83); and (2)
the disposition to be misled on the part of the thinker. Since we cannot change our concepts
at will, we would have to change the disposition in order not to fall prey to the mistakes or
linguistic confusions. Bouwsma mentions two possible approaches (the only ones
according to him), one represented by Ryle, the other by Wittgenstein. One is ‘to study the
language’ (Bouwsma 1972, 84) and the other is ‘to alert the thinker’ (ibid.). Whereas
Bouwsma sees Ryle as correcting mistakes by studying the language in a neutral, scientific
way, he claims that Wittgenstein wanted to alert the individual thinker:
(…) Wittgenstein was not thinking of what he was doing as correcting mistakes. It was not
mistakes, but an urge, a bewitchment, a fascination, a deep disquietude, a captivity, a
disorientation, illusions, confusions – these, the troubles of the mixed-up intelligence, that
Wittgenstein sought to relieve. (…) Wittgenstein’s interest was not in any particular problem but
in the bothered individual, particularly in the hot and bothered. (Bouwsma 1972, 84)
Bouwsma even speaks of Wittgenstein as ‘getting under one’s skin’:

It is as though Wittgenstein purposely hid the meaning of what he had to say and no one is to
have it for the asking. He will have to dig for it. Nearly every paragraph is offered as an exercise,
a challenge. (…) He [Wittgenstein] isn’t satisfied with telling the reader something. He nags. He
intends to get under your skin, to get into your hair, to make you uncomfortable, to drive you to
self-examination and improvement. (Bouwsma 1972, 85)
Bouwsma regards Ryle as taking up a problem which can be dealt with independently of
anyone, a problem similar to a scientific problem. ‘If you want to know to what category a
term belongs, go to Ryle. Ask him: To what category does the term “uneasy” belong? He
will tell you: To the category “agitation”.’ (Bouwsma 1972, 86) Wittgenstein on the other
hand, since his aim was to teach a skill, would never have given a list similar to the one
Ryle gives in characterising words such as ‘uneasy’, ‘anxious’, ‘startled’, ‘shocked’ and
‘irritated’ as signifying agitations. Wittgenstein’s problem is always an individual in
trouble. ‘There are no standard explanations which bring relief.’ (Bouwsma 1972, 87)
Wittgenstein’s goal is not so much to hit upon the analogy that really explains the
compulsion of saying things, but it is ‘to hit upon the analogy that one may assent to as
what has compelled one to say this’ (Bouwsma 1972, 87).
In 1972 Ryle responded to Bouwsma’s paper and his criticisms were primarily
aimed at Bouwsma’s interpretation of Wittgenstein and not so much at his characterization
of Ryle (Ryle 1972d). Ryle’s first objection is that he unjustly assimilates the Wittgenstein
of the Philosophical Investigations to the psychoanalyst. Bouwsma claims that both are
‘treating the individual’ (Bouwsma 1972, 86) and that the object of both is to ‘hit upon the
analogy that one may assent to as what has compelled one to say [or ‘do’ in the case of
172
psychoanalysis] this’ (Ibid. 86-87). Ryle thinks that, apart from 254-255 and (perhaps) 133,
no indications of Wittgenstein practising a psychoanalyst model are present in his
Philosophical Investigations. He would rather want to stress skills instead of the specific
solutions; Ryle considers the psychoanalyst to focus primarily on the latter.
Second, Bouwsma overstresses the coaching element in Wittgenstein’s ideas. Ryle
admits that there is indeed a coaching element present, but argues that Wittgenstein does
not provide us with a particular appropriate way of getting rid of our confusions, or even
with a ‘particular pocket of confusion’ (ibid.). Bouwsma neglects the ‘exploring element’,
i.e. that ‘behind the mentor there was the philosopher’ (Ryle 1972d, 109) – who was
especially present in the Notebooks, where Wittgenstein explored ‘his own flybottles from
inside’ (ibid.).
We are told with pathos that Wittgenstein ‘sought to bring relief, control, calm, quiet, peace,
release, a certain power.’ Well! – what of the Wittgenstein who got us interested, fascinated,
excited, angry, shocked? He electrified us. Whom did he ever tranquilize? (Ryle 1972d, 109)
Ryle’s last objection is aimed at Bouwsma’s claim that the Philosophical Investigations
provides ‘no theory of mind, contains no arguments or refutations and rectifies nothing’
(Ryle 1972d, 109). Ryle strongly disagrees with this and gives examples of what he
considers to be arguments, refutations, rectifications and claims about mind in the
Philosophical Investigations.
No arguments? Yet, ‘I remember having meant (gemeint) him. Am I remembering a process or

state? – When did it begin, what was its course, etc.?’ (661) No arguments? But lots of
Wittgenstein’s wearisome interrogatives are, at least this (…) one, the rhetorically barbed
conclusions of reductio ad absurdum arguments. (Ryle 1972d, 110)
Bouwsma’s interpretation does not do justice to the fact that the Investigations was a
fierceful attack rather than merely a story not directed at anyone.
The clang of Wittgenstein’s metal against the metals of Frege, Russell, Ramsey, Brouwer,
Moore, and the author of the Tractatus is here muted to a soothing bedside murmur. (Ibid., 110)
Ryle’s criticisms of Bouwsma’s interpretation are particularly relevant because they reveal
with respect to some main issues what Ryle’s place would have been in the current debate
concerning the interpretation of Wittgenstein. This will be clarified below, where Ryle’s
Wittgenstein interpretation will be briefly discussed in relation to that of the so-called ‘New
Wittgensteinians’.
An Evaluation of Their Differences and Similarities

Underlying the different assessments of Bouwsma and Hacker regarding the differences
between Ryle and Wittgenstein may be the fact that whereas Ryle is often tempted to
making positive claims, Wittgenstein hardly ever seems to do so – and even when he does,
his positive claims are presented as purely descriptive rather than normative, that is, based
on a philosophical theory. And as positive claims are in general easier to attack than
negative ones, it seems that Wittgenstein is less susceptible to attacks. On the other hand,
Wittgenstein does not draw any direct conclusions and this sometimes makes it difficult to
see his point. And, as we have already seen, Ryle wondered whether Wittgenstein’s ‘hinted
diagnosis’ (Ryle 1957b, 267) would do.
173
Hacker may be right in claiming that Ryle’s writings are often more superficial
than those of Wittgenstein and do not in general touch upon the so-called limits of
language. This can be illustrated by the fact that Wittgenstein’s discussion of ‘certainty’,
which has to do with Wittgenstein’s interest in the limits of our language games, has no
counterpart in Ryle. In On Certainty Wittgenstein evidently touches upon the limits of
language and the limits of our language-games. His basic claim is that within each
language-game there are always propositions that are certain. Otherwise language-games
could not exist and communication would be impossible. As regards psychological
language games, Wittgenstein relates their limits to the notion of ‘instinctive’ or
‘prelinguistic’ behaviour, a notion absent from Ryle’s work. Ryle does not discuss this
matter.
Furthermore, Wittgenstein is also deeper with respect to the nature of philosophy.
The difference between grammatical and empirical propositions and the confusion this
distinction causes in philosophy is, for example, not discussed by Ryle. Not only On
Certainty but also Wittgenstein’s treatment of private language and psychology deals with
subjects which are neglected by Ryle. And Wittgenstein pays more attention to the
constitutive role of language for the meaning of concepts. Finally, Wittgenstein more
persistently and thoroughly pays attention to the analogies which mislead us.
I find Bouwsma’s claim that Ryle provides us with ‘Knowledge that’ whereas
Wittgenstein merely wants to teach us a method, less convincing. We have already seen
that Ryle himself does not agree with Bouwsma’s interpretation of Wittgenstein as a
philosopher who does not use arguments and does not want to rectify, etc. Moreover, in his
introduction to The Concept of Mind Ryle mentions two different kinds of arguments he
employs (rigorous logical arguments and less rigorous persuasive ones). The use of
persuasive arguments seems to be a counterexample to Bouwsma’s claim that Wittgenstein
focuses on the individual whereas Ryle does not. Bouwsma refers to, at most, only one of
Ryle’s methods. Ryle’s persuasive arguments remind us of Wittgenstein’s idea that:
Das, was den Gegenstand schwer verständlich macht ist – wenn er bedeutend, wichtig, ist –
nicht, dass irgendeine besondere Instruktion über abstruse Dinge zu seinem Verständnis
erförderlich wäre, sondern der Gegensatz zwischen dem Verstehen des Gegenstandes und dem,
was die meisten Menschen sehen wollen. Dadurch kann gerade das Nahe liegendste am
allerschwersten verständlich werden. Nicht eine Schwierigkeit des Verstandes, sondern des
Willens ist zu überwinden. (Wittgenstein, The Big Typescript, MS 213, 406)167
While I agree with Hacker’s suggestion about the relation between Ryle’s The Concept of
Mind and Wittgenstein’s writings, I consider it unfortunate that he does not take into
account Ryle’s later writings on thinking in his comparison. Bouwsma does not do so
either.
As was mentioned in the preceding chapter on Ryle’s later writings, his treatment
of the concept of thinking and other related mental concepts basically amounts to showing
in many different ways that concepts are of many different orders and that thinking is a
higher order concept. Thinking itself is not a one-layered but a many-layered concept of a
higher order. As we have seen, in these later writings Ryle focuses on the concept of
thinking in relation to other concepts, concepts of other types, and he also discusses the
plurality of different uses of the concept of thinking. More than in his earlier writings he
167
When an object is significant and important what makes it hard to understand is not the lack of some special
instruction in abstruse matters necessary for its understanding, but the conflict between the right understanding of
the object and what most people want to see. This can make the most obvious things the very hardest to
understand. What has to be overcome is not a difficulty of the understanding but of the will. (Kenny 1994, 263)
174
pays attention to the complexity of the concept of thinking, which reminds us of

Wittgenstein. In his treatment of thinking Ryle tries to show by using several expressions
(e.g. ‘abstract’, ‘adverbial’, ‘host action’, ‘thick description’ and ‘higher order purpose’)
that concepts of thinking are of a different – higher – order than others. Wittgenstein is
trying to show something similar, but not by using or introducing new concepts in order to
describe theoretically what is involved in thinking, but rather by giving examples,
stimulating the reader to think for himself. For example, in Remarks on the Philosophy of
Psychology (vol. 1) (Wittgenstein 1980) Wittgenstein talks about the conceptual relation
between thinking and learning how to think and about perfectionizing methods, subjects
which are also to be found in Ryle. While Wittgenstein focuses on the plurality of concepts
and of different uses of these concepts, Ryle seems to be more interested in showing us
different categories, within which concepts can be treated more or less the same.
Their views on language, ordinary language and the use of language also show
remarkable similarities. In particular Ryle’s paper ‘Ordinary Language’ (Ryle 1953b)
shows similarities to Wittgenstein’s view. In this paper Ryle, as was discussed in the
preceding chapter, clarifies what is meant by ‘use’ and ‘ordinary’, distinguishing between
‘the ordinary use of language’ and ‘the use of ordinary language’. Its purpose is to disarm
Ryle’s (and also Wittgenstein’s) critics, who would for example argue that looking at what
ordinary people say would turn philosophy into a mere sociological or philological
enterprise.
Concerning their methods, we could say that Ryle focuses primarily on the relation
between different concepts, and on the fact that not all concepts mean in the same way, or
rather: not all concepts are of the same level; some concepts are of a higher order than
others. Wittgenstein, on the other hand, concentrates more on showing the diversity in our
use of particular concepts.168 However, neither of them limits himself to discussing
exclusively ‘their own’ type. Moreover, the later Ryle – but the earlier not so much – paid
considerable attention to the different uses of particular concepts, e.g. the concept of
thinking.
Concluding Remarks
In the first part of this chapter we have seen that Ryle studied Wittgenstein’s writings
extensively, and that he gave him credits for at least part of his own philosophical
development. From Ryle’s papers and annotations we have been able to distil his picture of
Wittgenstein, which has enabled us to say something about what would have been his
position in the current Wittgenstein debate. Ryle would have chosen the side of those who
consider Wittgenstein to be one philosopher rather than two – an early and a later one – let
alone three. Ryle did not deny that Wittgenstein’s position underwent changes, but he did
not consider them so radical as to defend the position that the Wittgenstein of the Tractatus
had an ontological aim. Particularly interesting was Ryle’s early study of ‘Notes on Logic’
(Wittgenstein 1913). From the ‘Ryle Collection’, and especially from Ryle’s annotated
copies of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus and Philosophical Investigations, new facts about Ryle’s
study of Wittgenstein have been revealed.
168
Using the terminology of Gellner – who wrote a polemical critique of what he called linguistic philosophy –
the early Ryle’s primary goal was to show ‘the external polymorphousness of concepts’ and that of Wittgenstein
was rather to point at ‘the internal complexity of concepts’ (Gellner 1959, 68-69).
175
In comparing Ryle and Wittgenstein my aim has been a modest one: to point to
some important differences and similarities in philosophical method and choice of subjects
between the two philosophers. A comparison between them evidently depends largely on
how one interprets their writings. Those who think Ryle to be a behaviourist are likely to
miss some of the striking resemblances between the two philosophers.
We have seen that Ryle did not like Wittgenstein’s talk of language-games. He also
denied the value of the notion of family resemblances, and did not touch upon the limits of
our use of language in general. Furthermore, Wittgenstein can be considered ‘deeper’ than
Ryle with respect to the nature of philosophy. For example, the difference between
grammatical and empirical propositions and the confusion this distinction causes in
philosophy has no counterpart in Ryle. Wittgenstein also pays more attention to the
constitutive role of language for the meaning of concepts. Despite these differences, I
believe that their philosophical views and methods reveal close and important similarities.
Ryle as well as Wittgenstein has a great interest in the notion of thinking and learning how
to think, or how to think creatively. Both use arguments in order to refute and rectify,
although the form Wittgenstein uses may tempt us into thinking that he does not. Both
provide us with a method and express their views on Cartesian dualism, behaviourism,
denotationalism, etc. – sometimes in an obvious way, sometimes in a more hidden way.
Underlying all of this are their views on meaning and use of language, which are in essence
similar.
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Concluding Remarks
Chapter 7
Summary and Concluding

Remarks
In this dissertation I have discussed the philosophical development of Gilbert Ryle against
the background of some of his contemporaries, in particular Russell, Collingwood and
Wittgenstein. To this end I have used the ‘Ryle Collection’, kept at Linacre College
Library, a hitherto virtually unexplored source. One of the main aims of this dissertation
has been to criticize some persistent interpretations of Ryle as a behaviourist. This not only
adds to a better understanding of the historical Ryle, but also of the positions ascribed to
him in current debates in the philosophy of mind.
I started with a biographical sketch of Ryle (Chapter 1), for which I used not only
published sources, which are fairly limited, but also stories and anecdotes which relatives,
former students, colleagues and friends of Ryle provided. These interviews enabled me, I
hope, to present a somewhat fuller picture of him, both as a person and as a professional
philosopher, than is usually presented in print. This biographical sketch clearly shows the
importance of Ryle for Oxford philosophy and philosophy in general. By his manner of
teaching and writing and by his discussions of philosophers who were not commonly
studied in Oxford at the time he inspired generations of students, and his The Concept of
Mind (1949) became a classic to be studied by virtually every philosophy student in Britain
and abroad. Attention was also given to his other important contributions to Oxford
philosophy: his role in the founding of the B.Phil, which attracted many overseas students
and greatly stimulated the activity of philosophy tutors in Oxford; his donation to Linacre
College Library of a large part of his personal library (see Appendix 2); his role in the
founding of Analysis; his editorship of Mind; his role in moving the Brentano Society from
Prague to Oxford in 1938-9; and his single-handed rescue of the Waismann legacy. These
and other activities show that Ryle was a powerful figure in British philosophy, who was
almost always asked for his opinion when academic staff had to be appointed.
Ryle’s development from a homogeneous denotational theory of meaning towards
a heterogeneous theory of use constitutes the subject of Chapters 2 and 3. We have seen
that Ryle moved from his early Russellian search for an ideal language to a position more
similar to that of the later Wittgenstein. Ryle soon abandoned the Russellian method of
analysing and reformulating expressions and he began to realize that denotationalism was
responsible for many misunderstandings, sham-questions and problematic theories in
philosophy. Thus Ryle’s focus was no longer on ‘meaning’, which for him implied the view
that there is a homogeneous relationship between language and reality, and that all
expressions mean what they mean in the same way. He now focused on ‘use’, underscoring
the many different ways in which expressions are used. Consequently, his method of
philosophical analysis changed from a logical and decompositional (or reductive) type of
analysis to what may be called a connective type, somewhat analogous to the task of a
cartographer (one of Ryle’s own favourite analogies). As analysed in Chapter 3, the method
employed in The Concept of Mind (1949a) was meant to show that certain kinds of
operations with concepts of mind go against the rules which these concepts ought to follow
177
according to the ‘logical geography’ of these concepts. Ryle no longer uses a reductive type
of analysis, and does not talk about a deeper level of the logical form of facts, nor does he
aim at an ideal language. He is now interested in the possible and impossible connections
between different (types of) concepts.
As we have seen, Ryle is often characterized as a (reductive) behaviourist, which is
largely responsible for a general and swift disregard of his views. Since the rise of cognitive
science and the influential rejection of behaviourism by Chomsky (1959) and Fodor (1975),
any association with (reductive) behaviourism has become damaging. The reason why Ryle
was so frequently and mistakenly considered to be a behaviourist was that his rejection of
the idea of a denotational theory of meaning was not sufficiently recognized. But Ryle
himself was to some extent to blame for this misinterpretation, for it was not always clear
which target he attacked. Moreover, the fact that The Concept of Mind deals with category-
mistakes on many different levels makes it difficult to interpret the book. The most general
type of category-mistake arises because mental concepts are treated as names, and mental
language as a description of a mental world. Once we recognize these category-mistakes we
are able to expose both dualism and behaviourism, although Ryle, as he himself later
declared, was not fully aware of the consequences for a behaviourist position when writing
The Concept of Mind.
In this chapter I have given several reasons why Ryle should not be characterized
as a reductive behaviourist. The most important ones are: (1) a reductive behaviourist view
does not fit Ryle’s meta-philosophical purpose; (2) reductive behaviourism presupposes
something like a homogeneous denotational theory of meaning, a view rejected by him
already in the late 1930s; and (3) the most charitable interpretation of the main category-
mistakes Ryle attacks in The Concept of Mind tells against it. I hope to have argued
convincingly for a non-reductivist interpretation of Ryle, since in this way his method can
still be of value for modern philosophy, e.g. in discussions about the foundations of
neuroscience.
In Chapter 4 Ryle’s later writings were analysed: his theoretical papers, Dilemmas
and his later writings on thinking. The theoretical claims which Ryle had presented in his
earlier papers could not fully carry the weight of the method of The Concept of Mind.
Hence, in the late 1950s and early 60s Ryle wrote additions to the ‘old’ theoretical account
of how to do philosophy. He continued on his path of rejecting the idea of a denotational
theory of meaning in favour of a heterogeneity of use, and still focused on informal logic
and the idea that philosophical problems are of a different nature than scientific ones and
cannot be solved piecemeal. New elements were Ryle’s instructions for interpreting ‘the
ordinary use of the expression x’, namely that ‘use’ should be interpreted in a logical rather
than in a philological sense and that ‘the ordinary use of an expression’ is not the same
thing as ‘the use of ordinary expressions’. Furthermore, Ryle analysed the differences
between language and speech and between words and sentences. Speech involves language
but cannot be reduced to it. If we confuse speech with language, and sentences with words,
we end up, according to Ryle, with a philosophy that is mere philology. Also new – in
terminology though not in spirit – was his description of philosophy as an interlevel-
activity. Ryle argued that philosophical arguments, as opposed to proofs, concern multiple
levels; they are, in his vocabulary, ‘operations upon operations’. This is exactly what
constitutes the difference between philosophy and the sciences. Whereas the sciences
explain in the sense that they are trying to discover new facts and directly operate on them,
philosophy does not aim at discovering facts but is concerned with description rather than
with explanation.
178
Concluding Remarks
Like The Concept of Mind, Ryle’s Dilemmas (1954a) was also meant as an
example of how to do philosophy. Although Ryle’s specific solutions to the dilemmas
which he analysed may be (and have been) criticized as superficial and incomplete, his
meta-philosophical message has proven to be of great value: connective philosophical
analysis diagnoses the mistakes we make when we let language set traps for us, and how
we can recognize and discard them.
The remainder of Chapter 4 considers in some detail Ryle’s later work on thinking.
Ryle’s basic question was: what does it mean to say that our descriptions of thinking are
higher-level descriptions of processes? He considers the figure of the Thinker (Le Penseur)
and asks: if the thinking which Le Penseur is doing is (merely) the way in which processes
are managed, then what kind of processes are we talking about here? Ryle uses ‘the
thinking of Le Penseur’ precisely to indicate the sort of thinking of which it is most
difficult to see that it is adverbial (that is, it qualifies something else) and is supervening
upon actions instead of itself being qualified as an action. If the ‘thinking’ of Socrates,
Mozart and the scientist does not describe a process but a manner of ‘X-ing’, what can this
X-ing possibly be? Is it ‘pondering’, ‘reflecting’ or ‘meditating’? What ‘happens’ when we
do that? To present an answer to this cluster of questions was Ryle’s main objective in
these later papers. His answer was that although no one single, specific autonomous X-ing
exists for the thinking of Le Penseur, purely as a matter of logic we do seem to need a non-
adverbial – or at least partly non-adverbial – verb for the adverbs to attach to.
In these papers Ryle sharpened and strengthened his position without radically
changing his mind; the adverbial element, for instance, was already present in 1949, though
less prominent. We have seen that Ryle, by using what I have called ‘higher-order’
concepts, tried to show that a description of the thinking of Le Penseur is not a description
of complex processes. It was rather a complex (or higher-order) description of processes.
This enabled him to reject both dualism and behaviourism, which both (mistakenly) take all
descriptions as functioning like sentences that refer to processes or things. It was important
for Ryle to become more explicit about his rejection of both Cartesian dualism and
behaviourism in his later writings, since his own The Concept of Mind was interpreted as a
behaviourist work. We have analysed his position in some detail and suggested that Ryle is
neither a dualist nor a behaviourist – not even a conceptual dualist or a conceptual
behaviourist. His position may be described as ‘conceptual pluralism’, according to which
concepts should not be treated in one single way, or in two different ways, but in many
different ways depending on the context in which a concept is used. Though Ryle’s later
work on thinking has been criticized, it is argued that his solution is original and the
distinctions at which he points give us a clearer view on the ordinary use of our concept(s)
of thinking. In this respect he certainly has a role to play in philosophy of mind and
cognitive science of the twenty-first century.
In Chapter 5 I discussed the philosophical relation between Ryle and Collingwood
and their brief correspondence from 1935. The Correspondence shows us their
disagreements on many points but the underlying, more fundamental, issues were not
brought to the surface. In this chapter I have tried to uncover these fundamental issues by
showing that Ryle and Collingwood had a different approach to and understanding of logic
and the history of philosophy. Their disagreements can be traced back to these more
fundamentally different views about the nature of philosophy and logic, the nature of
metaphysics and the definition of a universal proposition. Essential is the difference
between Collingwood’s overlap of classes in philosophy and Ryle’s idea of one general
logic being applicable in all disciplines. Further, Collingwood’s somewhat idiosyncratic
terminology led Ryle to think that Collingwood’s project was of a strong ontological
179
nature. Armed with this fuller understanding of the correspondence and its philosophical
background, I have criticized some interpretations of the philosophical relationship between
Collingwood and Ryle.
Ryle’s study of Wittgenstein has been discussed in Chapter 6. In the first part of
this chapter it was shown that Ryle had studied Wittgenstein’s writings extensively, and
that he explicitly recognized the influence of Wittgenstein on his own philosophical
development. From Ryle’s papers and annotations we have been able to learn about his
views on Wittgenstein. Ryle’s position comes close to those who now, in contemporary
debates on the philosophy of Wittgenstein, argue that there is only one Wittgenstein, not
two (let alone three). He did not deny that Wittgenstein’s position underwent changes, but
he positioned the Tractatus closer to Wittgenstein’s later work than traditional interpreters
have done. Of particular interest is Ryle’s early study of Wittgenstein’s ‘Notes on Logic’
from 1913. From the ‘Ryle Collection’, and especially from Ryle’s annotated copies of
Wittgenstein’s Tractatus and Philosophical Investigations and his comments on ‘Notes on
Logic’ I have been able to reveal new facts about Ryle’s study of Wittgenstein.
In comparing Ryle and Wittgenstein in the second part of Chapter 6, I have studied
some important differences and similarities between the two philosophers. Ryle did not like
Wittgenstein’s talk of language-games. He also denied the value of the notion of family
resemblances, and did not talk about the limits of our use of language. Some scholars have
argued that Wittgenstein is ‘deeper’ than Ryle with respect to the nature of philosophy. For
example, the difference between grammatical and empirical propositions and the confusion
this distinction caused in philosophy has no counterpart in Ryle. Wittgenstein also pays
more attention to the constitutive role of language for the meaning of concepts. But despite
these differences, I have also argued that their philosophical views and methods reveal
close and important similarities. Both philosophers had a great interest in the notion of
thinking and learning how to think, and how to think creatively. They attacked Cartesian
dualism, behaviourism, denotationalism, etc. – sometimes explicitly, sometimes less
affront. They used arguments in order to refute and rectify, although in the case of
Wittgenstein this is less obvious. Underlying all of this are their largely similar views on
meaning and our use of language.
It has not been easy to give a final verdict on Ryle’s philosophical work that has
been discussed in this dissertation. Scholars have frequently praised Ryle’s style, especially
that of The Concept of Mind, while at the same time it was often noticed that it was too
florid and mannerist so that the true purport of his arguments was unclear. Nonetheless,
behind the style we can discern a clear message about the nature of philosophy. For Ryle
philosophy is a conceptual study. However, he did not, in one sense of the word, solve the
philosophical problems. He showed the implications of the common assumption that the
mind is a secret grotto inside our head, and that thinking is an equally secret process inside
this mysterious entity. Ryle rejected this view both in The Concept of Mind and in his later
papers, but did not provide a new theory to replace the old ones. One may say that he
offered doubts about the old views but no securities about new ones. This was part and
parcel of his philosophy, which was essentially about philosophy and how it should be
done. It was so much part of his approach that Ryle began to repeat himself, inventing ever
new examples and notions to illustrate it. This makes reading his later papers a somewhat
tedious affair, and it is not surprising that these papers have attracted far less attention than
The Concept of Mind. Notwithstanding Ryle’s repetitions and his often in the end not
entirely satisfactory solutions to specific philosophical problems, his meta-philosophical
message remains of great value and influenced many philosophers.
180
Concluding Remarks
The focus of this dissertation has not allowed me to pay much attention to whom Ryle
influenced. In this conclusion let me therefore say a few things about it and about his
importance for today. Although today explicit reference to his writings are scarce, it is not
hazardous to say that many philosophers have been influenced by them, in particular by his
views on the nature and aims of philosophy and its proper methods. We may rightly say
that Ryle is one of the founding fathers of a connective type of philosophical analysis.
Daniel Dennett is one good example of someone who is influenced by Ryle. He
was a friend of Ryle and corresponded with him for many years. From him Dennett adopts
the idea that at the ‘folk psychological level’ – what Ryle would call the ordinary use of
psychological concepts – psychological concepts function roughly in a dispositional way.
According to what Dennett calls the intentional stance, talk about propositional attitudes
(such as belief and desire) is an instrument for predicting other people’s behaviour. An
example of his acknowledgement of Ryle’s influence is the following quotation from an
interview in 2002:
Ryle saw (brilliantly, intuitively, but not systematically) that in order to escape the mysteries, we
had to turn the mind inside out, in a certain way, and forsake the quest for the golden nuggets of
content or phenomenality (or something like that) hidden in secret places amongst the
machinery. How do the personal level events of folk psychology map onto the events of sub-
personal level cognitive neuroscience? Ryle didn’t try to address this question directly, because
he knew he was master of only the personal level, but that still gave him plenty to say about what
we shouldn’t look for. So my introduction to the stances, for instance, can be seen as part of my
effort to illuminate the directness Ryle identified but could give no positive account of. (Dennett
2002, 10)
Dennett attacks, as does Ryle, a Cartesian dualist view and more in general rejects the idea
of propositional attitudes as causally active inner states of people. However, they part
company when it comes to what goes on ‘inside’. Unlike Dennett, Ryle almost entirely
refrains from making claims about this subject, whereas Dennett attempts to exorcise the
ghost in the machine in particular by claiming that mental (i.e. computational)
representation ultimately cannot require an (intelligent) homunculus (to which Ryle would
agree), but rather a series of stupid homunculi (to which Ryle would not agree).169 Without
neglecting their differences, it is fair to say that Ryle greatly influenced Dennett and
through him also Dennett’s readers and students.
Furthermore, Ryle considerably influenced the debates about dispositions which
are currently dominated by, D. M. Armstrong, C. B. Martin and U. T. Place, all of whom
studied in Oxford during Ryle’s professorship.170 The main problem with dispositions
seems to be to explain ‘how it can be true that something has a dispositional property when
the disposition ‘points beyond’ itself, and never manifests itself – without committing
oneself to the idea that dispositions are not actual’ (Crane 1996, 4). Place and Martin stay
the closest to Ryle. Place gives a purely hypothetical explanation of dispositions, whereas
Armstrong and Martin think that something categorical has to be brought in as well.
According to Armstrong dispositional properties supervene on purely categorical ones – he
generally identifies dispositions with categorical properties; both Martin and Place argue
that dispositions cannot be reduced to categorical properties. Place adheres to the idea that
there are two kinds of properties: categorical and dispositional (hypothetical) ones, whereas
169
See also Chapter 4, p. 120 for Ryle and Dennett about ‘internal life’ and ‘internal representations’.
170
Armstrong was in Oxford from 1952-1954 to gain his B.Phil.; Martin spent the year 1953-1954 in Oxford, just
before he was appointed Lecturer at the University of Adelaide; Place graduated in philosophy (and psychology) at
Oxford in 1949.
181
Martin thinks that a property is never either entirely categorical or entirely hypothetical but
always both. Dispositional explanations (and more specifically Ryle’s) have also played a
role in discussions concerning the possibility of extending deductive models of explanation
in the natural sciences to the human sciences. In the 1950s P. L. Gardiner, W. Dray, C. G.
Hempel and P. Winch all paid attention to the dispositional model as an alternative to the
covering-law model.171
Finally, besides Ryle’s distinction between categorical and dispositional, many of
his other distinctions still play a role today, for example the one between ‘knowing how’
and ‘knowing that’. Many philosophers, with due recognition to Ryle’s ground-breaking
discussion, adhere to such a distinction, though recent discussions show a reductionist
tendency: ‘knowing how’ presupposes or can even be reduced to ‘knowing that’. Stanley
and Williamson, for example, argue in ‘Knowing How’ (2001) that there is no fundamental
distinction between the two, ‘knowing how’ being simply a species of ‘knowing that’.
Other similar examples of Ryle’s influence could be given.
When we turn to Ryle’s work on thinking and on conceptual method we find that
his views are often ignored in present-day discussions. That he was believed to be a
behaviourist did his reputation no good, but it is worth noticing, as I discovered at
conferences and in conversations, that this interpretation is especially held by American and
continental philosophers, whereas British philosophers – and especially those from Oxford
– seem to know that this is a misleading label. However, they do not argue the case, since
they think it is so self-evident, which, alas, it is not. This is regrettable because if a non-
behaviourist (or at least non-reductive) interpretation of Ryle would be more widely
defended it would show that his work is still valuable in current philosophical debates, for
instance on the nature of cognitive science and psychology.
For example in a recent book by Bennett and Hacker, The Philosophical
Foundations of Neuroscience (2003), the authors use a method which is remarkably similar
to that of Ryle and Wittgenstein. (Hacker is of course a widely recognized Wittgenstein
specialist.) Their aim is to expose conceptual confusions in neuroscience and their starting-
point is a non-reductive view on philosophy. One of the main claims is that empirical
research is fundamentally unable to solve philosophical problems. Another is that
conceptual confusions about how the brain relates to the mind affect the intelligibility of
research carried out by neuroscientists, in terms of the questions they choose to address, the
description and interpretation of results and the conclusions they draw. Hacker and Bennett
adopt methods which are close to the ones practiced by Ryle and Wittgenstein and apply
them to the practice of neuroscience. For example, they expose the conceptual error ‘that
perception is a matter of apprehending an image in the mind’ and show the mistakes in
neuroscientific research as a result of that error. And there are many other examples where
their discussions of conceptual and linguistic mistakes show close affinity with Ryle and
Wittgenstein. This then is another example of the importance I see Ryle still has in
contemporary philosophy. And I am not the only one. As Jeff Coulter for example writes:
the ‘lasting value of Ryle’s endeavours remains clear: his work stands as an enduring
refutation of all forms of neurophysiological reductionist reasoning about what it is to think
or to have a thought.’ (Coulter 2003, 77) Without doubt, others will remain sceptical about
the significance of Ryle’s later work – like Matthews (1981), who claimed that Ryle has
become someone of the past, whose work is outdated.
Ryle’s specific solutions may indeed be outdated in the sense that they do not
present conclusive solutions, and that in the case of thinking he did not provide a
171
Cf. Grazia Ramoino-Melilli 2003 on this and on other aspects of the value of Ryle’s account of dispositions.
182
Concluding Remarks
completely satisfactory account of what the thinking of Le Penseur is. But Ryle has
provided us with tools for approaching philosophical problems, for disentangling
conceptual confusions, and for paying careful attention to the richness of our language in
describing the many different layers of thinking. However, in order to recognize the merits
and importance of these achievements, we first need to free Ryle from the mistaken label of
behaviourism, to which I hope this dissertation has contributed.
183
184
Appendix 1: Ryle’s Writings – the Complete List
Appendix 1: Ryle’s Writings – the

Complete List
Some fairly complete lists of Ryle’s published writings can be found in Oscar P. Wood and
George Pitcher’s Ryle. A Collection of Critical Essays (London 1971) and in Lucie
Antoniol’s Lire Ryle Aujourd’hui (Brussels 1993). At the time of publication, the first list
was probably complete, or at least nearly complete, since Ryle himself assisted in the
making of the bibliography. It stops in 1968. Antoniol’s list includes post-1968 writings
and posthumously published essays, but needs to be updated.
What follows is a chronological list of Ryle’s published writings 1927-2007.172
The following fields of philosophy are represented in his works: philosophical
methodology, philosophical logic, philosophy of mind, and the history of philosophy.
Christ Church
1927 - Critical Notice of Roman Ingarden, Essentiale Fragen, Mind, Vol. XXXVI
1929 - Critical Notice of Martin Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, Mind, Vol. XXXVIII173**
- ‘Negation’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supp. Vol. IX (symposium
with J. D. Mabbott and H. H. Price)**
1930 - ‘Are there propositions?’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Vol. XXX,
1929-30**
- Editor’s Foreword to the Proceedings of the Seventh International Congress of
Philosophy, held at Oxford, September 1-6, 1930, Oxford University Press
1931 - ‘Mr. Ryle on Propositions, Rejoinder’, Mind, Vol. XL (a reply to R. Robinson in

the same volume)
1932 - ‘Systematically Misleading Expressions’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society,

Vol. XXXII, 1931-32. Reprinted in Antony Flew (ed.), Logic and Language, First
Series (Blackwell 1951)**
- ‘Phenomenology’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supp., Vol. XI
(symposium with H. A. Hodges and H. B. Acton)**
- Review of A. Wolf, Textbook of Logic, Philosophy, Vol. VII
- Review of Ralph Eaton, General Logic, Philosophy, Vol. VII
1933 - ‘Imaginary Objects’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supp. Vol. XII
- ‘About’, Analysis, Vol. 1, 1933-34**
- ‘Locke on the Human Understanding’, John Locke Tercentenary Addresses,
Christ Church Oxford, Oxford University Press**
172
* indicates that the book or paper mentioned did not appear on the lists of Wood and Pitcher and Antoniol. **
indicates that the paper mentioned was reprinted in Gilbert Ryle, Collected Papers, Vol. 1 or 2.
173
In Gilbert Ryle, Collected Papers, Vol. 2, this paper on Heidegger is said to be published in 1928, but this is a
mistake.
185
- Review of J. N. Findlay, Meinong’s Theory of Objects, Oxford Magazine, Vol.

LII, 1933-34
- Review of B. M. Laing, David Hume, Philosophy, Vol. VIII
1935 - ‘Internal Relations’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supp. Vol. XIV
(Symposium with A. J. Ayer)**
- ‘Mr. Collingwood and the Ontological Argument’, Mind, Vol. XLIV174**
1936 - ‘Unverifiability by Me’, Analysis, Vol. IV, 1936-37**

- Review of Bent Schultzer, Transcendence and the Logical Difficulties of
Transcendence, Philosophy, Vol. XI
1937 - ‘Induction and Hypothesis’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supp. Vol.
XVI (Symposium with Margaret MacDonald)**
- ‘Taking Sides in Philosophy’, Philosophy, Vol. XII**
- ‘Back to the Ontological Argument’, Mind, Vol. XLVI (Reply to E. E. Harris,
‘Mr. Ryle and the Ontological Argument’, Mind, Vol. XLV)**
1938 - ‘Categories’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Vol. XXXVIII, 1937-38.

Reprinted in Antony Flew (ed.), Logic and Language, Second Series (Blackwell
1959)**
- Welcoming speech to the 4th International Congress for Unified Science,
Erkenntnis, Vol. VII
1939 - ‘Plato’s Parmenides’, Mind, Vol. XLVIII. Reprinted in R. E. Allen (ed.), Studies
in Plato’s Metaphysics (Routledge & Kegan Paul 1965)**
- Review of Karl Britton, Communication, Philosophy, Vol. XIV
- Review of F. M. Cornford, Plato and Parmenides, Mind, Vol. XLVIII**
1940 - ‘Conscience and Moral Convictions’, Analysis, Vol. VII. Reprinted in Margaret
MacDonald (ed.), Philosophy and Analysis (Blackwell 1954)**
- Review of W. M. Urban, Language and Reality; Philosophy, Vol. XV
- Review of Brand Blanshard, The Nature of Thought; Philosophy, Vol. XV
Magdalen College
1945 - Philosophical Arguments (Oxford University Press) (Inaugural Lecture as
Waynflete Professor of Metaphysical Philosophy). Reprinted in A. J. Ayer (ed.),
Logical Positivism (The Free Press, Glencoe, Illinois)**
- ‘Knowing How and Knowing That’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Vol.
XLVI, 1945-46**
1946 - ‘Why are the Calculuses of Logic and Arithmetic Applicable to Reality?’,
Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supp. Vol. XX (Symposium with C. Lewy
and K. Popper)**
- Review of Marvin Farber, The Foundations of Phenomenology; Philosophy, Vol.
XXI**
174
See Chapter 5 on the Ryle-Collingwood Correspondence, which was provoked by this paper.
186
1947 - Review of Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies; Mind, Vol. LVI
1949 - The Concept of Mind (Hutchinson’s University Library)

- Discussion of Rudolf Carnap, Meaning and Necessity; Philosophy, Vol. XXIV**
1950 - ‘’If’, ‘So’ and ‘Because’’, Max Black (ed.), Philosophical Analysis (Cornell
University Press)**
- ‘The Physical Basis of Mind’, Peter Laslett (ed.), The Physical Basis of Mind
(Blackwell) (A symposium with Lord Samuel and A. J. Ayer). Reprinted in Antony
Flew (ed.), Body, Mind and Death (Macmillan 1964)
- ‘Logic and Professor Anderson’, The Australasian Journal of Philosophy, Vol.
XXVIII**
- Review of M. H. Carré, Phases of Thought in England; Philosophy, Vol. XXV
1951 - ‘Heterologicality’, Analysis, Vol. XI, 1950-51. Reprinted in Margaret MacDonald

(ed.), Philosophy and Analysis (Blackwell 1954)**
- ‘Thinking and Language’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supp. Vol.
XXV (Symposium with Iris Murdoch and A. C. Lloyd)**
- ‘Feelings’, The Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 1. Reprinted in William Elton (ed.),
Aesthetics and Language (Blackwell 1954)**
- ‘The Verification Principle’, Revue Internationale de Philosophie, Vol. V**
- ‘Ludwig Wittgenstein’, Analysis, Vol. XII, 1951-52. Reprinted in Irving Copi and
Robert Beard (eds.), Essays on Wittgenstein’s Tractatus (Routledge & Kegan Paul
1966)**
1952 - Review of J. Wisdom, Other Minds; The Listener, Vol. LXIV

- ‘Graduate Work in Philosophy at Oxford’, Universities Quarterly, Vol. VI
1953 - ‘Thinking’, Acta Psychologica, Vol. IX175**

- ‘Ordinary Language’, Philosophical Review, Vol. LXII. Reprinted in Charles
Caton (ed.), Philosophy and Ordinary Language (University of Illinois Press
1963)**
1954 - Dilemmas, The Tarner Lectures (Cambridge University Press)

- ‘Proofs in Philosophy’, Revue Internationale de Philosophie, Vol. VIII (and
contributions to discussion)**
- ‘Pleasure’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supp. Vol. XXVIII
(Symposium with W. B. Gallie). Reprinted in Donald Gustafson (ed.), Essays in
Philosophical Psychology (Anchor Books 1964)**
- Review of L’enseignement de la philosophie (Publications Unesco, Paris 1953);
Universities Quarterly, Vol. VIII
1956 - ‘Sensation’, H. D. Lewis (ed.), Contemporary British Philosophy, Third Series

(Allen & Unwin). Reprinted in R. J. Swartz (ed.), Perceiving, Sensing and
Knowing (Anchor Books 1965)**
175
In the same volume Prof. G. Humphrey responded to Ryle’s paper.
187
- ‘Hume’, M. Merleau-Ponty (ed.), Les Philosophes Célèbres, Editions de l’art

(Lucien Mazenod, Paris)**
- Introduction to The Revolution in Philosophy (Macmillan) (the book consists of
previously broadcasted talks by A. J. Ayer and others)
1957 - ‘The Theory of Meaning’, C. A. Mace (ed.), British Philosophy in Mid Century
(Allen & Unwin). Reprinted in Charles Caton (ed.), Philosophy and Ordinary
Language (University of Illinois Press 1963)**
- ‘Predicting and Inferring’, Observation and Interpretation in the Philosophy of
Physics, Proceedings of the Colston Research Society Symposium, Vol. IX
(University of Bristol)**
- Final discussion with Mary Warnock and A. M. Quinton, in D. F. Pears (ed.), The
Nature of Metaphysics (Macmillan) (A series of programmes originally
broadcasted in the Third Programme of the B.B.C. in 1955)
- Review of Ludwig Wittgenstein, Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics;
Scientific American, Vol. CXVII**
1958 - ‘On Forgetting the Difference Between Right and Wrong’, in A. I. Melden (ed.),
Essays in Moral Philosophy (University of Washington Press)**
- ‘A Puzzling Element in the Notion of Thinking’, Proceedings of the British
Academy, Vol. XLIV (Oxford University Press). Reprinted in Dudley Bailey (ed.),
Essays in Rhetoric (Oxford University Press 1965), and in P. F. Strawson (ed.),
Studies in the Philosophy of Thought and Action (Oxford University Press 1968)**
- Reply to J. Garelli, ‘La notion de possibilité dans l’analyse logique de l’esprit de
Gilbert Ryle’; Revue de Metaphysique et de Morale, Vol. LXIII
- ‘T. H. Weldon’, The Oxford Magazine, Vol. LXXVI, 1957-58 (Obituary)
1960 - ‘Letters and Syllables in Plato’, Philosophical Review, Vol. LXIX**

- ‘Epistemology’, in J. O. Urmson (ed.), The Concise Encyclopaedia of Western
Philosophy and Philosophers (Hutchinson)
- Comment on Mr. Achinstein’s Paper, Analysis, Vol. XXI, 1960-61
- Review of Richard Wollheim, F. H. Bradley; The Spectator, Vol. CCIV
1961 - ‘Use, Usage and Meaning’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supp. Vol.
XXXV (Symposium with J. N. Findlay). Reprinted in G. H. R. Parkinson (ed.), The
Theory of Meaning (Oxford University Press 1968)**
1962 - ‘A Rational Animal’, Auguste Comte Memorial Lecture (University of London,

Athlone Press)**
- ‘Abstractions’, Dialogue, Vol. 1**
- ‘Thinking Thoughts and Having Concepts’, Logique et Analyse, No. 20**
- ‘La Phénoménologie Contre The Concept of Mind’, La Philosophie Analytique;
Cahiers de Royaumont Philosophie, No. IV (Les Editions de Minuit, Paris)**
1963 - Review of G. E. Moore, Commonplace Book 1919-53; New Statesman, Vol.

LXV**
1965 - ‘The Timaeus Locrus’, Phronesis, Vol. X**
188
- ‘Dialectic in the Academy’, in R. Bambrough (ed.), New Essays on Plato and

Aristotle (Routledge & Kegan Paul)**
1966 - Plato’s Progress (Cambridge University Press)

- ‘Jane Austen and the Moralists’, The Oxford Review, No. 1. Reprinted in B. C.
Southam (ed.), Critical Essays on Jane Austen (Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1968)**
- Review of Stuart Hampshire, Freedom of the Individual; New Statesman, Vol.
LXXI
1967 - ‘Plato’, in Paul Edwards (ed.), The Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, Vol. VI

(Macmillan and Free Press)
- ‘John Locke’, Crítica Revista Hispano Americana de Filosofía (Mexico), Vol.
1**
- ‘Teaching and Training’, in R. S. Peters (ed.), The Concept of Education
(Routledge & Kegan Paul)**
After Ryle’s Retirement

1968 - ‘Dialectic in the Academy’, Aristotelian Dialectic (Oxford University Press)
(Proceedings of the third Symposium Aristotelicum)**
- ‘Thinking and Reflecting’, in G. N. A. Vesey (ed.), The Human Agent, Royal
Institute of Philosophy Lectures, Vol. 1, 1966-67**
- ‘The Thinking of Thoughts’, University Lectures, No. 18 (University of
Saskatchewan)**
- ‘G. E. Moore’s “The Nature of Judgement”’, in Ambrose, A., and Lazerowitz, M.
(eds.), G. E. Moore: Essays in Retrospect (London: Allen & Unwin 1968)
1970 - ‘Autobiographical’, in Oscar P. Wood and George Pitcher, Ryle. A Collection of

Critical Essays (Macmillan)*
- Review of ‘Symposium on J.L. Austin’, The Listener**
- ‘Obituary Appreciation of Bertrand Russell’, The Listener
- ‘Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society LXXI,
reprinted in Revue Internationale de Philodophie XXVI (1972) and Roberts, G. W.
(ed.), Bertrand Russell Memorial Volume (London: Allen & Unwin 1979)
- ‘Some problems about Thinking’, Keifer, H., and Munitz, M. (ed.), Mind,
Science and History (New York: SUNY Press 1970)
1971 - ‘Interview with Brian Magee’, The Listener, reprinted in Magee, Brian (ed.),
Modern British Philosophy (London: Secker & Warburg 1971)
- Collected Papers, volume 1 (Hutchinson of London), with an introduction by
Ryle
- Collected Papers, volume 2 (Hutchinson of London), with an introduction by
Ryle
- ‘Phenomenology and Linguistic Analysis’, Neue Hefte für Philosophie, no. 1
1972 - ‘Thinking and Self-Teaching’, in Konstantin Kolenda, A symposium on Gilbert

Ryle, Rice University Studies, Vol. 58 (William Marsh Rice University)
- ‘Thinking and Saying’, in Konstantin Kolenda, A symposium on Gilbert Ryle,
Rice University Studies, Vol. 58 (William Marsh Rice University)
189
- ‘Postscript’, in Konstantin Kolenda, A symposium on Gilbert Ryle, Rice

University Studies, Vol. 58 (William Marsh Rice University) (Ryle’s response to
the contributions of Professor Kolenda and Professor Bouwsma to the symposium)
- ‘Intentionality-Theory and the Nature of Thinking’, Haller, R. (ed.), Jenseits von
Sein und Nichtsein (Graz: Akademische Druck und Verlagsanstalt 1972), reprinted
in Revue Internationale de Philosophie, Vol. 27 (1973). First presented at a
Symposium on Meinong held in Graz.
- ‘Negative Actions’, Hermathena, No. CXV
1974 - ‘Mowgli in Babel’, Philosophy, Vol. 49, No. 187
1976 - ‘Improvisation’, Mind, Vol. LXXXV, No. 337

- Preface, Contemporary Aspects of Philosophy (London: Oriel Press 1976)
Posthumous Publications
1976 - ‘Fifty Years of Philosophy and Philosophers’, Philosophy, Vol. 51 (Lecture given
at King’s College London, on 14 May 1976, to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of
the foundation of the Royal Institute of Philosophy)
1977 - ‘Can Virtue be Taught’, Raimono-Mellili, Grazia (ed.), Studi filosofici e

pedagogici, no. 1 (1977)
1979 - Konstantin Kolenda (ed.), Gilbert Ryle On Thinking (Basil Blackwell, Oxford)
(with a preface by G. J. Warnock); This is a collection of Ryle’s most recent
(previously published) essays on Thinking.
- ‘Last Thoughts on The Concept of Mind’, Personal communication to Bestor,
Thomas W. (June 28, 1976), The Personalist
1990 - ‘Logical Atomism in Plato’s Theaetetus’, Phronesis 35 (1990)*
1993 - René Meyer, Aspects of Mind. Gilbert Ryle (Blackwell); This collection contains
until then unpublished papers by Gilbert Ryle, notes René Meyer made when he
attended Ryle’s lectures and a seminar in 1964, and two tributes to Ryle.
1999 - The Gilbert Ryle Issue, The linacre Journal, Number 3; This issue contains,
besides reflections on Ryle’s philosophy and the ‘Ryle Collection’ present at
Linacre College Library by various authors, four papers written by Ryle. All four
essays were published before. Three of them were published in René Meyer’s,
Aspects of Mind, but the editors of The Gilbert Ryle Issue did not in all instances
agree with Meyer’s renderings of Ryle’s handwriting.*
1999 - Ryle, Gilbert, 1976b, Letter to Daniel Dennett, 22 February 1976, published by
Dennett in 1999 on EJAP: http://ejap.louisiana.edu/EJAP/2002/RyleLett.pdf*
2000 - ‘Courses of Action or the Uncatchableness of Mental Acts’, Philosophy, Vol. 75

(originally read at the annual conference of the Experimental Analysis of
Behaviour Group at Bangor in April 1974)*
190
2005 - ‘The Ryle-Collingwood Correspondence’, in Connelly, James and D’Oro,

Giuseppina, An Essay on Philosophical Method, revised edition (Oxford:
Clarendon Press 2005)*
2006 - McGuinness, Brian and Vrijen, Charlotte (eds.), ‘First Thoughts: An Unpublished
Letter from Gilbert Ryle to H. J. Paton’, British Journal for the History of
Philosophy 14(4) 2006*
191
192
Appendix 2: Gilbert Ryle Collections in Oxford
Appendix 2: Gilbert Ryle

Collections in Oxford
In this appendix I shall describe collections of Ryle material which I found or rediscovered
in various places in Oxford. The ‘Gilbert Ryle Collection’ at Linacre College is by far the
largest one. Some of the others are but minor collections, sometimes consisting of no more
than a few sheets of paper, but as they are virtually unknown to the scholarly world, I list
these too. This list, however, is not complete as more material is likely to turn up.
Minor Ryle Collections Outside Linacre College
The New Bodleian, Oxford

One of the most valuable sources is the Ryle-Collingwood Correspondence, which is kept
in the New Bodleian as part of the Collingwood legacy. The handwritten letters as well as
typescripts of them – not in all respects accurate – are available upon request at the Modern
Papers Room. The correspondence was still unpublished when I started studying it in 2002,
but it has now been published (Connelly and D’Oro 2005). On this correspondence see
Chapter 5 of my thesis.
Besides the Ryle-Collingwood Correspondence, the New Bodleian keeps other
documents of a biographical rather than philosophical nature.
1) MS Eng. C. 2714 is a paper by a Mr Morgan about the history of the Ryle family,
focusing on their activities as bankers. The paper was presented at the 2nd
European Congres of the International Banknote Society in London, on 7 May
1972, and the National Congres British Association of Numismatic Societies. Mr
Morgan’s story about J.C. Ryle seems to have been unknown to Gilbert in 1970.
Gilbert and a few of his brothers and nephews corresponded with Mr Morgan
about the Ryle-family. Gilbert wrote a letter to Mr Morgan on 13 November 1970.
2) Top Oxon. C. 870, fol. 18-34, gives insight into the transfer of the Brentano
Institute from Prague to Oxford right before the Second World War. See Chapter 1
for Ryle’s role in transferring the Brentano Institute from Prague to Oxford.
The Philosophy Library, Oxford

Other philosophically interesting documents can be found in the Philosophy Library. Apart
from papers that have been published176, which I shall not mention, the following
documents can be found here:
1) a typescript of a conversation between J. O. Urmson, Brian Magee and Ryle. I have

not been able to find out when this conversation took place. It is most likely a
176
E.g. René Meyer published Ryle’s ‘The Meno’ and a paper read to the Oxford Philosophical Society 500th
meeting in 1968 (Meyer 1993), both of which were kept in the Philosophy Library in Oxford.
193
typescript of a radio program or video recording, which could have been made by
a philosophy student. Magee could not remember the conversation;
2) a paper by J. King Gordon, containing large quotations of letters from Ryle to him;
3) a paper on Ryle as a teacher, by Professor Julius Moravcsik.
The first document is particularly interesting because Ryle makes some explicit remarks
about his debts to Wittgenstein. The other two papers are of a more biographical nature.
Nuffield College, Oxford

As part of the Lord Cherwell Correspondence, Nuffield College keeps documents relating
to Ryle’s Intelligence work in the Second World War. The index of correspondents of Lord
Cherwell contains three references to Gilbert Ryle (D219, F415 and G442)177. From the
beginning of the Nazi persecutions in 1933, Lord Cherwell – Frederick Alexander
Lindemann (1886-1957) – took much trouble to help distinguished German Jewish
scientists to find places in British Universities and to obtain grants. Holding the post of
Paymaster-General, a ministerial post in Britain, from 1942-1945, he was Churchill's
scientific adviser during the Second World War.
From the three letters written by Ryle it seems that he did not correspond with
Lord Cherwell about finding places for German Jewish scientists at British universities, but
rather about aircraft recognition and engagement of low flying aircrafts, as taught at the
A.A. (Anti-aircraft) (L.M.G. – Light machine gun) School, Northolt. Clearly as a response
to a letter from Lord Cherwell, one of the letters Ryle starts as follows:
I’ve not lost interest in my former activity, & send you the enclosed to bring to your mind some
of the problems, technical & especially administrative, which face those who want to make the
lower air unsafe for enemy planes. (D219/2)
F415/5 is a pamphlet on the methods taught at the A.A. School. The principal subjects
taught were engagement of low flying aircraft – mobile and static warfare – and elementary
aircraft recognition. It is unclear whether Ryle wrote the pamphlet which he sent to Lord
Cherwell himself.
Queen’s College, Oxford

A letter from Ryle to his former tutor H. J. Paton, dated April 15 1926, is kept as part of the
Paton archive at Queen’s College Library.178 The letter provides valuable insight in Ryle’s
earliest philosophical thoughts.179
Collections outside Oxford

I have found only a few items outside Oxford, which is not surprising considering the fact
that Ryle spent his entire academic life in Oxford. The Popper Collection of Hoover
Institution Archives, Stanford, and McMaster’s Russell Archive contain correspondences
with Ryle, mostly concerning Mind. Furthermore, I know of at least one unpublished paper,
which was sold to an anonymous buyer via Lameduck Books in 2001 by Professor Samuel
177
As well as one to his brother John A. Ryle (D220) and another to his brother Sir Martin Ryle (D221).
178
I am grateful to Professor Brian McGuinness for bringing this to my attention.
179
For the text and a detailed discussion of this letter see McGuinness and Vrijen 2006.
194
C. Wheeler III, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Connecticut.180 The paper is a

five-page unpublished holograph essay, entitled ‘Consciousness’, prepared by Ryle as a
contribution to the Collier’s Encyclopedia. Since Ryle was still working out his views on
the matter at the time, the essay became much too long and technical for its intended
purpose, and was in the end not included. It consists of almost 2000 words, with numerous
corrections and emendations, written on five legal-size lined sheets. Unfortunately, it was
not possible to obtain a copy.
Ryle’s books and papers at Linacre College

As was mentioned in Chapter 1, as a Fellow of Magdalen Ryle was a member of the
committee which oversaw the establishment of Linacre as a college. He donated much of
his library to this College when he retired in 1968, followed by another donation upon his
death in 1976. These books and papers, together with the so-called ‘red box’ which
contains letters, postcards, two notebooks and separate sheets of notes, form the ‘Gilbert
Ryle Collection’. At first Ryle’s books did not receive separate treatment and could be
borrowed like any other book. Today they are kept as a special collection in restricted and
secured cabinets, only available upon request.
One should be careful not to attribute much significance to ‘gaps’ in Ryle’s library.
As Giles Barber, Linacre College’s first librarian, has noticed, it is not clear what books
Ryle owned other than the ones he donated to Linacre, since the circumstances of his
donations are largely undocumented.181 It is obvious that some books are missing, for
example published Bphil-theses that he supervised and in which he was thanked.
Furthermore, there is no sign of copies of the Blue and Brown Books, of ‘Notes on Logic’
or Russell’s Theory of Knowledge, which he must have possessed. And Ryle must have
owned more novels than the collection contains. He was a great admirer of P. G.
Wodehouse but the library does not contain any of his books.
The books in this collection are very much the working library of a philosopher of
his day with wide-ranging interests. There are about 1100 volumes, some of which
valuable, the earliest in date being an Aristotle of 1588. They include philosophical studies
such as G. E. Moore’s Principia Ethica, Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Tractatus logico-
philosophicus (1922) and Philosophical Investigations (1953), Aristotle, Plato, Bacon,
Bergson, Descartes, Berkeley, Locke, Hume, Bolzano, Brentano, Lotze, Collingwood,
Bosanquet, Husserl, Frege, Meinong, Russell and many others. Eighteenth-century English
literature is also represented. The books and papers tell their own story of Ryle’s personal
and intellectual development throughout his life, containing, for example, books owned by
his parents, books which he got for Christmas in the year he first went to college, books he
bought when he was a don at Christ Church, and several presentation examples. He owned
relatively many second-hand books. His copy of his great-great-grandfather John Charles
Ryle’s, The Christian Leaders of England in the eighteenth century had previously
belonged to an E. J. Furlong from Trinity College Dublin. There are also non-philosophical
180
Before he sold the manuscript he tried to find a Ryle archive in order to send a Xerox to it by posting a message
on the internet (http://palimpsest.stanford.edu/byform/mailing-lists/exlibris/1995/01/msg00012.html). The fact that
Wheeler did not know of the ‘Gilbert Ryle Collection’ at Linacre College and finally sold the manuscript to an
anonymous buyer shows the need to report about the existence of this Ryle Collection.
181
Thus, Giles Barber in his paper ‘A Philosopher and his books’ in: The Linacre Journal, 1999, nr. 3, 17-26,
which is the only paper about the ‘Ryle Collection’.
195
books, e.g. W. Robinson’s The English Flower Garden (London 1893), which reflects
Ryle’s love of gardening, several issues of Astounding Science Fiction and Florence
Nightingale’s Notes on Nursing: what it is and what it is not (1860). Some books are
heavily annotated, e.g. Ryle’s three copies of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus (1922, 1951 and
1969), his copy of Husserl’s Philosophische Untersuchungen, and Russell’s Principles of
Mathematics; others were not even cut open.
In his autobiographical essay Ryle mentioned the influence which his father’s
interest in philosophy had on him. Ryle was an avid reader and read many of the mainly
philosophical and semi-philosophical books owned by his father. The ‘Ryle Collection’
contains several books that originally belonged to his father, e.g. late nineteenth-century
editions of Aristotle, bearing his signature. Other examples of books that had clearly
belonged to his father are: The republic of Plato (London 1879); Lettres de Pascal (Paris
1862); Karl Pearson’s The Grammar of Science (1911), which contains a handwritten
remark from the author on the first page: ‘R. J. Ryle From the author with affectionate
regards’; a translation of Mach’s Popular Scientific Lectures (Chicago 1895); John
Burnet’s Early Greek Philosophy (London/Edinburgh 1892); a translation of Kant’s
Prolegomena and Metaphysical Foundations of natural science (London 1891); some
Spinoza, such as Sir Frederick Pollock, Spinoza his life and philosophy (London/New York
1899); W. Wallace’s, Life of Arthur Schopenhauer (London 1890); of course Arnauld’s The
Port-Royal logic; and T. H. Green’s Prolegomena to Ethics (Oxford 1890).
R. J. Ryle did not only read philosophical works but also preceded his son by
contributing to the Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society. He was in fact one of the first
members of the Aristotelian Society. Some of the early volumes of the Proceedings contain
papers or discussions by him. In volume 1 of the Proceedings (1888) R. J. Ryle is
mentioned as a member and in the second volume from 1894 he has four contributions, one
to a symposium concerning the question ‘Does Law in Nature exclude the possibility of
miracle?’, one to a symposium concerning the question ‘Is religion pre-supposed by
morality, or morality by religion?’, a paper ‘The nature of force and matter’, and another
paper called ‘Epictetus’. The 1933 volume, which contains his contribution to the
symposium on Imaginary objects, is the first one bearing Gilbert Ryle’s name.
Examples of books that originally belonged to other members of the Ryle-family
are: Burnet’s edition of the Greek text of Plato, 5 volumes (Oxford 1899), which had once
belonged to E. Ryle (Ryle’s sister Effie), who also owned Liddell & Scott’s Greek-English
Lexicon (Oxford 1883) which she had received from her mother’s Union members of S.
Hilda’s, Newcastle; Philosophical Lectures and Remains of Richard Lewis Nettleship
(London 1897) which was bought by a C.R. in 1898. And Notes on Nursing by Florence
Nightingale was at one time owned by an Isabelle Ryle who bought or received it on 4 May
1880.
Ancient philosophy is well represented and so are the philosophical classics, e.g.
works of Hobbes, Descartes, Leibniz, Locke and Berkeley. Ryle’s library contains the
works of Aristotle, translated into English under the editorship of W. D. Ross, all annotated
slightly; 14 volumes of the translated works of Aristotle into English in the Loeb series, all
slightly annotated as well. Further, Ryle owned Bekker’s edition of the Greek text of
Aristotle’s Opera and Metaphysica from 1837; Aristotle’s Theory of Poetry and Fine Art,
with a critical text and translation of ‘the Poetics’ by S. H. Butcher (London 1911).
Aristotle’s, Ethica Nicomachea, ed. I. Bywater (Oxford 1894 and 1897) contains many
annotations.
In his paper about the Linacre Collection Giles Barber writes that ‘it is surprising
and unfortunate that the collection contains virtually nothing by Descartes, whether
196
annotated by Ryle or not. Equally it may seem surprising to find no works by that very
Oxford figure, John Locke.’ (Barber 1999, 21) However, the following books by Locke can
be found on Ryle’s bookshelves:
1) Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, ed. Peter. H. Nidditch,

Clarendon Press 1975. This book contains few marginal annotations, e.g.
‘faculties’ in the margin, mostly in book III.
2) Locke, The Works of John Locke in four volumes, seventh edition (1768). This
could well have been one of his father’s books.
3) Locke on Civil Government (London 1884)
4) Locke’s conduct of Human Understanding, intr., notes, etc. by Thomas Fowler, 2
edition (Oxford 1882)
5) An Early Draft of Locke’s Essay together with excerpts from his journals, ed. R.I.
Aaron and Jocelyn Gibb (eds.) (Oxford 1936), containing few marginal
annotations, e.g. word ‘induction’ in the margin, and references to other
philosophers such as Aristotle.
Barber’s claim that Ryle owned virtually nothing by Descartes is also incorrect. The
collection clearly shows his interest in the works of Descartes. His copy of the French
translation of Descartes’ Regulae ad directionem ingenii (Paris 1933) contains a receipt,
showing that Ryle bought this book for 5 GBP on Feb. 13th 1933 when he was a lecturer at
Christ Church. He bought it at Blackwell’s, together with Weldauer’s, Kritik der
Transzendentalphaenomenologie Husserls. He had these books on approval, but he at least
did not return the Descartes, though he did not read it (the pages are uncut). Ryle also
owned, Descartes, Discourse on Method. Meditations. (Edinburgh and London 1890),
which had belonged to his father. Further, Ryle owned a copy of Descartes’ Lettres sur La
Morale, which is a correspondence with princes Elisabeth (Paris 1935). The first part was
probably read by Ryle; the second is uncut. Ryle also read Elizabeth S. Haldane and G.R.T.
Ross, (transl.), The Philosophical works of Descartes, volume 1 and 2 (Cambridge 1911).
He rather heavily annotated volume 1. There are hardly any annotations in ‘The Passions of
the Soul’. Some of his comments consist of several sentences, others only of a word, such
as ‘induction’, or a name, such as ‘Aristotle’, or ‘Heraclitus’. Most are references to other
philosophers. Volume 2 is missing from Linacre Library. There is also a copy of Boyce
Gibson’s The Philosophy of Descartes (London 1932).
Numerous works by and about Brentano, Husserl, Meinong, Russell and Frege
illustrate Ryle’s early interest in philosophers other than the commonly respected ones in
Oxford at the time. Some of them are heavily annotated, such as Husserl’s Logische
Untersuchungen (1922), which was bought by Ryle in 1926. Husserl’s Philosophie der
Arithmetic (Leipzig 1891) and Ideeen zu einer reinen Phaenomenologie, Erster Band
(1922), which Ryle bought when he was a don at Christ Church, are also heavily annotated.
In these books Ryle made his own index of names and subjects. With a few exceptions it
seems that Ryle only made marginal notes. His annotations to Husserls writings are often
short abstracts. Sometimes Ryle presents an example, such as, with respect to Husserl’s
claim: “Wahr ist für jede Spezies urteilender Wesen, was nach ihrer Konstitution, nach
ihren Denkgesetzen als wahr zu gelten haben” (LU1, 117). Ryle gives the following
example: ‘What is true for men, false for cows’. Sometimes Ryle fills in names to make
things more concrete and to connect Husserl’s words to the history of philosophical
thought. On page 122 of Logische Untersuchungen he mentions Kant’s categories and
197
Bolzano. Ryle’s copies of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus were also heavily studied and
annotated. They are discussed in Chapter 6.
The most interesting documents in the so-called ‘red box’, which is part of the
‘Ryle Collection’, are his notes on Wittgenstein. ‘Ontological and Logical Talk in
Wittgenstein’s Tractatus’ is one of these documents – it was published by René Meyer in
1993. Others, still unpublished, are Ryle’s notes on the structure of the Tractatus (included
in this dissertation as Appendix 3); notes on 5.5.41; a bibliography of relevant readings to
the Tractatus; and Ryle’s comments on Wittgenstein’s ‘Notes on Logic’ from 1913. Also
worth mentioning are several letters and postcards to Ryle, e.g. a letter from Mabbott and a
postcard written by Husserl, and two notebooks containing Ryle’s lecture notes and first
drafts of papers.
198
Appendix 3: Ryle’s Lecture Notes on the Structure of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus
Appendix 3: Ryle’s Lecture Notes

on the Structure of Wittgenstein’s
Tractatus
This unpublished sheet of paper can be found in The Red Box, part of the ‘Ryle Collection’,
which is kept at Linacre College Library, Oxford 182
“Inserted in the margin, where the whole numbers first appear, I shall suggest some chapter
headings in a moment.
Next, I think we can treat the single decimal numbers, such as 2.1 or 5.4 as the
beginnings of sections. So anything in, say, the 4.3s can be described as in Chapter 4,
Section 3. I shall also suggest section titles for insertion in the margin. I don’t think we
need bother about the lower decimal places. Certainly sometimes a very important thing is
said in a paragraph or sentence with a very fiddling number of decimals in its number, e.g.
in 4.0312.
Here are my Chapter Headings (to be taken with several pinches of salt)
Chapter 1 (i.e. from the first sentence on p.26/27) ‘Facts and the World’.
Chapter 2 (i.e. from the eighth sentence on the same page) ‘The Representation of Facts’.
Chapter 3 (p.42/43) ‘The Propositional Representation of Facts’.
Chapter 4 (p. 60/61) ‘Propositional Forms.’
Chapter 5 (p. 102/3) ‘The Logic of Propositional Forms’.
Chapter 6 (p.152/3) ‘The Propositions of Logic Itself’.
Chapter 7 (p.188/9) ‘General Moral’.
Now for the Section-headings. But first for a quite general point. Usually, though not quite
always, the new move of a new chapter is not explicitly launched until the beginning of
Section 1 of that chapter. Thus in Chapter 3, it’s not until the beginning of Section 1, i.e.at
3.1, that we get an explicit mention of sentences or propositions though this is what the
whole Chapter is about. Similarly it is not until Section 1 in Chapter 6 that we get an
explicit mention of the propositions of logic, though again this is what nearly the whole
chapter is about (my interpretation). The sentences or paragraphs numbered, say, ‘3.0 … so
and so’, or 6.0 ... so and so’ are usually something of a resumé of or extract from the
previous chapter – the springboard for the new move, but not the new move itself. Chapter
5 seems to be an exception, in starting off directly with the new move.
Section Titles (to be taken with pinches of salt)

In Chapter 1. Section 1 (i.e. 1.1 to 1.13) ‘The Totality of Facts’.
Section 2 (i.e. 1.2 and 1.21) ‘Independence of Facts from one another’.
In Chapter 2. Section 0 (i.e. 2 to 2.063) ‘Facts and Objects’.
182
If the notes on the Tractatus were written at about the same time as the bibliography also found in the ‘red
box’, which was presumably meant as a reading-list for students studying the Tractatus, they are to be dated
between 1955 and 1957; for in his bibliography Ryle refers to Wittgenstein’s ‘Notes on Logic’, which was
published in the Journal of Philosophy in 1957, as ‘unpublished’, and he already mentions Moore’s articles in
Mind on ‘Wittgenstein’s teaching in Cambridge, 1930-33’, which were published in 1954-1955.
199
Section 1 (i.e. 2.1 to 2.19) ‘Pictures of Facts.’

Section 2 ‘Isomorphy of Pictures and Facts’.
In Chapter 3. Section 0 ‘The Thinkable and the Unthinkable’.
Section 1 ‘Sentences and Words’.
Section 2 ‘Names and Objects’.
Section 3 ‘Sentences and their Logical Syntax’.
Section 4 ‘Sentences and “Logical Space”’.
Section 5 ‘Sentences and Thoughts’.
In Chapter 4. Section 0
Section 1 What Sentences Tell versus what they Show.
Section 2 Atomic Propositions.
Section 3 Molecular Propositions.
Section 4 The Truth-conditions of Propositions.
Section 5 The Most General Propositional Form.
In Chapter 5. Section 0 Propositions as Truth-functions and Truth-arguments.
Section 1 Truth-conditions and Inference.
Section 2 Logical operations.
Section 3 Truth-operations.
Section 4 What Logical Operation-signs do and do not express.
Section 5 Construction of all molecular propositions, generality, identity
and special Forms.
Section 6 The Limits of the Sayable.
In Chapter 6. Section 0 The General Form of Truth Function.
Section 1 The Propositions of Logic.
Section 2 The Propositions of Mathematics (versus those of Logic).
Section 3 The General Propositions of Natural Science (versus those of
Logic).
Section 4 The Propositions of Ethics (etc.)
Section 5 The Propositions of Metaphysics.”
200
Dutch Summary
Dutch Summary
De Britse filosoof Gilbert Ryle (1900-1976) is één van de meest vooraanstaande filosofen
van de 20e eeuw. Hij is vooral bekend geworden met zijn Concept of Mind (1949a) dat
doorgaans als een behaviouristisch manifesto is gelezen. Ryle zou de wereld van de geest
willen reduceren tot zichtbare gedragingen van de mens. Dit proefschrift heeft tot doel deze
interpretatie te corrigeren, en doet dit door Ryle’s gehele filosofische ontwikkeling te
bestuderen vanaf zijn vroegste papers, geschreven onder de invloed van Bertrand Russell,
tot en met zijn latere werk over het menselijke denken, geïnspireerd onder andere door de
ideeën van Ludwig Wittgenstein. Daarbij wordt voor het eerst gebruik gemaakt van
ongepubliceerd materiaal uit het Ryle archief in Oxford, dat tot op heden praktisch
onbekend is gebleven. Uit al dit gepubliceerd en ongepubliceerd materiaal komt een heel
andere Ryle naar voren: een filosoof die de geest niet wilde reduceren tot de materie of tot
uiterlijke gedragingen. Ryle is vooral een filosoof die de concepten waarmee wij over ons
mentale leven praten in kaart wilde brengen. Zijn verdiensten blijken dan aanzienlijk te
zijn, en gaan verder dan zijn beroemde onderscheid tussen ‘knowing how’/’knowing that’,
zijn notie van de categorie-fout en zijn befaamde verdrijving van de ‘ghost’ uit de
‘machine’. Wanneer de interpretatie van Ryle als behaviourist eenmaal is ontzenuwd, is de
weg vrij voor eerherstel van deze genuanceerde filosoof, wiens ideeën over betekenis, taal
en denken een vruchtbare rol zouden kunnen spelen in hedendaagse debatten op het gebied
van taalfilosofie, de filosofie van de geest en cognitieve psychologie.
Hoofdstuk 1 biedt een biografische schets van Ryle, waarvoor niet alleen gebruik
gemaakt is van gepubliceerde bronnen en het Ryle archief, maar ook van verhalen en
anekdotes die Ryle’s familieleden, voormalige studenten, collega’s en vrienden ter
beschikking hebben gesteld. Dit heeft het mogelijk gemaakt om een completer en
sprekender beeld van hem te geven, als filosoof en als persoon. Uit dit hoofdstuk wordt
duidelijk dat Ryle een grote invloed heeft gehad op de filosofische traditie in Oxford, maar
ook op de filosofie in het algemeen. Door zijn manier van doceren en schrijven en zijn
aandacht voor filosofen die destijds vrijwel niet in Oxford werden bestudeerd heeft hij
generaties filosofen kunnen inspireren. Zo werd the Concept of Mind (1949a) een klassieker
die bestudeerd is door vrijwel iedere student in Groot-Brittannië en ook daarbuiten. Ook
had Ryle een grote rol bij het opzetten van de B.Phil in Oxford en doneerde hij een
aanzienlijk deel van zijn persoonlijke bibliotheek aan Linacre College Library. Daarnaast
zijn noemenswaardig zijn rol bij het opstarten van Analysis, zijn hoofdredacteurschap van
Mind, en de hoofdrol die hij speelde bij de verhuizing van de Brentano Society van Praag
naar Oxford in 1938-9 en het behoud van de Waismann erfenis voor toekomstige
generaties. Deze en andere activiteiten hebben hem tot een belangrijke figuur binnen de
Britse filosofie gemaakt, wiens mening vrijwel altijd werd gevraagd bij de invulling van
academische posities.
Hoofdstukken 2 en 3 laten Ryle’s ontwikkeling zien van een homogene,
denotationele betekenistheorie – een betekenistheorie volgens welke alle concepten en
uitdrukkingen op dezelfde manier betekenis hebben – naar een heterogene theorie van
‘gebruik’. Vanuit een positie dicht bij Russell’s zoektocht naar een ideale taal ontwikkelt
Ryle zich naar een positie die meer in overeenstemming is met die van de latere
Wittgenstein. Hij verlaat al snel de Russelliaanse methode van het analyseren en
201
herformuleren van uitdrukkingen en begint zich te realiseren dat denotationalisme

verantwoordelijk is voor veel misverstanden, non-vragen en problematische theorieën
binnen de filosofie. Ryle’s focus ligt dan niet langer op ‘betekenis’, wat voor hem
impliceert dat er een homogene relatie tussen taal en werkelijkheid is en dat alle
uitdrukkingen op dezelfde manier betekenis hebben. Zijn nadruk ligt nu op ‘gebruik’, en
met name op de diversiteit van de manieren waarop uitdrukkingen gebruikt worden. Ryle’s
methode van filosofische analyse verandert hierdoor van een logische en decompositionele
manier van analyseren naar een zogenaamd connectivistisch analyse type. The Concept of
Mind, Ryle’s meest bekende werk, heeft tot doel in kaart te brengen wat Ryle de ‘logische
geografie’ van concepten van de geest noemt, dat wil zeggen de mogelijke en onmogelijke
verbindingen tussen verschillende (types) concepten. Bepaalde operaties met concepten van
de geest gaan in tegen de regels die gevolgd zouden moeten worden volgens de ‘logische
geografie’ van deze concepten. Dit noemt Ryle categorie-fouten, namelijk het behandelen
van uitdrukkingen alsof ze tot dezelfde categorie behoren (dat wil zeggen op dezelfde
manier betekenis hebben) terwijl ze in werkelijkheid tot verschillende categorieën behoren.
Ryle maakt niet langer gebruik van een reducerend analyse type en heeft het hier niet langer
over een dieper niveau van logische vormen of feiten, noch probeert hij te komen tot een
ideale taal.
In The Concept of Mind wijst hij ons op categorie-fouten op verschillende niveaus,
wat één van de redenen is waarom dit boek moeilijk te interpreteren valt. De meest
algemene categorie-fouten ontstaan omdat mentale concepten behandeld worden als
eigennamen en mentale taal als een beschrijving van een mentale wereld
(denotationalisme). Met andere woorden, mentale concepten worden behandeld alsof ze op
dezelfde manier betekenis hebben zoals ‘Fido’ (de naam) Fido (de hond) betekent. Er is
echter een oneindige verscheidenheid aan betekeniscategorieën die niet in de mal die de
logica van eigennamen ons oplegt kan worden geperst. Als we ons dit niet realiseren maken
we een categorie-fout. Het is in dit kader belangrijk dat we kijken naar hoe uitdrukkingen
gebruikt worden. De heterogeniteit van ons gebruik van taal neemt de plaats over van
Ryle’s eerdere homogene, denotationele betekenistheorie. Mentale concepten dienen niet
meer te worden behandeld alsof ze op dezelfde manier ‘betekenen’ als eigennamen. Als we
mentale concepten behandelen als een beschrijving van een mentale wereld gaat het ook
fout. Onze taal gaat uiteindelijk over onze normale wereld, en niet over een mentale en/of
een fysieke wereld. Volgens Ryle zijn fysische en mentale taaluitingen verschillende
manieren om dezelfde wereld te beschrijven. Dit is een conceptuele en geen ontologische
positie.
Uit hoofdstuk 3 wordt duidelijk dat Ryle vaak gezien is als een reductief
behaviourist en dat dit misverstand grotendeels verantwoordelijk is voor het feit dat zijn
denkbeelden in de regel snel van tafel worden geveegd. Sinds de opkomst van de cognitieve
wetenschap en de invloedrijke verwerping van het behaviourisme door Chomsky (1959) en
Fodor (1975) is elke associatie met het behaviourisme immers schadelijk geworden. De
reden waarom Ryle zo vaak wordt gekenmerkt als behaviourist is dat zijn verwerping van
een denotationele betekenistheorie niet voldoende wordt erkend. Ryle is tot op bepaalde
hoogte zelf verantwoordelijk voor deze verkeerde interpretatie, want hij maakt niet altijd
voldoende duidelijk waar hij zijn pijlen precies op richt. Bovendien is hij, ondanks de
heldere stijl die hij over het algemeen hanteert, in The Concept of Mind niet in staat
gebleken zelf het gebruik van vage concepten en uitdrukkingen te vermijden.
De belangrijkste redenen waarom Ryle niet als reductief behaviourist getypeerd
kan worden zijn de volgende: (1) een dergelijke interpretatie is niet in overeenstemming
met zijn meta-filosofische doel; (2) reductief behaviourisme veronderstelt iets als een
202
Dutch Summary
homogene, denotationele betekenistheorie en op het moment van schrijven van The

Concept of Mind heeft Ryle deze positie reeds lang achter zich gelaten; en (3) de meest
welwillende interpretatie van de voornaamste categorie-fouten die Ryle aanvalt in dit boek
spreken tegen een behaviouristische interpretatie. Bevrijd van het juk van behaviourisme
kan Ryle nog steeds een waardevolle bijdrage leveren aan filosofische discussies van
vandaag de dag, zoals bijvoorbeeld discussies over de fundamenten en
onderzoeksmethoden van de neurowetenschappen.
In hoofdstuk 4 worden Ryle’s latere werken geanalyseerd: zijn theoretische
artikelen, Dilemmas (1954a) en zijn latere werk over denken. De theoretische claims uit
Ryle’s eerdere artikelen blijken niet in staat te zijn geweest het volledige gewicht van The
Concept of Mind te kunnen dragen. Daarom schrijft Ryle in de late jaren 50 en vroege jaren
60 aanvullingen op zijn ‘oude’ theoretische denkbeelden over wat filosofie is en hoe men
dient te filosoferen. Hij vervolgt hierbij zijn eerdere weg van het verwerpen van een
denotationele betekenistheorie ten faveure van de heterogeniteit van ‘gebruik’. Zijn focus
ligt nog immer op informele logica en het idee dat filosofische problemen van een andere
aard zijn dan wetenschappelijke vraagstukken. Nieuwe elementen zijn Ryle’s instructies
over de interpretatie van ‘het normale gebruik van uitdrukking x’, namelijk dat ‘gebruik’ op
een logische in plaats van op een filologische manier gezien moet worden en dat ‘het
normale gebruik van een uitdrukking’ niet hetzelfde is als ‘het gebruik van normale
uitdrukkingen’. Daarnaast analyseert Ryle de verschillen tussen taal en spraak en tussen
woorden en zinnen. Spraak heeft taal nodig maar kan niet tot taal gereduceerd worden. Als
we spraak met taal verwarren komen we uit op een filosofie die eerder filologie is. Ook
nieuw – als terminologie maar niet als gedachte – is zijn beschrijving van filosofie als
activiteit die meerdere niveaus bestrijkt. In tegenstelling tot wetenschappelijke bewijzen
zijn filosofische argumenten ‘operaties op operaties’, oftewel ze gaan over operaties. Dit is
nu precies het verschil tussen filosofie en wetenschap: waar de wetenschap verklaart in de
zin dat ze nieuwe feiten boven water probeert te krijgen en direct op deze feiten opereert, zo
houdt de filosofie zich bezig met het niveau daarboven.
Net als The Concept of Mind heeft ook Dilemmas tot doel een voorbeeld te geven
van een goede manier om filosofie te bedrijven. Hoewel de specifieke oplossingen die Ryle
aandraagt voor de dilemma’s vaak bekritiseerd zijn om hun oppervlakkigheid en
onvolledigheid, is zijn meta-filosofische boodschap van grote waarde: zijn connectieve
filosofische analyse legt de fouten bloot die we maken als de taal ons verleidt en in de val
lokt en laat bovendien zien hoe we deze fouten kunnen herkennen en vermijden.
In het laatste deel van hoofdstuk 4 staat Ryle’s latere werk over denken centraal,
waarin hij bepleit dat onze concepten van denken beschrijvingen zijn (van processen) op
een hoger niveau. Deze concepten zouden bijwoordelijk (‘adverbial’) zijn in de zin dat ze
niet zelf direct processen beschrijven maar op een hoger niveau deze processen
kwalificeren, net zoals bijwoorden (zoals ‘oplettend’) werkwoorden (zoals ‘autorijden’)
kwalificeren. Ryle stelt zich de figuur van de Denker (Le Penseur) van Rodin voor en
vraagt zich af: als het denken van Le Penseur slechts de manier is waarop processen
worden bestuurd, over welk soort processen hebben we het dan eigenlijk? Ryle gebruikt
‘het denken van Le Penseur’ precies om die categorie van denken aan te duiden van welke
het het moeilijkste te begrijpen is dat hij bijwoordelijk is (dat wil zeggen dat hij iets anders
kwalificeert) en supervenieert op acties in plaats van zelf gezien te worden als een actie.
Als het ‘denken’ van Socrates, Mozart en de wetenschapper geen proces beschijft maar een
manier van ‘X-en’, wat kan dit ‘X-en’ dan zijn? Is het ‘reflecteren’ of ‘mediteren’? Wat
‘gebeurt’ er als we dat doen? Ryle’s voornaamste doel in zijn latere artikelen over denken is
het beantwoorden van dit cluster van vragen. Zijn uiteindelijke antwoord is dat hoewel er
203
geen specifiek autonoom ‘X-en’ bestaat voor het denken van Le Penseur, we puur logisch
gezien toch een niet-bijwoordelijk werkwoord nodig hebben om de bijwoorden aan te
kunnen koppelen.
In deze latere artikelen versterkt Ryle zijn eerdere positie zonder echt
fundamenteel van gedachte te veranderen. Het bijwoordelijke element was bijvoorbeeld,
hoewel minder prominent, al aanwezig in 1949. Hij probeert te laten zien dat een
beschrijving van het denken van Le Penseur geen beschrijving is van complexe processen,
maar een complexe beschrijving van processen. Dit stelt hem in staat zowel dualisme als
behaviourisme te verwerpen, welke beide aannemen dat alle beschrijvingen functioneren
als zinnen die refereren naar processen of dingen (denotationalisme). Ryle is dus geen
dualist of behaviourist, ook geen conceptueel dualist of conceptueel behaviourist. Zijn
positie kan het beste gekarakteriseerd worden als ‘conceptueel pluralisme’, de positie dat
concepten niet op één enkele manier behandeld moeten worden, of op twee manieren, maar
op oneindig veel verschillende manieren, afhankelijk van de context waarin een concept
wordt gebruikt. Hoewel Ryle’s latere artikelen over denken kritische geluiden hebben
opgeroepen zijn zijn oplossingen origineel en stellen de onderscheidingen waarop hij ons
wijst ons in staat een duidelijker beeld te krijgen van ons normale gebruik van de concepten
van denken.
Het onderwerp van hoofdstuk 5 is de filosofische relatie tussen Ryle en
Collingwood en hun korte correspondentie uit 1935. In deze correspondentie verschillen
Ryle en Collingwood veelvuldig van mening maar de onderliggende en meer fundamentele
punten komen niet boven water. Ik beweer in dit hoofdstuk dat hun verschillen van mening
teruggevoerd kunnen worden op hun verschillende visies op de aard van filosofie en logica,
de aard van metafysica en de definitie van een universele propositie. Collingwood’s overlap
van klassen binnen de filosofie en Ryle’s idee dat er een algemene logica is die toepasbaar
is op alle gebieden zijn hier van groot belang. Verder is ook Collingwood’s gebruik van
idiosyncratische terminologie verantwoordelijk voor Ryle’s onterechte aanname dat hij
sterk ontologische claims maakte. Gewapend met dit betere begrip van de correspondentie
en haar filosofische context bediscussieer ik tenslotte een aantal interpretaties met
betrekking tot de filosofische relatie tussen Collingwood en Ryle.
Ryle’s studie en interpretatie van Wittgenstein worden behandeld in hoofdstuk 6.
In het eerste deel zien we dat Ryle Wittgenstein’s werk uitgebreid bestudeerd heeft en de
invloed van Wittgenstein op zijn eigen werk expliciet heeft erkend. Ryle’s interpretatie van
Wittgenstein ligt dichtbij die van degenen die in het huidige Wittgenstein debat beweren
dat er slechts één Wittgenstein is en geen twee (laat staan drie). Wat vooral opvalt is dat
Ryle de Tractatus dichterbij Wittgenstein’s latere werk plaatst dan traditionele
interpretatoren. Interessant is in dit kader ook Ryle’s vroege studie van Wittgenstein’s
‘Notes on Logic’ uit 1913. Door bestudering van de ‘Gilbert Ryle Collectie’ in Oxford, en
dan voornamelijk Ryle’s geannoteerde exemplaren van Wittgenstein’s Tractatus,
Philosophical Investigations en zijn commentaar op ‘Notes on Logic’, kan een aantal
nieuwe feiten over Ryle’s studie en interpretatie van Wittgenstein worden onthuld.
Het tweede deel van hoofdstuk 6 bestaat uit een vergelijking tussen Ryle en
Wittgenstein. Noemenswaardige verschillen zijn dat Ryle een aversie heeft tegen
Wittgenstein’s gebruik van ‘taalspelen’. Hij ontkent ook de waarde van diens
‘familiegelijkenissen’ en spreekt in tegenstelling tot Wittgenstein niet over de grenzen van
ons taalgebruik. Sommige filosofen hebben beweerd dat Wittgenstein ‘dieper’ gaat dan
Ryle met betrekking tot de aard van filosofie. Het onderscheid dat Wittgenstein maakt
tussen grammaticale en empirische proposities is bijvoorbeeld niet terug te vinden bij Ryle.
En Wittgenstein besteedt ook meer aandacht aan de constitutieve rol van taal voor de
204
Dutch Summary
betekenis van concepten. Behalve deze verschillen zijn er ook belangrijke overeenkomsten
tussen beide filosofen. Beiden hebben een grote interesse in de notie van denken, leren
denken en creatief denken. Ze verwerpen Cartesiaans dualisme, behaviourisme,
denotationalisme, etc. – soms expliciet en op andere momenten op een minder directe
manier. Zowel Ryle als Wittgenstein gebruikt argumenten, verwerpt en rectificeert, hoewel
dit bij Wittgenstein minder duidelijk is door de vorm en stijl van zijn werk. Ze hebben
grotendeels met elkaar overeenkomende visies op betekenis en ons gebruik van taal.
Hoewel Ryle’s behandeling van concrete filosofische vraagstukken niet altijd als
afdoende werd gezien door tijdgenoten en hij soms, vooral aan het eind van zijn
filosofische loopbaan, te veel verstrikt raakte in ‘mannerisms’, heeft hij een belangrijke
invloed uitgeoefend op andere filosofen, bijvoorbeeld op A. J. Ayer, Daniel Dennett, D. M.
Armstrong, C. B. Martin en U. T. Place. Bovendien wordt een aantal van de
onderscheidingen die hij geïntroduceerd heeft nog steeds bediscussieerd, zoals het
onderscheid tussen ‘knowing how’ en ‘knowing that’ en tussen ‘dispositioneel’ en
‘categorisch’. Zijn visies op de aard en methode van de filosofie en de instrumenten die hij
ons heeft aangedragen voor het oplossen van filosofische problemen hebben grote waarde;
niet alleen vanuit historisch oogpunt maar ook omdat ze relevant zijn in huidige
filosofische discussies, bijvoorbeeld met betrekking tot cognitieve wetenschap of
taalfilosofie. Dan moet Ryle echter wel eerst bevrijd worden van het foutieve label van
behaviourisme; ik hoop dat dit proefschrift hiertoe heeft bijgedragen.
205
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RYLE, Gilbert, 1937a, ‘Back to the Ontological Argument’, in Mind XLVI, 1937, reprinted
in Ryle 1971b
RYLE, Gilbert, 1937b, ‘Taking Sides in Philosophy’, Philosophy, vol. XII, 1937, reprinted
in Ryle 1971b
RYLE, Gilbert, 1938, ‘Categories’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, vol. XXXVIII,
1938, reprinted in Ryle 1971b
RYLE, Gilbert, 1940, ‘Conscience and Moral Convictions’, Analysis, vol. VII, 1940,
reprinted in Ryle 1971b
RYLE, Gilbert, 1945, ‘Philosophical Arguments’, Originally delivered as the Inaugural

Lecture as Waynflete Professor of Metaphysical Philosophy in 1945, reprinted in Ryle
1971b
RYLE, Gilbert, 1946a, ‘Knowing How and Knowing That’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian
Society, vol. XLVI, 1946, reprinted in Ryle 1971b
RYLE, Gilbert, 1946b, ‘Why Are The Calculuses of Logic and Arithmetic Applicable to
Reality?’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, suppl. vol. XX, 1946, reprinted in Ryle
1971b
RYLE, Gilbert, 1949a, The Concept of Mind (London: Penguin Books 1990)
216
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Philosophy, vol. XXIV, 1949, reprinted in Ryle 1971a
RYLE, Gilbert, 1950, ‘Logic and Professor Anderson’, The Australasian Journal of
Philosophy, Vol. XXVIII, 1950, pp. 137-53, reprinted in Ryle 1971a
RYLE, Gilbert, 1951a, ‘Thinking and Language’, symposium with Iris Murdoch and A. C.
Lloyd, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, suppl. vol. XXV, 1951, reprinted in Ryle
1971b
RYLE, Gilbert, 1951b, ‘The Verification Principle’, Revue Internationale de Philosophie,

vol. V, 1951, translated and reprinted in Ryle 1971b
RYLE, Gilbert, 1951c, ‘Ludwig Wittgenstein’, Analysis 1951, reprinted in Ryle 1971b.
RYLE, Gilbert, 1953a, ‘Thinking’, Acta Psychologica, vol. IX, 1953, reprinted in Ryle
1971b
RYLE, Gilbert, 1953b, ‘Ordinary Language’, The Philosophical Review, vol. LXII, 1953,
reprinted in Ryle 1971b
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VIII, 1954, reprinted in Ryle 1971b
RYLE, Gilbert, 1954c, report on ‘If a distraction makes me forget my headache, does it
make my head stop aching, or does it only stop me feel it aching?’, Analysis 14, 1954
RYLE, Gilbert, 1957a, ‘The Theory of Meaning’, in Mace, C. A., British Philosophy in Mid-
Century (1957), reprinted in Ryle 1971b
RYLE, Gilbert, 1957b, ‘Review of Ludwig Wittgenstein: Remarks on the Foundations of

Mathematics’, Scientific American, vol. CXVII (1957), reprinted in Ryle 1971a
RYLE, Gilbert, 1958, ‘A Puzzling Element in the Notion of Thinking’, Proceedings of the
British Academy, vol. XLIV, 1958, reprinted in Ryle 1971b
RYLE, Gilbert, 1961a, ‘Use, Usage and Meaning’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society,
suppl. vol. XXXV, 1961, reprinted in Ryle 1971b
RYLE, Gilbert, 1961b, general discussion of Urmson’s paper ‘The History of Analysis’ at
the Royaumont Colloquium of 1961, La Philosophie Analytique (Paris: Editions de Minuit,
1962), translated and reprinted in Rorty 1967
RYLE, Gilbert, 1962a, ‘A Rational Animal’, Originally delivered as the Auguste Comte
Memorial Lecture in 1962, reprinted in Ryle 1971b
217
RYLE, Gilbert, 1962b, ‘Abstractions’, Dialogue, vol. I, 1962, reprinted in Ryle 1971b
RYLE, Gilbert, 1962c, ‘Thinking Thoughts and Having Concepts’, in Logique et Analyse,
no. 20, 1962, reprinted in Ryle 1971b
RYLE, Gilbert, 1962d, ‘Phenomenology versus “The Concept of Mind’ (french), La

Philosophie Analytique, no. IV (Cahiers de Royamount Philosophie 1962), reprinted in
Ryle 1971a
RYLE, Gilbert, 1964, Lecture notes by René Meyer, published in Meyer 1993
RYLE, Gilbert, 1966-67, ‘Thinking and Reflecting’, The Human Agent, Royal Institute of
Philosophy Lectures, vol. I, 1966-67, reprinted in Ryle 1971b
RYLE, Gilbert, 1968a, ‘The Thinking of Thoughts. What is “Le Penseur” doing?’,
University Lectures University of Sakatchewan, no. 18, 1968, reprinted in Ryle 1971b
RYLE, Gilbert, 1968b, ‘The Genesis of ‘Oxford’ Philosophy’, read to the Oxford
Philosophical Society, 500th meeting, in 1968, printed in The Linacre Journal, number 3,
november 1999
RYLE, Gilbert, 1970, ‘An Autobiographical Essay’, in Wood and Pitcher 1971
RYLE, Gilbert, 1971a, Collected Papers, Volume I (London: Hutchinson 1971)
RYLE, Gilbert, 1971b, Collected Essays, vol. II (London: Hutchinson 1971)
RYLE, Gilbert, 1972a, ‘Thinking and Self-Teaching’, Rice University Studies, vol. 58, no. 3,
summer 1972, reprinted in Kolenda 1979
RYLE, Gilbert, 1972b, ‘Thinking and Saying’, Rice University Studies, vol. 58, no. 3,
summer 1972, reprinted in Kolenda 1979
RYLE, Gilbert, 1972c, ‘Intentionality-Theory and the Nature of Thinking’, in Haller, R.

(ed.), Jenseits van Sein und Nichtsein (Graz: Akademische Druck und Verlagsanstalt 1972),
reprinted in Revue Internationale de Philosophie XXVII, 1973. First presented at a
symposium held in Graz on Meinong in 1970.
RYLE, Gilbert, 1972d, ‘Reply to Bouwsma’, in Kolenda 1972
RYLE, Gilbert, 1973, ‘Negative Actions’, Hermathena , no. CXV, summer 1973, reprinted
in Kolenda 1979
RYLE, Gilbert, 1974, ‘Mowgli in Babel’, Philosophy, vol. 49, no. 187, January 1974,
reprinted in Kolenda 1979
RYLE, Gilbert, 1976a, personal communication, in Bestor 1979
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reprinted in Kolenda 1979
RYLE, Gilbert, 1976c, ‘Fifty years of philosophy and philosophers’, in Philosophy 51

(1976)
RYLE, Gilbert, 1976d, Letter to Daniel Dennett, 22 February 1976, published by Dennett in
1999 on EJAP: http://ejap.louisiana.edu/EJAP/2002/RyleLett.pdf
RYLE, Gilbert, 1979a, ‘Adverbial Verbs and Verbs of Thinking’, in Kolenda 1979
RYLE, Gilbert, 1979b, ‘Thought and Soliloquy’, in Kolenda 1979
RYLE, Gilbert, 1979c, ‘Thought and Imagination’, in Kolenda 1979
RYLE, Gilbert, 1979d, in Kolenda, Konstantin (ed.), On Thinking (Oxford: Basil Blackwell
1979)
RYLE, Gilbert, 1993, ‘Ontological and Logical Talk in Wittgenstein’s Tractatus’, in Harré
and Shosky 1999
RYLE, Gilbert, 2000, ‘Courses of Action or the Uncatchableness of Mental Acts’, prepared
for delivery at the annual conference of the Experimental Analysis of Behaviour Group at
Bangor in April 1974 (but the paper was in the end read by Professor T. R. Miller because
Ryle was not able to attend), first published in Philosophy (2000)
SAVIGNY, Von, E., 1974, Die Philosophie der normalen Sprache, second revised edition
(Frankfurt am Main 1974)
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reprinted in Ayer, A. J., Logical Positivism 1959, reprint (Westport: Greenwood Press
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Philosophy 98, 2001
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2003, pp. 37-49
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THE PHILOSOPHICAL DEVELOPMENT OF

A Study of His Published and Unpublished Writings

Illustrations front cover:

The Philosophical Development of Gilbert Ryle

ter verkrijging van het doctoraat in de

Beoordelingscommissie: Prof. Dr. D.H.K. Pätzold

CHAPTER 1 GILBERT RYLE – A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH ..................................... 9

CHAPTER 2 RYLE’S EARLY WRITINGS ................................................................... 29

CHAPTER 3 THE CONCEPT OF MIND: MAIN AIMS, METHOD AND RECEPTION 55

CHAPTER 4 GILBERT RYLE’S LATER WRITINGS................................................... 93

CHAPTER 5 RYLE AND COLLINGWOOD: THEIR CORRESPONDENCE AND ITS

CHAPTER 6 RYLE AND WITTGENSTEIN................................................................ 147

CHAPTER 7 SUMMARY AND CONCLUDING REMARKS...................................... 177

APPENDIX 1: RYLE’S WRITINGS – THE COMPLETE LIST ................................... 185

APPENDIX 2: GILBERT RYLE COLLECTIONS IN OXFORD .................................. 193

APPENDIX 3: RYLE’S LECTURE NOTES ON THE STRUCTURE OF

DUTCH SUMMARY ................................................................................................... 201

Gilbert Ryle – A Biographical

Family Background and Childhood

Christ Church College

When he wrote ‘Systematically Misleading Expressions’ Ryle clearly believed in objective

Ayer and the Vienna Circle

Second World War

Ryle’s Early Writings

Position 1: Denotationalism and the Reformulation of

Influences and Philosophical Context

Ryle’s Realism and Russell’s Influence Illustrated by Two Papers

‘Are there Propositions?’

because he considers it to be a mistake to let truth-value determine meaning. (Gochet 1972,

‘Systematically Misleading Expressions’

1) quasi-ontological statements (e.g. ‘God does not exist’, ‘Mr Pickwick is a

Position 2: Rejecting Denotationalism

So though in fact only a minority of sentence-fragments, namely mentioningly used substantival

Category-Mistakes: the Essence of Philosophical Problems

We can determine to which category a proposition belongs by looking at its relations or

Philosophy as a Method and the Reductio ad Absurdum as the Ultimate

This is why a philosopher’s discovery cannot be summarized by the conclusion of the

Ryle himself, as well as Wittgenstein, has been accused of talking ‘platitudes’.

‘Philosophical Arguments’ (1945) was, in effect, a fresh declaration of principles, replacing

The Concept of Mind: Main Aims,

they cannot be persuaded of the absurdity of Cartesian dualism by proving that a

Ryle’s Method: Starting With What We Already Know

Philosophy is the replacement of category-habits by category-disciplines, and if persuasions of

Ryle’s Primary Target

Theorizing as the Primary and Silent Activity of the Mind

One Action: Not Two

The Issues Under Discussion

A More Accurate Account of the Category-mistake of

The recommended restoration of the trade-names of traditional epistemology to their proper

My earlier description of the category-mistake as treating mental statements and bodily

The Reception of The Concept of Mind

• P.S. Maclellan, ‘Professor Ryle and the Concept of Mind’ (1951);

And commenting on Ryle’s style, Hampshire writes:

Conceptual Confusions and Vague Distinctions

Description versus Explanation: Philosophy versus Science

Ryle’s Account of Self-knowledge

The Concept of Mind as a Non-Behaviourist Attack on

Ryle’s Behaviourism According to Modern Handbooks

In Lowe’s An introduction to the philosophy of mind (2000) it is mentioned in a footnote

Suggestions of Behaviourism in The Concept of Mind

Ryle’s Rejection of a Behaviouristic Interpretation

Two Interpretations: Shelley M. Park and Rowland Stout