Presentation Summary on Gilbert Ryle’s “The Will”

Introduction (by Peter Buehl):

Gilbert Ryle, a philosopher at Oxford University, argues against a dualist view and presents a positivist view of his own. He accuses Descartes and other dualists of subscribing to the “dogma of the ghost in the machine” and suggests that these views rest on a “category mistake” in posing questions about the relationship between mind and body. The mind is not to be seen as something distinct from the body and steering it from the inside, but as an aspect of the body’s own activities. Ryle’s positivist views include the idea that the mind is an aspect of behaviour. That is, to be in a given mental state (such as wincing), or at least to have a disposition to behave in certain ways (such as the disposition to express pain if asked). Thus, for Ryle the mind is seen as a public aspect of human activity, rather than as a private inner aspect.

  Broadly, Ryle’s philosophy is based on the notion that most philosophical problems are merely confusions created by accidents of grammar. As well, he shares with the logical positivists the view that metaphysical theories about the nature of the mind are gibberish produced by a misunderstanding of the meaning of mental concepts. In their view and in Ryle’s the role of philosophy is to provide a logical analysis of the meaning of psychological statements. However, unlike the logical positivists who restrict all meaning questions to the natural sciences, Ryle believes that the correct approach is to look carefully at our everyday descriptions of the mind. According to Ryle, people in ordinary life know perfectly well how to talk sensibly about the mind and how to interact with other people on the basis of this knowledge. It is there we should look for an understanding of how concepts such as “The Will” are used.

  In Ryle’s analysis of psychological concepts there is a clear rejection of Descartes’ notion that mental states are the inner states of a person. According to Ryle, psychological states do not refer to states of any kind. They refer only to certain facts about a person’s behaviour. In Ryle’ view there is nothing more to a psychological concept than what is conveyed by a statement that describes how a person will behave under certain circumstances.

  Ryle’s Central Argument (by Colette Bedard):

Ryle argued that the mind is not a non-physical substance residing in the body, a ghost in the machine, but a set of capacities and abilities belonging to the body and abilities belonging to the body.  All reference to mental states must be understood in terms of some sense experience that would determine its truth.  According to Ryle, to have mental states is simply to have the appropriate pattern of activity in one’s body, and all reference to the mental must be understood, at least in theory, in terms of human activity.

  Ryle rejects Cartesian dualism, arguing that adequate descriptions of human behavior need never refer to anything but the operations of the human bodies. He denies the concept of willing actions due to a faculty, called the will and its resulting operations called volitions. If people never report that occurrence of these acts of volition, which should happen very frequently, then we do not know how to settle simple questions about their frequency, duration or strength.  It is then fair to assume that their existence is not proven on empirical grounds.

  Since the connection between volition and movements is allowed to be mysterious, argues Ryle, the acts of volition may have some other movements as its cause.  In short then, the doctrine of volition is a causal hypothesis, adopted because it was wrongly supposed that the question “What makes a bodily movement voluntary?” was a causal question.  How are mental concepts applicable to human behavior?  This is a causation about the causation of that behavior.

  According to Ryle, freedom of will was asserted by philosophers in order to differentiate the human animals from brute nature.  He states “without such an apparatus, they, the philosophers, felt it would be impossible to state what are the qualifications for membership of the realm of spirit, the lack of it entails relegation to the realm of brute nature.

  Ryle poses many questions, but does not suggest any answer to the paradoxical questions he raises.

 Ryle’s Four Objections (by Takahiro Hoshi):

 In response to the theory of will, Ryle postulated four objections based on his logical behavioristic view to reject the theory.

The First Objection:

 Despite theorists assertion that all voluntary behaviour entails preceding volition, and such behaviors are explicable in terms of volition, nobody in practice performs this analysis. Advocates of the doctrine argue that the infrequency of such analysis due lacking of terms to describe the state of volition. But Ryle refutes flatly that if the use of volition is not common to explain behaviors, and there is more sufficient and commonly used alternative, the concept of volition is no longer needed.

  The Second Objection:

  Since volition cannot be observed by others and can only be witnessed by a first person by means of introspection, it is impossible to study volition on empirical ground. In addition, theorists allow the connection between volition and the execution of behavior to be a mystery; therefore we cannot tell if it was really a volition that executed behavior.

  The Third Objection:

  In the third objection, Ryle goes on to point out more about uncertainty of transactions between volition and behavior. According to theorists, the mind and the body are different sorts of existence between which there is no bridge-status, and the primary distinction is that the body is confined in a system of causal system whereas the mind is free of causal system. If the mind was capable of executing behavior, it would conflict with both premises that there is no bridge-status and that the mind is free of causal system. Therefore, the whole theory of the will is self-contradictory.

  The Forth Objection:

  Theory of volition also maintains that mental processes as well as overt behaviors issue from volition, and acts of volition makes them voluntary, resolute, meritorious, wicked, etc. Then Ryle asks: what of volition itself?  Is the volition voluntary or involuntary act of mind? Either answer leads to absurdity. If volition were involuntary, it would be ridiculous to conclude that the behavior executed by involuntary volition is described as voluntary. If volition were voluntary, it should issue from a prior volition and that from another because voluntary mental process must result from volition. This is ad infinitum.

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