The Concept of Mind

This was the first philosophy book I read in college and switched from physics and went on to complete a degree in philosophy instead.

I had long wanted to read this title.It is of great hitorical significance.It teaches one humility.

"The Concept of Mind" is one of the essential works of philosophy and one of the great books of the twentieth century. Western thought took a horrendous wrong turn with Cartesian dualism and it was not until Ryle's book in 1949 that we got back on track. Or at least should have done, for the idea that we are two separate entities - mind and body - still pervades, and muddies, our thinking, whether philosophical, theological or everyday.Some of Ryle's followers have extended his ideas to the point of distortion, and would have us believe that mind and consciousness actually do not exist. Don't let such behaviorist extremism put you off. Ryle's feet were always more firmly on the ground. He defines the concept of mind, not invalidates it.He has a lively, readable style (of how many philosophers can you say that?) and although a lot of his ideas do not have the novelty that they would have had half a century ago, this is still the best book with which to begin an investigation of the nature of mind and consciousness.

In a sense, this book is a mirror to the problems covered in Wittgenstein's "Philosophical Investigations"--albeit with tighter arguments and far less meandering than Wittgenstein's groundbreaking work (this was published three years before Wittgenstein's posthumous PI). Both men were dedicated to freeing philosophy from what Ryle terms "category errors"--misapplications of the ordinary referential scope of a given term ("mind" as a concept which must necessarily oppose "substance" for instance--this duality forces us to ascribe and essentialize qualities to the incorporeal along the same lines as that of substance, by giving it attributes on the linguistic model of physical objects) These misapplications have led philosophers into vast problems which, by their very nature as linguistic misuses, are unsolvable (but not dis-solvable). Parts of it will provoke cries of "behaviorism!", but Ryle included a chapter near the end distancing his stance from Skinner et al. (how well he manages in this is debatable!) Brilliant, straightforward, and elegant, this is one the best works of 20th-century philosophy.

The Concept of Mind is a great book for several reasons. The main reason to me is that Ryle clarifies the concept of being human, while he uses language in a natural way. In stead of constructing concepts based on (for example scientific) assumptions, he shows what we already see as obvious, just by pointing out what we mean with our ordinary language. He is far from reductionistic; mark the subtle irony: 'Man need not be degraded to a machine by being denied to be a ghost in a machine. He might, after all, be a sort of animal, namely, a higher mammal. There has yet to be ventured the hazardous leap to the hypothesis that perhaps he is a man.'

This is really a seminal work of philosophy, undermining reliance on the mind/body dualism so prevalent in academia for centuries. Ryle calls distinctions made by Descartes false, that the "official theory" is a categorical mistake.