Gilbert Ryle

Quotes

• “A myth is, of course, not a fairy story. It is the presentation of facts belonging to one category in the idioms appropriate to another. To explode a myth is accordingly not to deny the facts but to re-allocate them.”
• “The mind is its own place and in his inner life each of us lives the life of a ghostly Robinson Crusoe. People can see, hear and jolt one another’s bodies, but they are irremediably blind and deaf to the workings of one another’s minds and inoperative upon them.”
• “Myths often do a lot of theoretical good, while they are still new.”
• “It is of first-rate importance to notice from the start that stupidity is not the same thing, or the same sort of thing, as ignorance. There is no incompatibility between being well-informed and being silly, and a person who has a good nose for arguments or jokes may have a bad head for facts.”
• “To see is one thing; to picture or visualise is another. A person can see things, only when his eyes are open, and when his surroundings are illuminated; but he can have pictures in his mind’s eye, when his eyes are shut and when the world is dark.”

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Key facts

Born

19 August 1900, Brighton , England

Died

6 October 1976 (aged 76), Whitby , England

Alma mater

The Queen's College, Oxford

Region

Western philosophy

School

Analytic philosophy logical behaviourism

Doctoral students

Daniel Dennett Colin Radford

Notable students

Theodor W. Adorno A. J. Ayer G. A. Cohen Antony Flew Þorsteinn Gylfason Bernard Williams

Main interests

Philosophy of language ordinary language philosophy philosophy of mind behaviourism meaning cognition

Notable ideas

Category mistake Ryle's regress ordinary language philosophy ghost in the machine thick description vs thin description knowing-how vs. knowing-that topic neutrality

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Wikidata facts

Image

Rex Whistler - Gilbert Ryle, Fellow.jpg

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