Volume Introduction: Gilbert Ryle on Propositions, Propositional Attitudes, and Theoretical Knowledge

Authors

  • Julia Tanney

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.15173/jhap.v5i5.3203

Abstract

In the introduction to the special volume, Gilbert Ryle: Intelligence, Practice and Skill, Julia Tanney introduces the contributions of Michael Kremer, Stina Bäckström and Martin Gustafsson, and Will Small, each of which indicates concern about the appropriation of Ryle’s distinction between knowing-how and knowing-that in seminal work in contemporary epistemology. Expressing agreement with the authors that something has gone awry in these borrowings from Ryle, Tanney takes this criticism to a deeper level. She argues that the very notion of content-bearing, causally-efficacious mental states, let alone representational states of knowledge-that or knowledge-how, embodies the very presuppositions that Ryle calls into question in his rejection of classical theories of meaning and his related warning of the type-errors involved in conflating rational and mechanistic explanation. That these mental posits are presupposed, unchallenged, in today’s debates make his arguments against intellectualism particularly difficult to discern.

References

Bäckström, Stina and Martin Gustafsson, 2017. “Skill, Drill, and Intelligent Performance: Ryle and Intellectualism.” Journal for the History of Analytical Philosophy 5.5: 40–55. (This issue.)

Fodor, Jerry, 1975. The Language of Thought. New York: Crowell.

Ginet, Carl, 1975. Knowledge, Perception, and Memory. Boston: D. Reidel.

Kremer, Michael, 2017. “Ryle’s ‘Intellectualist Legend’ in Historical Context.” Journal for the History of Analytical Philosophy 5.5: 16–39. (This issue.)

Russell, Bertrand, 1903. The Principles of Mathematics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Ryle, Gilbert, 2009a. Collected Papers, 2 vols. London: Routledge.

———, 2009b. The Concept of Mind, 60th anniversary edition. London: Routledge. First published 1949.

Small, Will, 2017. “Ryle on the Explanatory Role of Knowledge How.” Journal for the History of Analytical Philosophy 5.5: 56–76. (This issue.)

Tanney, Julia, 2009a. Prefaces to Ryle (2009a), vol. 1, pp. vii–xix, and vol. 2, pp. vii–xx.

———, 2009b. “Real Rules.” Synthese 171: 499–507.

———, 2009c. “Rethinking Ryle: A Critical Discussion of The Concept of Mind.” In Ryle (2009b), pp. ix–lvii. First published as “Une Cartographie des Concepts Mentaux,” Critical Introduction to Gilbert Ryle’s La Notion d’Esprit (The Concept of Mind), pp. 7–70. Paris: Payot, 2005.

———, 2011. “Ryle’s Regress and The Philosophy of Cognitive Science.” In J. L. Austin et La Philosophie du Langage Ordinaire, edited by Sandra Laugier and Christophe Al-Saleh, pp. 447–67. Hildesheim: Olms. Reprinted in Tanney (2013), chap. xx.

———, 2013. Rules, Reason and Self-Knowledge. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

———, 2015. “Gilbert Ryle”, in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ryle/, accessed 26 April 2017.

———, 2017. “What Knowledge is Not: Reflections on Some Uses of the Verb ‘To Know’.” In Knowledge in Contemporary Philosophy, edited by Markos Valaris and Stephen Hetherington. New York and London: Bloomsbury Academic.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 1953. Philosophical Investigations, translated by G. E. M. Anscombe. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

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Published

2017-05-15