Kesarimalji Surana Abhinandan Granth

Author(s): Nathmal Tatia, Dev Kothari
Publisher: Kesarimalji Surana Abhinandan Granth Prakashan Samiti

Page 1290

Ryle's Concept of the Category-Mistake
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thetical Statements about events and ordinary words. One of the main confusions in Ryle's Concept of Mind is the use of Categorical-Hypothetical distinction borrowed from logic to make a distinction which is not strictly logicalRyle's view that to give reasons for accepting or rejecting such statements must always involve hypothetical statements about overt behaviours is due to his thinking that meaning is identical with the verification. But in fact, the overt behaviours indicate that meaning is not identical with verifications.
Michael Scriven in his article The Mechanical Concept of Mind' (Mind 1953) maintains that overt behaviour does not always and necessarily give sufficient account of consciousness. The evidence is appropriate only if we have the other vital evidence which may serve the purpose of acting as the inference licence. As he says, "behaviour is attached to consciousness as pain is to torture; the one does not guarantee the other but is guaranteed by it !" All these statements support our view that mind and body both have separate status from each other and are essential feature of human personality. Indeed, we cannot know mind, apart from the body; its knowledge is possible only in relation to the body, but it does not mean that the mind is the body. No conscious and deliberate activity is possible in the absence of mind. Moreover, only conscious body can operate on many sorts of things where as the rangs of unconscious activity is quite limited. Hence, minds and bodies are essential feature of human personality. Human existence is impossible in the absence of any one of them. Both are real; though their union in human beings remains a mystery for many philosophers even in the present century.
But Ryle cannot be daunted by such failure. He further defends his theory of mind by claiming that mental conduct concepts are not definable terms of cognitions. Cognitive statements are open hypothetical dispositional statements or semi-hypothetical dispositional statements which demonstrate only certain tendencies, capacities or abilities of human beings (see C. M. pp. 50, 51, 117, 118). Theorising is not an activity of mind which separates mental activities from physical occurences and indicates two different
rocesses. For Ryle bodily and mental processes are not two different and distinct processes but ono proces. For evidence he has cited various examples, (See CM pp.-51, 142, 143). It is, of course, worth-noting that in some cases at least mental activities are perceptible in human behay. iours. But thereby we cannot infer definitely and necessarily that it holds in all cases. It is not only hard but also impossible to know in certain cases about others' minds. Ryle's criterion of knowing about others' minds becomes unsatisfactory and undesirable in the case of silence. We have no instrument to know in case of silence about mental activities of others' minds whether he is thinking or not and about what he is thinking. We fully agree with Hampshire on this point. Against Ryle, Hampshire maintains in his review article on The Concept of Mind (1949) that individual has 'Privileged Access to his own states of mind. First person reports about mental activities may or may not always be reducible to statements about perceptible behaviour. When I am silent, others have no criteria to have access to my state of mind. Only I can know what I am thinking. You can only guess whether one is thinking or not, but you cannot say anything about what one is thinking. In this sense, it is obvious that everyone has Privileged Access' to his mind and others have no such Privileged Access'. Therefore, on Ryle's showing 'some of the legitimate uses of such statements have been debarred from the range of meaningful utterances. There are, indeed, many cases where these terms do have cognitively legitimate uses in ordinary language. But our point is that Ryle has definitely narrowed down the criteria of knowing which is totally unsatisfactory. It is never possible to know exactly and definitely about others' minds in