Abstract

The purpose of this work is to delineate an important theme of Ryle's thought which has been overlooked in the past by Ryle's interpreters on account of his elusive style of writing and some of the positivistic trends of his thought. I have identified this theme as phenomenology. Ryle's "over-riding worry", I believe was to be able to provide some theory of sense and nonsense with the help of which he could analyze mind and mental functioning. His major adversary in this area was Cartesian dualism which was consequently the target of his attack. I claim that Ryle, in contrast to dualism, has employed the phenomenological method of analysis of mind and mental operations commonly known as phenomenological psychology. He criticized the dualistic legend with the help of his category-mistake argument derived from a phenomenological approach to sense and nonsense. To justify my claim, I have traced the development of Ryle's thought over a period of about fifty years highlighting his views on the problem of meaning and absurdity through which, he thinks, categories and category distinctions can be understood. I have argued that Ryle's approach to this problem in its application to mind can be partially qualified as both behaviorism and the ordinary language method. But in the long run Ryle rejected behaviorism, was critical of the view that linguistic convention can explain meanings of expressions, and recognized the need for deeper structure. I have also noted that in the last ten years, Ryle's approach is being recognized as phenomenological. I have claimed that Ryle was influenced by Husserl's phenomenology and embraced it in contrast to dualism and behaviorism but has rejected Husserl's transcendental phenomenology on account of his own confused understanding of Husserl and of Husserl's difficult writing and intricacy of his thought