Abstract

The ways in which mental concepts can seem problematic are various, and consequently the idea of a coherent body of issues forming one part of philosophy, namely the philosophy of mind, is highly misleading. When Ludwig Wittgenstein and Gilbert Ryle inaugurated the flood of recent writings about the concept of mind there was some similarity, although not identity, in the problems which led them to concentrate their attention on mental concepts. Wittgenstein saw that lack of clarity about such notions as willing, thinking, feeling and imagining generated powerful but misleading pictures about logic—about the difference between sense and nonsense —so that if we were to become clear about one we should have to become clear about the other. Worries about logic generated his interest in what it is to have a mind. In the case of Ryle, if we are to accept his own autobiographical remarks, an exposition of the logic of mental concepts was undertaken to illustrate whatever clarity had already been achieved by him and others with regard to logic and logical investigations. ‘The Concept of Mind was a philosophical book written with a meta-philosophical purpose’. Although I think it should be open for speculation just why specifically mental notions were singled out by him for such an illustrative purpose. In each case questions about logic prompted writing about the mind. There remains an echo of this in some of the books under review, but, as often with deepseated changes, the original impetus can soon be lost, and debates about distinctions in which it was first embodied can take on a life of their own.