Abstract

A contribution to the elaboration of a systematical philosophical anthropology from an analytical point of view can be made by means of a critical comparison between the thoughts of G. Ryle and P. F. Strawson on this subject matter. Ryle's interest is to get rid of the traditional, 'official' myth about the relation between body and mind. Instead of the conception of two distinct worlds, which we can talk about in rather the same way, he proposes the conception of one, empirical world of overt human action, to which all other aspects of human existence are related . About this activity we can talk in semi-dispositional terms, pointing out both that a certain episode of action has occurred , and that it can be caught under a certain dispositional 'law'. Thus, if we want to mention dispositions as such , we have to notice that we are talking about certain activities or occurrences in a certain manner, not about hidden, silent, and mysterious activities or occurrences which cause the overt action on a second, postulated stage. The risk of Ryle's ideas is the underlying theory of 'meaning = referent', which he himself wants to avoid elsewhere. But if he succeeds in avoiding this, then we have to ask if Ryle has indeed given an adequate account of the concept of mind. Or did he rather, very accurately and sophisticatedly, tell us quite a lot about the empirical conditions and criteria for the application of concepts about the mind ? Strawson develops his concept of a person within the framework of the conditions of possibility for identifying reference. The ultimate condition is formed by a unified spatio-temporal structure, in which material bodies and persons are 'basic particulars'. Persons are, from this point of view, primarily entities of a type, to which both phyiscal situations and states of consciousness are ascribed equally, and a such the concept of a person is logically primitive. Seeking for criteria on the strength of which the 'I' can ascribe a P-predicate to itself , Strawson moves a central class of P-predicates into the picture : that which involves 'doing something'. It can be shown that they are ascribable to others on the basis of observation , where-as they are ascribable to oneself not on the basis of observation . Although Strawson is rather vague here, we think to interpret him correctly by saying that his aim is to point out that the meaning of our concepts about the mind is determined by linguistic rules which refer not only to certain feelings, e.g. pain, but also, and primarily, to a whole 'pattern' of events, feelings, behaviour, actions, etc., which together form the concept of 'pain'. Learning these rules is already acknowledging and affirming intersubjectivity ; the problem of Other Minds comes too late, when we do see already others as self-ascribers. Comparing Ryle and Strawson on a few general points we have to say that certain important steps in the argument of Strawson are abo present in Ryle's thought in statu nascendi. The idea of a spatio-temporal structure with material bodies and persons as basic particulars : a structure which is common to all people, who teach me to use a language. The 'inversion' of ontological dualism by pointing out the unique reference of diverse uses of language. Strawson is much more careful than Ryle to avoid here a theory of 'meaning = referent', although he is himself too vague about what is precisely consciousness. Ryle's terminology of dispositions and occurrences falls short when it has to deal with the language of feelings. The basis of this is that he cannot give an account of the anthropological distinction between the 'I' and the 'other'. While Strawson is trying to maintain the distinction between self-ascription and other-ascription, and to show us others as self-ascribers, Ryle's effort is to show us ourselves as 'other-ascribers'. The basic intuition of both Ryle and Strawson is a philosophy of action, as a solid basis of the logical primitiveness of the concept 'person', and its reference to ontological whole-ness and intersubjectivity. But we should bear in mind that this category of action is for Strawson not only the most important key in discovering something about man ; it is, more fundamentally, a 'transcendental' category: it forms the condition of possibility for understanding philosophically that there are persons in the world