Descartes and Ryle’s Argument Essay Example

representationalism. On the other hand, Ryle contradicts the proposition of Descartes under his book entitled, The Concept of Mind, that views Descartes’ dualism as a fundamental error emphasizing a categorical mistake. Dualism, in Ryle’s view, concerns the assumption of causes, processes, or events under dualism cannot actually implicate both processes.

Ryle acknowledges that Descartes’ myth of body and mind separation coincides in a category with peculiar language inappropriate to one another. Nevertheless, Ryle does not negate the principles of Descartes rather he proposes a relocation of components and ideas present in his theory on dualism. Descartes’ defensive stance considers the category to which events of a person’s trying to do something is physical while being dependent to human beings’ cognitive aspect, which considers appropriate categorical placement on Descartes dualism of mind and body relationship.

Descartes’ view on mind and body’s dualism provide significant portrayal of rational mind/soul powers over the body, which entail intellectuality over man’s physical embodiment; although, Ryle’s argument questions the use of the terminology, soul, which can be inappropriate in application of logical statements to a cognitive-based component. The argument of Ryle is answered back by Descartes’ concept of rational soul, which, according to him does not require physical manipulation (e. g. by pineal gland).

Conclusion

Since both components comprise two separate characteristics and principles, body and mind should be handled independently from one another. Descartes’ second meditation in his book, Meditations on First Philosophy, proposes the idea of Dualism of Mind and Body. He considers the two components as separate identities independent from each other. On the other hand, Ryle’s The Concept of Mind proposes the argument

that the Cartesian dualism is one large category mistake, which is an incorrect placement of terms from psychological vocabulary to logico-linguistic category, and should therefore consider replacement or re-categorization of ideas.