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Dilemmas Dilemmas The Tarner Lectures 1953 B gilbert ryle UniversityPrintingHouse,CambridgeCB28BS,UnitedKingdom CambridgeUniversityPressispartoftheUniversityofCambridge. ItfurtherstheUniversity’smissionbydisseminatingknowledgeinthepursuitof education,learningandresearchatthehighestinternationallevelsofexcellence. www.cambridge.org Informationonthistitle:www.cambridge.org/9781107534193 ©CambridgeUniversityPress1954 Thispublicationisincopyright.Subjecttostatutoryexception andtotheprovisionsofrelevantcollectivelicensingagreements, noreproductionofanypartmaytakeplacewithoutthewritten permissionofCambridgeUniversityPress. Firstpublished1954 Reprinted1956 Firstpaperbackedition1960 Reprinted1962,1964,1966,1969,1973,1975,1976,1977,1980,1983,1985,1987,1994,1995 CambridgePhilosophyClassicsedition2015 PrintedintheUnitedKingdombyClays,StIvesplc AcataloguerecordforthispublicationisavailablefromtheBritishLibrary LibraryofCongressCataloginginPublicationdata Ryle,Gilbert,1900–1976. Dilemmas:theTarnerlectures1953/byGilbertRyle.–CambridgePhilosophy Classicsedition. pages cm. Includesbibliographicalreferencesandindex. ISBN978-1-107-11362-6(Hardback)– ISBN978-1-107-53419-3(Paperback) 1. Dilemma. I. Title. BC185.R92015 170–dc23 2015016169 ISBN978-1-107-11362-6Hardback ISBN978-1-107-53419-3Paperback CambridgeUniversityPresshasnoresponsibilityforthepersistenceoraccuracy ofURLsforexternalorthird-partyinternetwebsitesreferredtointhispublication, anddoesnotguaranteethatanycontentonsuchwebsitesis,orwillremain, accurateorappropriate. Contents B Acknowledgements pagevi Preface to this edition bybarry stroud vii 1 Dilemmas 1 2 ‘Itwas to be’ 13 3 Achilles and the tortoise 31 4 Pleasure 46 5 The worldof science and the everyday world 58 6 Technical and untechnicalconcepts 70 7 Perception 79 8 Formaland informal logic 95 v Acknowledgements B I am very grateful to the Master and Fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge,forthehonourtheydidmeinelectingmetheirtwelfthTarner Lecturer. This book is a slightly modified version of the Tarner Lectures which Idelivered in Cambridge in the Lent Term of 1953. g.r. vi Preface to this edition barry stroud B Philosophy changed its appearance around the middle of the twentieth century. It was still philosophy, but it looked, and felt, different from the lofty clashes among abstract doctrines and ‘isms’ it had often seemed to be in the past. It was becoming evident that the sources of philosophy could be found, and enquired into, right here on earth, in the apparently conflictingwaysofthinkinganyreflectivepersoncannaturallyfallintoin trying to understand familiar features of the world around us. In Gilbert Ryle’sDilemmasweareinthehandsofamasterofthisnewerconception of the relation between philosophy and everyday life. He realizes that the title of his book might suggest disputes between one philosophical schoolandanother:‘thefeud,forexample,betweenIdealistsandRealists, or the vendetta between Empiricists and Rationalists’. But that is not Ryle’sterrain. Rylestartswithwaysofthinkingweallengageinandwithconflictswe can be brought to feel with other, apparently equally natural ways of thinking about more or less the same things. There is real charm in Ryle’s philosophical writing. His rich vocabulary of common expressions andthedown-to-earthparallelsbywhichheillustratesthestructureofthe apparently deeper quandaries bring the dilemmas vividly before the mind. IfIwenttobedonSundaynightitmusthavebeentrueonSaturdaythat Iwillgoto bedonSunday night, andsoalsotrue ontheSaturdaybefore that, and the Saturday before that, and so on. So whatever anyone does ‘has been definitely booked from any earlier date you like to choose. Whatever is, was to be.’ There is no place in a physical theory of the universe for the colours, tastes, and smells of the objects around us; it is enough to account for the physical effects those objects have on other objects, including the sensory systems of human beings and animals. But the scientific account cannot be denied, so this apparent rivalry between the world of science and the world of everyday life seems to banish the colours,tastes, and smells of things from the world altogether. Ryle recognizes that such conflicts cannot be resolved by the simple diplomaticsuggestionofdifferentdomainsofinterestfordifferentpeople vii viii prefacetothisedition for different purposes. We must come to understand how one side of theapparentdilemma,properlyunderstood,doesnotactuallydenywhat we know to be true on the other side. This is a high standard to meet. Whether Ryle overcomes the dilemmas he presents, and if so whether he does it in the same way each time, is a good question for the attentive reader. In the 1950s it was widely proclaimed that philosophy is or involves ‘the analysis of concepts’. For Ryle, the concepts that give rise to philosophical puzzlement do not present themselves in isolation, but only within the dilemmas we seem inevitably led into in trying to understand from different directions whatappearto be the same familiar facts. CHAPTER 1 Dilemmas B There are different sorts of conflicts between theories. One familiar kind ofconflictisthatinwhichtwoormoretheoristsofferrivalsolutionsofthe sameproblem.Inthesimplestcases,theirsolutionsarerivalsinthesense that if one of them is true, the others are false. More often, naturally, theissueisafairlyconfusedone,inwhicheachofthesolutionsproffered is in part right, in part wrong and in part just incomplete or nebulous. There is nothing to regret in the existence of disagreements of this sort. Evenif,intheend,alltherivaltheoriesbutonearetotallydemolished,still theircontesthashelpedtotestanddevelopthepoweroftheargumentsin favourof the survivor. However,thisisnotthekindoftheoreticalconflictwithwhichweshall beconcerned.Ihopetointerestyouinquiteadifferentpatternofdisputes, and, therewith, in quite a different sort of settlementof thesedisputes. Thereoftenarisequarrelsbetweentheories,or,moregenerally,between lines of thought, which are not rival solutions of the same problem, but rather solutions or would-be solutions of different problems, and which, none the less, seem to be irreconcilable with one another. A thinker who adoptsoneofthemseemstobelogicallycommittedtorejectingtheother, despitethefactthattheinquiriesfromwhichthetheoriesissuedhad,from the beginning, widely divergent goals. In disputes of this kind, we often find one and the same thinker—very likely oneself—strongly inclined to champion both sides and yet, at the very same time, strongly inclined entirely to repudiate one of them just because he is strongly inclined to support the other. He is both well satisfied with the logical credentials of each of the two pointsof view, and sure that one of themmust be totally wrong if the other is even largely right. The internal administration of each seems to be impeccable but their diplomatic relations with one anotherseemto be internecine. This whole set of lectures is intended to be an examination of a variety ofconcreteexamplesofdilemmasofthissecondkind.ButIshalladduce, 1 2 dilemmas here and now, three familiar examples in order to illustrate what I have sofar describedonlyin general terms. The neuro-physiologist who is studying the mechanism of perception, like the physiologist who is studying the mechanism of digestion or reproduction,baseshistheoriesuponthemostsolidkindofevidencethat his work in the laboratory can provide, namely upon what he and his collaborators and assistants can see with the naked or the instrumentally assisted eye, and upon what they can hear, say, from the Geiger counter. Yet the theoryof perception atwhichhe arrivesseems constitutionallyto entailthatthereisanunbridgeablecrevassebetweenwhatpeople,including himself, see or hear and what is really there—a crevasse so wide that he has apparently and can have no laboratory evidence that there exists even any correlation between what we perceive and what is really there. If his theory is true, then everyone is systematically debarred from perceiving the physical and physiological properties of things; and yet his theories are based on the very best experimental and observational evidence about the physical and physiological properties of such things as ear-drums and nerve-fibres. While at work in the laboratory he makes the best possible use of his eyes and ears; while writing up his results he has to deliver the severest possible censure upon these sham witnesses. He is sure that what they tell us can never be anything like the truth just becausewhattheytoldhiminhislaboratorywasofthehighestreliability. Fromonepointofview,whichisthatoflaymenandscientistsalikewhile actually exploring the world, we find out what is there by perceiving. From the other point of view, that of the inquirer into the mechanism of perception, what we perceivenever coincides with what isin the world. There are one or two features of this embarrassment which should be noticed. First, it is not a dispute between one physiologist and another. Doubtless there have been and are rival physiological hypotheses and theories, of which some will be defeated by others. But what are at loggerheads here are not two or more rival accounts of the mechanism of perception, but between a conclusion derivable apparently from any account of the mechanism of perception on the one side and everyone’s workadaytheoryofperceptionontheother.Or,rather,Iamstretchingthe word ‘theory’ over-violently when I say that the dispute is between a physiological theory of perception and another theory. For when we use our eyes and ears, whether in the garden or in the laboratory, we are not tradingonanytheorytotheeffectthatwecanfindoutthecolours,shapes, positionsandothercharactersofobjectsbyseeing,hearing,tastingandthe rest. We are finding out these things or else, sometimes, getting them