Editing Gilbert Ryle (section)

==Work==
===''The Concept of Mind''===
{{Main|The Concept of Mind}}

In ''The Concept of Mind'', Ryle argues that [[Mind–body dualism|dualism]] involves [[category mistake]]s and philosophical [[nonsense]], two philosophical topics that continued to inform Ryle's work. He [[Rhetorical question|rhetorically]] asked students in his 1967–68 Oxford audience what was wrong with saying that there are three things in a field: two cows and a pair of cows. They were also invited to ponder whether the [[bunghole]] of a beer barrel is part of the barrel or not.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.the-philosophy.com/ryle-concept-mind-summary|title=Ryle: The concept of mind (Summary)|website=www.the-philosophy.com|date=3 June 2012|language=en-US|access-date=2018-09-03}}</ref>

====Knowing-how and knowing-that====
{{main|Descriptive knowledge|Procedural knowledge}}
A distinction deployed in ''The Concept of Mind'', between 'knowing-how' and 'knowing-that', has attracted independent interest. This distinction is also the origin of procedural (''knowing-how'') and declarative (''knowing-that'') models of [[long-term memory]].<ref name=":2">[[Jason Stanley]] and [[Timothy Williamson]], [https://www.jstor.org/stable/2678403 "Knowing How"], ''[[Journal of Philosophy]]'', '''98''' (8): 411–444, 2001.</ref> This distinction is widely accepted in philosophy.<ref name=":2" />

{{Cquote
| quote = Philosophers have not done justice to the distinction which is quite familiar to all of us between knowing that something is the case and knowing how to do things. In their theories of knowledge they concentrate on the discovery of truths or facts, and they either ignore the discovery of ways and methods of doing things or else they try to reduce it to the discovery of facts. They assume that [[intelligence]] equates with the [[contemplation]] of propositions and is exhausted in this contemplation.
| author = Gilbert Ryle
| source = [[Aristotelian Society]] Presidential Address, 1945.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Ryle |first=Gilbert |date=1945 |title=Knowing How and Knowing That: The Presidential Address |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/4544405 |journal=Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society |volume=46 |pages=1–16 |issn=0066-7374}}</ref>
}}

An example of the distinction can be knowing how to tie a [[reef knot]] and knowing that [[Queen Victoria]] died in 1901.

===Philosophy as cartography===
{{cquote|The philosophical arguments which constitute this book are intended not to increase what we know about minds but to rectify the logical geography of the knowledge we already possess.<ref>Concept of Mind p 1</ref>
}}
Ryle thought it no longer possible to believe that a philosopher's task is to study mental as opposed to physical objects. In its place, Ryle saw a tendency of philosophers to search for objects whose nature was neither physical nor mental. Ryle believed, instead, that "philosophical problems are problems of a certain sort; they are not problems of an ordinary sort about special entities."<ref name="Stanford Encyclopedia" />

Ryle analogises philosophy to [[cartography]]. Competent speakers of a language, Ryle believes, are to a philosopher what ordinary villagers are to a mapmaker: the ordinary villager has a competent grasp of his village, and is familiar with its inhabitants and [[geography]]. But when asked to interpret a map of that knowledge, the villager will have difficulty until he is able to translate his practical knowledge into universal cartographic terms. The villager thinks of the village in personal and practical terms, while the mapmaker thinks of the village in neutral, public, cartographic terms.<ref name=":0">Ryle, Gilbert. 1971. "Abstractions." In ''Collected Papers'' 2. London: Hutchinson.</ref>{{Rp|440–2}}

By mapping the words and phrases of a particular statement, philosophers are able to generate what Ryle calls '''implication threads''': each word or phrase of a statement contributes to the statement in that, if the words or phrases were changed, the statement would have a different implication. The philosopher must show the directions and limits of different implication threads that a "concept contributes to the statements in which it occurs." To show this, he must be tugging at neighbouring threads, which, in turn, must also be tugging. Philosophy, then, searches for the meaning of these implication threads in the statements in which they are used.<ref name=":0" />{{Rp|444–5}}

=== Thick description ===
{{main|Thick description}}
In 1968 Ryle first introduced the notion of ''[[thick description]]'' in "The Thinking of Thoughts: What is 'Le Penseur' Doing?"<ref name=":1">Ryle, Gilbert. [1968] 1996. "[https://web.archive.org/web/20080410232658/http://lucy.ukc.ac.uk/CSACSIA/Vol11/Papers/ryle_1.html The Thinking of Thoughts: What is 'Le Penseur' Doing?]" ''Studies in Anthropology'' 11:11. {{ISSN|1363-1098}}. Archived from the [http://lucy.ukc.ac.uk/CSACSIA/Vol11/Papers/ryle_1.html original] on 10 April 2008. Retrieved 25 June 2008.</ref><ref>Ryle, Gilbert. [1968] 1971. "The Thinking of Thoughts: What is 'Le Penseur' Doing?" pp. 480–496 in ''Collected Papers'' 2. London: Hutchinson.</ref> and "Thinking and Reflecting".<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Ryle |first=Gilbert |date=1968 |title=Thinking and Reflecting |url=https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S0080443600011511/type/journal_article |journal=Royal Institute of Philosophy Lectures |language=en |volume=1 |pages=210–226 |doi=10.1017/S0080443600011511 |issn=0080-4436|url-access=subscription }}</ref><ref>{{Citation |last=Kirchin |first=Simon |title=Thick Concepts and Thick Descriptions |date=2013-04-25 |work=Thick Concepts |pages=60–77 |editor-last=Kirchin |editor-first=Simon |url=https://academic.oup.com/book/5816/chapter/149029835 |access-date=2024-10-13 |publisher=Oxford University Press |doi=10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199672349.003.0004 |isbn=978-0-19-967234-9 |quote=The first coinage in print of ‘thick concept’ was due to Bernard Williams, [...] However, Gilbert Ryle was the first to use the phrase ‘thick description’ to describe ideas in this general ballpark.  A thick description is a more specific sort of description that one needs in order to categorize an action, personality trait, or other such thing. Ryle used this phrase in two papers from the late 1960s, although the idea runs through much of his work.|url-access=subscription }}</ref> According to Ryle, there are two types of descriptions:<ref name=":1" />

# thin description: surface-level observations of behaviour, e.g. "His right hand rose to his forehead, palm out, when he was in the vicinity of and facing a certain other human."
# thick description: adds context to such behaviour. Explaining this context necessitates an understanding of the motivations people have for their behaviours, as well as how observers in the community understand such behaviour: "He saluted the General."