Items from the list of books recommended by Dr Feldenkrais for SF training, 1975
Gilbert Ryle (1900-1976)
The Concept of Mind, 1949, reprinted University of Chicago Press, 2000, reprinted London, Routledge, 2009
A British philosopher who studied and taught at Oxford University, Ryle defended a radical ontology of mind. An analytical philosopher, he considers philosophical activity to be that which leads us to eliminate conceptual confusions. For him, these confusions or erroneous similarities stem from a problem of categorization. This philosopher is renowned for having rethought the correlation between the psychic and bodily aspects of an individual’s functioning. For Ryle, it’s crucial to stop thinking of the mind as a reality whose existence is comparable to that of the body.
Addition May 19, 2025
In The Concept of Mind, Ryle directly attacks the “dogma of the ghost in the machine” — the idea that the mind is a non-material entity housed within the body. He offers a logical-linguistic analysis of mental concepts: to speak of thought, intention, or desire is to speak of dispositions to act, observable in specific contexts.
To think is to act in certain ways, to exhibit intelligible, bodily-situated behaviors, without implying a causal dualism. G.R. rejects any notion of disembodied thought. He emphasizes how mental vocabulary is inferred from behavior, and therefore always connected to corporeality.
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