final paper

Aaron Rodriguez

Philosophy 1510

Mendell

December 10, 2016

Nature of the Mind

Gilbert Ryle makes claims about how mind effects nature. His statements talk about how mind does not affect the natural world and if it actually affects the natural world. The first claim he makes is “minds are not in space nor are their operations subject to mechanical laws” ( Perry 273) His claim is stating that minds don’t have mechanical laws therefore they cannot mechanically change the world since that is the only way that the world can be affected. I disagree with his claim because even though the mind doesn’t have mechanical functions they send signals to the functioning body parts to do mechanical functions. The mind process the information of the physical world which means that the physical world which is how the physical world communicates with the mind and the mind sends messages to the body to interact with the physical world. If the world can communicate with the mind and the mind can communicate to the world then the mind does in fact affect nature.Ryle later says ”what the mind wills the legs, arms and the tongue execute” (Perry 273). Even though the body is the one interacting with the world the body parts would not be able to interact with the world if it wasn’t for the mind. Take brain dead people for instance. Those who are brain dead cannot interact with the world because the body parts do not have their own ability to interact with the world their ability comes from the mind. Another statement that he tries to use to support his claim “the workings of one mind are not witnessable by other observers its career is private” ( Perry 274). However  this is untrue, the working of the mind are in fact witnessable by other minds and this is shown in things like art. People make things like movies, songs and paintings which are the works of people and these are witnessable by other observers. Which is evident when one watches a movie. One person or a group of people make a movie and then others are able to see it when they watch it in the movie theaters and online. These are the workings of one mind and others can witness those workings by seeing what one person made therefore not making the career of one mind private from others. Ryle says  “That the theoretically interesting category-mistakes are those made by people who are perfectly competent to apply concepts, at least in the situations with which they are familiar, but are still liable in their abstract thinking to allocate those concepts to logical to which they do not belong. An instance of a mistake of this sort would  be the following story. A student of politics has learned the main differences between the British, the French and the American Constitutions, and has learned also the differences and connections between the Cabinet, Parliament, the various Ministries, the Judicature, and the Church of England. But he still becomes embarrassed when asked questions about the connections between the Church of England, the Home office, and the British Constitution. For while the Church and the Home Office are institutions, the British constitution is not another institution in the same sense of that noun. So inter-institutional relations which can be asserted or denied to hold between the Church and the Home Office cannot be asserted or denied to hold between either of them and the British Constitution. "The British Constitution" is not a term of the same logical gland” (Perry 276). Ryle tries to make a parallel between governments and the mind and body he states that Parliament,  Cabinet and Ministries are all part of the government which the government would be the body and the the branches of government would be the mind and body parts. In this case the three branches are independent from each other but work toward running the same country. This is similar to a body because they both towards the same goal one is to interact with the world the other is to sustain a country. The difference is that the branches of government can be independent of each other while the mind and body depend on each other to function. The body needs the mind to process information to know how to react while the mind needs the body to interact with the physical world by producing the actions it wants to leave its interaction on the world.  The final way that Ryle tries to justify the way that the mind and body are independent is that they are both so complex that they must be independent by saying “ As the human body is a complex organised unit, so the human mind must be another complex organised unit, so the human mind must be another complex organised unit, though one made of a different sort of stuff and with a different sort of other paracel of matter, is a field of cause and effects, so the mind must be another field of causes and effects, though not (heaven be praised) mechanical causes and effects” (Perry 277-278). This is absure to think that just because something is complex it should be able to do everything on its own. For example a television and speakers are independently complex and a screen is independently complex however without speakers a movie has no sound and without a screen speakers have no images and movies and tv shows would be boring without either. Merely because something is complex that does not mean that it can do all the necessary functions. This is seen by the television and speaker example this is the same with the mind and the body they are both complex units and net other things to perform at optimum levels.

In conclusion the mind and body are dependent on each other to function. Also no matter how complex the ability that each has they can not perform all the functions needed in order to make the body function properly. All the justification to try and separate the body and the mind are irrelevant because the systems that they use as analogies are multiple different complex sets and even though they can work independently they can not run the whole system. When they try and prove their points they disprove it at the same time when they don’t take into account that the system doesn’t perform all the necessary jobs in order to function fluently and correctly.

Bibliography

Perry, John. Introduction To Philosophy. Seventh ed. New York: Oxford UP, 2016. Print.