A Brief Response to Gilbert Ryle's Concept of the Mind

After reading the excerpt from Gilbert Ryle's book, The Concept of the Mind, several things come to mind regarding the nature of the mind, which were not considered by Ryle. While he does appear to present a fairly sound argument against the traditional categorical placement of the mind in relation to one's physical existence or being, there seemed to be a lack of consideration for the mind's unique ability to comprehend semantics.

Ryle argues that minds really do belong to the same category as bodies, and consequently follow a deterministic system of behavior. In effect, he is reducing the mind body problem by stating that minds are the same as, or at least very similar to bodies. However, the human mind is in possession of a very significant quality, which is essential to its nature, which serves to distinguish it in a categorical manner from the body. This quality is the mind's ability to apply semantics to the perceptions of the body. If the mind is reduced to being simply a physical thing, it cannot, because of the nature of deterministic physical existence, have any awareness of the "meaning" of something when it perceives that something. And yet there is, I would argue, a level of comprehension which takes place in the mind which the body alone cannot account for, making the mind categorically different from the body.

For example, let us consider what occurs when we are using language as a means of communication. It is conceivable that one could build a machine which would, through formal processes alone, take a series of inputs in the form of language and manipulate them by a series of rules to form an output in the same language. Let us take this example one step further and say that the machine was built so well that it became impossible to tell the machine's responses from genuine human responses. Would we be forced to conclude that the machine actually had a mental state? I do not believe so because of the lack of semantic content in the formal processes the machine uses to manipulate the language (i.e. forming an output from a given input). As indistinguishable as the machine's responses may be from that of a person, the machine will never have any level of comprehension of the "meaning" of the language it has "used." John Searle gave a similar example of this counter-argument in a book by the name of Minds, Brains, and Science. It does seem to apply to Ryle's criticism of Descartes, because it appears to me that Ryle is not taking everything that is known about the nature of mental processes into account into that same criticism.

Given many of Ryle's premises and the historical background information, he does appear to present a fairly sound argument while, at the same time, show some rather inconsistent views which are held by many who hold the traditional Cartesian view of the mind's relation to the body. However, I feel that there is more to the nature of the mind than is accounted for by Ryle.