"Descartes' Myth" is the title of a chapter in Gilbert Ryle's influential book, The Concept

of Mind, which argues that the mind-body dualism of René Descartes is a category
mistake. Ryle contends that Descartes mistakenly treated the mind as a separate, non-
physical "ghost in the machine," leading to the flawed "official doctrine" that the mind
and body are two distinct types of substances. This myth, according to Ryle, is an error
in logic, not just a collection of individual mistakes.

Ryle's argument: The "category mistake"

 A category error is a logical error:

It happens when something is put into the wrong logical category.

 Example of a category mistake:

Ryle uses the analogy of a visitor who, after seeing Oxford's colleges and buildings,
asks to be shown "the university." The visitor mistakenly assumes the university is a
physical building like the others, when in reality, "the university" is the way all those
buildings are organized and coordinated.

 Applying it to Descartes:

Ryle argues that Descartes made the same kind of error by assuming the mind is an
extra entity—a "thing"—that exists alongside the body, when in fact, "mind" is a way of
describing a person's overall intelligent behavior.

 The error in "mental" and "physical":

The mistake is in thinking that "mental processes" are a special kind of physical
process, leading to the absurd idea that they are mutually exclusive or entirely separate
phenomena.

Gilbert Ryle’s "official doctrine" is the Cartesian dualist view that the mind is an
immaterial substance, distinct from the physical body, which he calls the "ghost in the
machine". The drawbacks are that this creates a category mistake—misunderstanding
the mind not as a different kind of thing, but as a different type of process—leading to
the unsolvable mind-body problem, the problem of other minds, and a misleading view
of mental life as a secret, internal world.

The official doctrine

 Cartesian dualism: The core belief is that every person has a body in space and a
separate, non-physical mind that co-exists with the body.

 Dual substances: The body is public, physical, and governed by mechanical laws,
while the mind is private, immaterial, and not subject to physical laws.

 Two histories: This view suggests that a person lives two separate lives: one public
(bodily) and one private (mental).

 Private access: It holds that individuals have direct, unchallengeable knowledge of

their own mental states and processes, while others cannot access them.

Drawbacks of the official doctrine

 The "category mistake": Ryle's main criticism is that the official doctrine makes a
category mistake, incorrectly treating the mind as a "thing" on par with the body, rather
than a different category of explanation.

 Creates philosophical problems: This fundamental mistake is the source of many

philosophical dead ends, such as the mind-body problem (how do mind and body
interact?) and the problem of other minds (how can we know other minds exist if they
are private?).

 Misrepresents mental life: The doctrine creates a misleading image of mental life as a
secret, internal theatre where a person's mind "watches" their own thoughts, rather than
as a set of abilities, skills, and behaviors.

 Overlooks the role of skill: It fails to account for "knowing-how" (e.g., being a good
chess player) and instead frames it as a hidden "knowledge-that" (knowing a secret set
of chess rules).

Gilbert Ryle, in his 1949 work The Concept of Mind, used the term "the official doctrine"
to refer to Cartesian dualism, the influential theory of mind proposed by René
Descartes. He criticized this doctrine as a "category mistake" and a myth he called "the
dogma of the Ghost in the Machine".

The official doctrine (Cartesian dualism)

Ryle summarized the official doctrine as follows:
 Dualism: Every human being is composed of two distinct parts: a physical body and a
non-physical mind. The body is material and exists in space, following the mechanical
laws of physics. The mind, on the other hand, is an immaterial substance that does not
occupy space and is not subject to mechanical laws.

 Separate histories: A person lives out two parallel, independent histories: a public,
physical history of their body and a private, mental history of their mind. The physical
history is observable to external parties, but the mental history is accessible only to the
individual.

 The "ghost in the machine": During a person's life, the mind and body are "harnessed
together" and interact with one another. After the body dies, the mind (the "ghost") may
continue to exist.

 Privileged access: The individual has direct, infallible knowledge of their own mind
through a process called introspection. Knowledge of other minds, however, can only be
gained indirectly by inferring a mental life from their observable physical behavior.

Ryle's drawbacks of the official doctrine

Ryle argued that the official doctrine was not a collection of small errors, but one "big
mistake" based on an improper use of language, which he called a "category mistake".
He identified the following drawbacks:

The problem of the category mistake

This is Ryle's central argument. A category mistake happens when a concept is treated
as if it belongs to one logical category when it actually belongs to another.

 The university example: Ryle offers an analogy of a foreigner visiting Oxford. After
being shown the colleges, libraries, and administrative buildings, the foreigner asks,
"But where is the University?" The mistake is thinking that "the University" is another
building in the same category as the others, rather than the collective organization of all
the parts.

 Applying the analogy to the mind: Ryle argues that dualists make a similar error.
They correctly observe that a person has a body and exhibits behavior, and they
correctly observe that mental phenomena exist. However, they mistakenly assume that
the mind must be another thing—a hidden, non-physical substance—rather than
 understanding that "mind" is a concept that refers to the organized system of a person's
abilities, behaviors, and dispositions.

The mystery of mind-body interaction

The official doctrine fails to explain how a non-physical mind and a physical body can
possibly interact.

 The mind is described as a non-spatial, non-mechanical entity, yet it is supposed to be

able to cause physical movements in the body (e.g., willing your arm to move) and be
affected by physical processes (e.g., how the eyes and ears affect what the mind
perceives).

 Ryle points out that the very idea of a causal transaction between two such
fundamentally different kinds of existence is nonsensical. It creates an insoluble
problem that "can be inspected neither by introspection nor by laboratory experiment".

The problem of other minds

The official doctrine's claim of privileged access leads to skepticism about the existence
of other minds.

 If mental life is a private, internal history, then you can never have direct knowledge of
another person's consciousness. You can only infer that they have a mind based on
their behavior, which is analogous to your own.

 This reasoning provides no way to be certain that anyone else truly has a mind, or isn't
just an automaton. Ryle argues that this tortured and artificial reasoning is at odds with
our everyday experience, where we have a direct and practical understanding of other
people's minds through their observable behavior.

The problem of infinite regress

Ryle also criticized the idea that intelligent actions are caused by a series of prior
intellectual acts. He used a regress argument: if every intelligent act needed a prior
intelligent act to cause it, this would lead to an infinite chain of acts. Ryle distinguished
"knowing that" from "knowing how," suggesting intelligent performance is about
demonstrating a skill ("knowing how") through behavior rather than being caused by
internal intellectual acts
 A category mistake is a semantic or ontological error where something is wrongly
placed in a different category, or a property is ascribed to it that it cannot possibly have.
For example, asking "How much does the color red weigh?" is a category mistake
because weight is a property of physical objects, not of colors. Another common
example is to treat the university as a single physical building alongside colleges, when
it is actually the way those buildings are arranged.

Characteristics of a category mistake

 Incorrect placement: An item is placed in a group it doesn't belong to, such as
mistaking a computer mouse for a rodent.

 Ascribing the wrong properties: A property is attributed to something that is not

capable of having that property, such as a research program being "falsified" when only
theories can be falsified.

 Misunderstanding concepts: It can arise from a misunderstanding of how concepts

are related, as seen in the visitor who, after seeing all the colleges, asks where the
university is.

 Logical fallacy: Category mistakes can be used rhetorically to create a fallacy, as seen
in attempts to reframe certain actions within the wrong conceptual framework, according
to some analyses.

Examples
 Color and weight: Asking "How much does the color blue weigh?" is a category
mistake because "weight" and "color" belong to different categories and "blue" is not a
physical object with weight.

 The university: A visitor who sees the buildings of a university but asks "Where is the
university?" is making a category mistake by assuming the university is a physical
building, not the institution and the coordinated network of buildings itself.

 Mind and body: Philosopher Gilbert Ryle argued that Descartes' concept of the mind
as a separate, non-physical substance is a category mistake, suggesting the mind is not
a different "thing" from the body but a different way of conceptualizing physical and
behavioral processes.
 A categorical mistake, or category error, is a logical and semantic error in which a
person incorrectly treats an abstract concept as if it belonged to a different logical type
or category. The concept was popularized by philosopher Gilbert Ryle in his 1949
book, The Concept of Mind.

It occurs when a person applies properties to a concept that it cannot logically have.
Ryle's core argument was that many philosophical problems arise from this kind of
confusion.

Classic examples from Gilbert Ryle

 The University tour: A visitor to Oxford is shown the various colleges, libraries, and
administrative buildings. At the end of the tour, the visitor asks, "But where is the
University?" The mistake is in thinking that "the University" is another physical building,
rather than the institution that encompasses the components they have already seen.

 The Army Division: A foreign visitor watches a military parade, with battalions,
batteries, and squadrons marching past. They then ask, "When is the division going to
appear?" The visitor fails to understand that the "division" is the organizational structure
of the parts, not another part to be seen.

 Team spirit in cricket: Someone unfamiliar with cricket watches a game and has the
roles of the batsmen, bowlers, and fielders explained. Afterward, they ask, "Who is left
to contribute the famous element of team-spirit?" They wrongly believe "team spirit" is a
distinct role, like bowling or batting, rather than a way of describing the entire team's
performance.

Philosophical applications
Ryle introduced the idea of a category mistake to attack Cartesian dualism, the theory
that the mind and body are two distinct substances. Ryle referred to this as the "ghost in
the machine".

Ryle's argument against dualism states that:

 Ascriptions to the mind: Descartes treats the mind as if it were a physical object with
a non-physical substance. This leads to nonsensical questions, like asking for the
mind's weight, size, or location.
 The proper category: The mind is not a "thing" or an "object" in the same category as
the body. Instead, it is the collection of an individual's behaviors, thoughts, and
dispositions. It is a mistake to apply physical predicates to this collection of capacities.

Other examples of category mistakes

 Attributing a color to a number: Asking "How much does the color red weigh?" or
stating "The number two is blue" is a category mistake, as numbers and colors belong
to fundamentally different logical categories.

 Mixing science and morality: A category error is made by assuming that science can
answer moral or ethical questions. Science explains what is (facts), while ethics deals
with what ought to be (values).

 Equating correlation and causation: Concluding that one event caused another
simply because they are correlated is a category mistake. Correlation is a statistical
measure, while causation describes a direct cause-effect relationship.