Doubting the Doubt:An Analysis of the Internal Tensions of Cartesian Substance Dualism

Ryle’s Attack on Cartesian Substance Dualism
Through his influential essay “Descartes’ Myth” from The Concept of Mind, Gilbert Ryle transformed Cartesian substance dualism from a major force in philosophy of mind to almost an historical footnote. Ryle’s essay did not so much offer a thorough critique of Cartesian premises and methodology as simply paint a convincing—and rather ugly—portrait of substance dualism as “the dogma of the Ghost in the Machine” (Ryle 2002, 34). According to this dogma, a human being lives a “double life” in which the human mind is a separate “complex organised unit” from the body, composed of “a different sort of stuff with a different sort of structure” and subject to a different sort of causality than that body (Ryle 2002, 35-6). According to Ryle, such is the unpalatable and unscientific view Cartesian substance dualism offers us.
Despite the wide influence of this attack on substance dualism, Ryle’s significant philosoph...