Wittgenstein lectures, Cambridge 1930-32 : from the notes of John King and Desmond Lee
- Oxford Basil Black well 1980
- 124 p.
Babel," is a partly appreciative, but mostly critical, review (reprinted from Philosophy) of Vendler's Res Cogitans. Perhaps the most dated feature of these discussions is their total in- nocence of the possibilities of computational functionalism as a sophis- ticated philosophy of mind. Ryle rejects,-contemptuously and without serious discussion, the suggestion that "the best thinkers in their best moments are doing in their heads the sort of things that computing machines do... " (52). And his only consideration of mental representa- tion, an exciting topic in very recent philosophy of psychology, comes in his dismissive treatment of (alleged) introspectibles. Here is a nostalgia trip for Ryle's old admirers and an enticing sampler for readers as yet unacquainted with Ryle's engagingly de- flationary way of doing philosophy. But it is not a ground-breaking work; it does not really advance our understanding of thinking much beyond the stage of enlightenment that his earlier writings helped us to attain.