Ryle's Regress

In philosophy, Ryle's regress is a classic argument against cognitivist theories, and concludes that such theories are essentially meaningless as they do not explain what they purport to.

The philosopher Gilbert Ryle was concerned with what he called the intellectualist legend (also known as the "Dogma of the ghost in the machine," the "Two-Lives Legend," the "Two-Worlds Story," or the "Double-Life Legend") which requires intelligent acts to be the product of the conscious application of mental rules. In other words Ryle was attempting to combat Cartesian dualism.

A fine summation of the position which Ryle is combating is the famous statement by Ralph Waldo Emerson that, "The ancestor of every action is a thought." In sharp contrast to such assertions, which rule out any other possible parentage to actions by the use of the word "every," Ryle argued in The Concept of Mind (1949) that the intellectualist legend results in an infinite regress of thought:

Variants of Ryle's regress are commonly aimed at cognitivist theories. For instance, in order to explain the behavior of rats, Edward Tolman suggested that the rats were constructing a "cognitive map" that helped them locate reinforcers, and he used intentional terms (e.g., expectancies, purposes, meanings) to describe their behavior. This led to a famous attack on Tolman's work by Edwin R. Guthrie who pointed out that if one was implying that every action must be preceded by a cognitive 'action' (a 'thought' or 'schema' or 'script' or whatever), then what 'causes' this act? (a physical feeling perhaps?) Clearly it must be preceded by another cognitive action, which must in turn be preceded by another and so on, in an infinite regress (always a sign that something has gone wrong with a theory). Guthrie's key point is that Tolman's explanation, which attempts to explain animal cognition, does not really explain anything at all.

As a further example, we may take note of the following statement from The Concept of Mind:

In light of Ryle's critique, we may translate the statement by Emerson (still very much in common currency) into, "The ancestor of every action is an action." (This is so, since Ryle notes that, "theorizing is one practice amongst others.") - a reminder of Thomas Aquinas. Or we can go even further and argue that, according to Ryle: "The ancestor of every behavior is a behavior".

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