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Courses of Action or the Uncatchableness of Mental Acts

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2000

Gilbert Ryle
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Abstract

We falter and stammer when trying to describe our own mental acts. Many mental acts, including thinking, are what the author calls ‘chain-undertakings’, that is, courses of action with some over-arching purpose governing the moment-by-moment sub-acts of which we are introspectively aware. Hence the intermittency and sporadicness of the passage of mental activity which constitutes thinking about something.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy , Volume 75 , Issue 3 , July 2000 , pp. 331 - 344
Copyright
© The Royal Institute of Philosophy 2000

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