Ryle on hypotheticals

Roger Teichmann

pp. 56-73

in: David Dolby (ed), Ryle on mind and language, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2014

Abstract

In "General Propositions and Causality" (1929), F. P. Ramsey argued that for a large class of general propositions of the form "All Fs are Gs", any such proposition amounts to a sort of rule: "If I meet an F, I shall regard it as a G" (p. 149). ¹ For Ramsey, to express a rule of this sort is the same as expressing or reporting a psychological "habit". That wouldn't rule out genuine disagreement between somebody who uttered the quoted rule and somebody who, for example, uttered the rule "If I meet an F, I shall regard it as a non-G", on account of its being possible for one to be proved right in what he believes (e.g. "This F is a G") and the other wrong. Still, it would arguably be an improvement on Ramsey to infuse proper objectivity into the rule corresponding to "All Fs are Gs' by re-phrasing it more impersonally, as "If one meets an F, one should regard it as a G".

Cited authors

Ryle Gilbert

Ramsey Frank P