ABSTRACT
In the ’fifties and ’sixties it was common to think of Gilbert Ryle’s work in conjunction with that of the later L. Wittgenstein. His book The Concept of Mind, published in 1949, was so influential that for almost three decades any writing on the philosophy of mind had to begin by a consideration of it. The new conception of logic and logical investigations was thus associated with Wittgenstein’s later work and in consequence Ryle’s work, although quite different in style from Wittgenstein’s, was looked upon as a version of Wittgenstein’s later views. The chapter argues that this idea of homogeneity of view but heterogeneity of style was an illusion. The turning point in Ryle’s philosophical development was when, as he himself put it in the autobiographical introduction he wrote for a collection of essays on his work, he went ‘all Cambridge’.
