ABSTRACT
Although Gilbert Ryle's philosophical behaviourism no longer receives as much attention as it once did, it nevertheless remains one of the most radical attacks on the concept of the inner process that any philosopher has produced. Like some Wittgensteinians, Ryle assumes that conceptions of mental privacy, introspection, self-knowledge and inner process are bound to be objectionable because they are essentially dualistic, Cartesian notions. Having read Descartes as a self-conscious introspectionist, and having assumed that Descartes' system is based on a theory of self-knowledge, Ryle then proceeds to deny that self-knowledge can be characterized in terms of any kind of privileged access to the contents of consciousness, either by means of introspection or some kind of immediate self-awareness. In his conception of language, and despite his credentials as a logical or philosophical behaviourist, Ryle finds himself behind the banner of those scientific behaviourists who thrive on making extrapolations from animal to human behaviour.
