Ryle's regress Guide, Meaning , Facts, Information and Description
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 set out to explain. The philosopher Gilbert Ryle (1949) was concerned with what he called the intellectualist legend, which required intelligent acts to be the product of the conscious application of mental rules. Ryle argued (in The Concept of Mind) that the intellectualist legend results in an infinite regress of thought:"According to the legend, whenever an agent does anything intelligently, his act is preceded and steered by another internal act of considering a regulative proposition appropriate to his practical problem. [...] Must we then say that for the hero's reflections how to act to be intelligent he must first reflect how best to reflect how to act? The endlessness of this implied regress shows that the aplication of the appropriateness does not entail the occurrence of a process of considering this criterion."
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 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? Clearly it must be preceded by another cognitive action, which must in turn must be preceded by another and so on, in an infinite regress.
Cognitive scientists must be constantly aware of Ryle's Regress as a potential problem with their theories, and must ensure that their theories include a principled account of how the (potentially) infinite regress that emerges from functional analysis can be stopped.
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