Finding a Gem in the History of Analytic Philosophy

Presentation by Cheryl Misak (University of Toronto, Philosophy), a 6-month JHI Faculty Research Fellow in 2021-22. Part of our JHI Alumni Research Lecture Series.

Cheryl Misak spent her JHI leave in the archives in Oxford, where she discovered that Gilbert Ryle’s famous book The Concept of Mind (1949) owes much (to say the least!) to the unacknowledged and now-forgotten Margaret MacDonald. In this brief talk, and the book that will result from her JHI fellowship, Misak argues Ryle’s ideas that laws are inference tickets (or rules with which we meet the future), and that there is an important distinction between knowledge that and knowing how to do something, should be considered parts of the pragmatist tradition.