kaa1. Early in the 20th century, the anti-idealist movement led by Bertrand Russell and G.E. Moore, among others, was sometimes known as the New Realism, which rejected "naive realism" and "naive materialism" as logically insupportable. Another new realist was Samuel Alexander, author of Space, Time, and Deity (Macmillan 1920, two vols.) who saw himself as allied with Russell. He believed mind to be something that emerges at a certain level of existence. At a higher level yet emerges deity. Whether Alexander's book had any direct influence on Ryle is unclear, though one can accept that many ideas of the "new realists" were still kicking about among Ryle's colleagues at the time Ryle wrote.
In any case, a principal goal of the New Realists was to be rid of the Cartesian mind-body dualism that seems to be implied by a straightforward materialism. Both Alexander and Russell came to regard the Einstein-Minkowski spacetime manifold as fundamental for their philosophical systems, as did A.N. Whitehead. But none of the systems of these men took hold. Ryle, not being a science-oriented fellow, was silent on that matter. Yet it is obvious that Ryle was not writing in a vacuum.
That Ryle was foreshadowed by the New Realism may be sensed in Bernard Bosanquet's critique of that doctrine, The Distinction Between Mind and Its Objects (Manchester 1913). Bosanquet writes, "When you read that a physical thing, a material substance 'is made up of sensa, percepta, and thoughts you have hard work to remember that for the author all these are the objects of the mental acts, not the acts themselves, and are therefore physical realities, and in no way bits of mind."
I believe Bosanquet's cryptic citation refers to Samuel Alexander's piece in the Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society (1909-1910) entitled "On Sensations and Images."
Just to confuse matters, early 20th Century pragmatists were sometimes termed "American new realists." In fact that term was used by Russell, who was branded a "new realist" by some English contemporaries.
In any case, a principal goal of the New Realists was to be rid of the Cartesian mind-body dualism that seems to be implied by a straightforward materialism. Both Alexander and Russell came to regard the Einstein-Minkowski spacetime manifold as fundamental for their philosophical systems, as did A.N. Whitehead. But none of the systems of these men took hold. Ryle, not being a science-oriented fellow, was silent on that matter. Yet it is obvious that Ryle was not writing in a vacuum.
That Ryle was foreshadowed by the New Realism may be sensed in Bernard Bosanquet's critique of that doctrine, The Distinction Between Mind and Its Objects (Manchester 1913). Bosanquet writes, "When you read that a physical thing, a material substance 'is made up of sensa, percepta, and thoughts you have hard work to remember that for the author all these are the objects of the mental acts, not the acts themselves, and are therefore physical realities, and in no way bits of mind."
I believe Bosanquet's cryptic citation refers to Samuel Alexander's piece in the Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society (1909-1910) entitled "On Sensations and Images."
Just to confuse matters, early 20th Century pragmatists were sometimes termed "American new realists." In fact that term was used by Russell, who was branded a "new realist" by some English contemporaries.
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