Arguing that the mind does not exist and therefore can’t be the seat of self, Ryle believed that self comes from behavior. We’re all just a bundle of behaviors caused by the physical workings of the body.

Dualism is the theory that reality or existence is divided into two parts. With his ties to dualism, Descartes believed the mind is the seat of our consciousness. Because it houses our drives, intellect, and passions, it gives us our identity and our sense of self.

Moving on to Gilbert Ryle, “The self is the way people behave”. The self is basically our behavior. This concept provided the philosophical principle, “I act therefore I am”. In short, the self is the same as bodily behavior.

According to Ryle’s original description, ‘a category-mistake […] represents the facts […] as if they belonged to one logical type or category (or range of types or categories), when they actually belong to another’.

Gilbert Ryle (1900–1976) was a British philosopher, principally known for his critique of Cartesian dualism, for which he coined the phrase “ghost in the machine.” He was a representative of the generation of British ordinary language philosophers who shared Ludwig Wittgenstein’s approach to philosophical problems.

He goes on to argue that the Cartesian dualism of mind and body rests on a category mistake. By using the argument, one can attack the existence of a separate, distinct mind. The argument concludes that minds are not conscious, but a collective predicate for a set of observable behaviour and unobservable dispositions.

Ryle rejects Descartes’ theory of the relation between mind and body, on the grounds that it approaches the investigation of mental processes as if they could be isolated from physical processes.

In The Concept of Mind (1949), Ryle argued that the traditional conception of the human mind—that it is an invisible ghostlike entity occupying a physical body—is based on what he called a “category mistake.” The mistake is to interpret the term mind as though it were…

The official doctrine falls into a category mistake: It represents the facts of mental life as if they belonged to one logical type or category (or range or types of category), when they actually belong to another.

Originally Answered: According to Ryle, what is self? Gilbert Ryle (1970 – 197) was a a British philosopher who opposed the Cartesian dualism of mind versus matter. He coined the phrase “the ghost in the machine”.

Dualism is closely associated with the thought of René Descartes (1641), which holds that the mind is a nonphysical—and therefore, non-spatial—substance. Hence, he was the first to formulate the mind–body problem in the form in which it exists today. Dualism is contrasted with various kinds of monism.

In short we have ‘minds’. Typically humans are characterized as having both a mind (nonphysical) and body/brain (physical). This is known as dualism. Dualism is the view that the mind and body both exist as separate entities.

As Sherlock Holmes famously said: “Once we have ruled out the impossible, what remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.” Given the deep problems that plague both dualism and materialism, panpsychism looks to me to be the best solution to the mind-body problem.