The Department of Philosophy of the University of Montreal welcomes Michael Kremer (U. Chicago), for a conference entitled “Animals, Infants and Idiots’: The Exclusion of Intellectual Disability in Gilbert Ryle’s Philosophy of Mind”.

Thursday, February 29, from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m., local 422, 2910 Édouard-Montpetit, Montreal.

Abstract:
“Gilbert Ryle’s project in The Concept of Mind (1949) explains human mindedness in terms of the mesh of capacities and tendencies that constitute the form of a  human life. He thus presents a broadly Aristotelian alternative to the dualism he rejects. However, this philosophy also involves a problem somewhat parallel to that raised for Aristotle’s anthropology by his treatment of “natural slaves.” Ryle specifies the phenomenon he wishes to capture through a contrast with “animals, infants, and idiots,” thus excluding intellectually disabled human beings from the class of beings endowed with minds. I place this exclusion in the historical context of 20th century eugenics discourse (and Ryle family connections to that discourse); discuss ways in which this exclusion affects Ryle’s philosophy of mind; and consider whether a basically Rylean picture of the mind can survive if we purify it of its ableist/eugenic aspects.”