Christofidou, A. (2018) Descartes’ Dualism versus Behaviourism. Behavior and Philosophy, 46, 63-99.
[Abstract]My analysis straddles Descartes’ metaphysics and some parts of contemporary philosophy, especially regarding consciousness, and aims to show that once our understanding is freed from philosophical habits that affect current debates, Descartes’ views offer an opportunity to draw important insights. Primarily, I examine Descartes’ mind-body dualism and contrast it with behaviourism, particularly with philosophical behaviourism, focusing on Gilbert Ryle’s dispositional behaviourism and his attacks on Descartes’ dualism. The discussion takes the form of Objections and Replies, presenting the two thinkers in some sort of dialogue with one another. This brings out clearly who is distorting our ordinary language, violating the logical geography of concepts, committing a category mistake, and systematically misleading us. Ryle’s two well-known accusations – the category mistake, and the dogma of the ghost in the machine – are turned, by a reductio ad absurdum, against his own commitments, leading to an evaluation of his highly paradoxical view, and showing how it collapses in on itself. The closing parts touch upon, but do not pursue, some fundamental concerns about personhood and the self, the metaphysics of mind, freedom, and moral significance, and raise the question of what our deepest concerns and responsibility in the twenty-first century must be.
[Citing Place (1999a)]  
Citing Place (1999a) in context (citations start with an asterisk *):
Section Ryle’s polemic against Descartes’ Dualism
Subsection Category Mistake
* Footnote 26: Place (1999 — himself a mind-body identity theorist regarding certain mental processes, such as sensations, and a behaviourist regarding propositional attitudes, such as beliefs) thought that Ryle’s work had not been more influential because of Ryle’s “failure to sharpen up the notion of category mistake.” (p. 371). If only that had been Ryle’s sole failure!