Gilbert Ryle’s Criticism of Descartes’ Concept of Consciousness

The crucial concept of the philosophy of mind is consciousness. The problem of consciousness is one of the fundamental problems of humanity. Rene Descartes maintained that consciousness or thinking is the essence of mind or soul. For him, mind is a substance and different from body and it can exist without the body. But Gilbert Ryle criticized Descartes’ concept of consciousness and called it to be a myth. The aim of this paper is to analyze and compare the views of both the philosophers in order to show how far Ryle’s criticism justified against Descartes’ consciousness in western perspective.