Mental Copies

Abstract

“The language of originals and copies,” writes Gilbert Ryle in The Concept of Mind, “does not apply to smells.”¹ Nor, according to Professor Ryle, does it apply to tastes and feelings. “It makes no sense,” he says, “to apply words like ‘copy,’ ‘likeness’ and ‘dummy’ to smells, tastes and feelings” (p. 253). Ryle thinks this is important for the following reason. When a philosopher says that to imagine² a face or a sound is to perceive an internal picture of the face, or an internal echo of the sound, what he says makes sense only because we already know what pictures of faces and echoes of sounds are. But since the language of copies and originals does not apply to smells, tastes, and feelings, none of us, not even the philosopher among us, is tempted to try a similar explanation of imagining smells, tastes, and feelings.