Gilbert Ryle - Wikipedia - Philosophy as cartography
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Ryle offers the analogy of philosophy as being like cartography. Competent speakers of a language, Ryle believes, are to a philosopher what ordinary villagers are to a mapmaker. The ordinary villager has a competent grasp of his village, and is familiar with its inhabitants and geography. However, when asked to interpret a map for the same knowledge he has practically, the villager will have difficulty until he is able to translate his practical knowledge into universal cartographal terms. The villager thinks of the village in personal and practical terms while the mapmaker thinks of the village in neutral, public, cartographical terms.
By “mapping” the words and phrases of a particular statement, philosophers are able to generate what Ryle calls “implication threads.” In other words, each word or phrase of a statement contributes to the statement in that, if the words or phrases were changed, the statement would have a different implication. The philosopher must show the directions and limits of different implication threads that a “concept contributes to the statements in which it occurs.” To show this, he must be “tugging” at neighbouring threads, which, in turn, must also be “tugging.” Philosophy, then, searches for the meaning of these implication threads in the statements in which they are used.
