CONCEPT
The Inner Theatre
Ryle's target metaphor for the Cartesian picture of mind as a private stage on which mental events are performed for an audience of one — dismantled by the regress of observation it requires.
The inner theatre is the picture of mind that Ryle spent the bulk of The Concept of Mind demolishing: a private stage on which mental events are performed for an internal observer — the self, the ego, the homunculus who watches the show and reports what it sees. On this picture, thinking is a private performance: you entertain propositions on an inner stage, examine them with an inner eye, manipulate them with an inner hand, and arrive at conclusions that you then express in the outer world. The theatre is private (no one else can see your stage), immediate (you have direct access to your own performances), and causally efficacious (events on the stage cause events in the outer world). Ryle's demolition of the theatre is the positive complement to his dissolution of the ghost: the ghost was the audience, and the theatre was where the audience was supposed to be watching.
