A fine summation of the position which Ryle was defeating is the famous statement by Ralph Waldo Emerson that, "The ancestor of every action is a thought.
"[1] In sharp contrast to such assertions, which rule out any other possible parentage to actions by the use of the word "every," Ryle argued in The Concept of Mind (1949) that the intellectualist legend results in an infinite regress of thought: Variants of Ryle's regress are commonly aimed at cognitivist theories.
For instance, in order to explain the behavior of rats, Edward Tolman suggested that the rats were constructing a "cognitive map" that helped them locate reinforcers, and he used intentional terms (e.g., expectancies, purposes, meanings) to describe their behavior.
[citation needed] This led to a famous attack on Tolman's work by Edwin R. Guthrie who pointed out that if one was implying that every action must be preceded by a cognitive 'action' (a 'thought' or 'schema' or 'script' or whatever), then what 'causes' this act?
"[3] In essence, Kant is saying that Reason is outside of the causative elements of the natural world and as such is not subject to the law of cause and effect.