The "ghost in the machine" is British philosopher Gilbert Ryle's description of René Descartes' mind-body dualism. The phrase was introduced in Ryle's book The Concept of Mind (1949) to highlight the perceived absurdity of dualist systems like Descartes' where mental activity carries on in parallel to physical action, but where their means of interaction are unknown or, at best, speculative.
Read more about Ghost In The Machine: Gilbert Ryle, Arthur Koestler, Popular Culture
Famous quotes containing the words ghost in, ghost and/or machine:
“Man was Cadaver’s masker, the harnessing mantle,
Windily master of man was the rotten fathom,
My ghost in his metal neptune
Forged in man’s mineral.
This was the god of beginning in the intricate seawhirl,
And my images roared and rose on heaven’s hill.”
—Dylan Thomas (1914–1953)
“Man was Cadaver’s masker, the harnessing mantle,
Windily master of man was the rotten fathom,
My ghost in his metal neptune
Forged in man’s mineral.
This was the god of beginning in the intricate seawhirl,
And my images roared and rose on heaven’s hill.”
—Dylan Thomas (1914–1953)
“Psychiatric enlightenment has begun to debunk the superstition that to manage a machine you must become a machine, and that to raise masters of the machine you must mechanize the impulses of childhood.”
—Erik H. Erikson (1904–1994)