Machine in the Ghost

René Descartes was one of the first to connect the mind with consciousness/self-awareness and separate it from the brain and the Seat of Intelligence. The result of this is the ancient idea of the mind/body dualism.

The Ghost in the Machine was coined by British philosopher Gilbert Ryle as a derogatory description of Descartes' mind/body dualism. By this he meant that the means of interaction between mental activity and physical action is unknown. In other words the workings of the mind (ghost) is not an independent mechanism, which governs the workings of the body (machine).

In a speech by Noam Chomsky called “Linguistics & Philosophy” he points this out:

“…it’s common these days, in philosophy and elsewhere, to deride theories of the mind as being a ghost in a machine and we got to exorcise the ghost, but what’s forgotten is that Newton exorcised the machine. So he left the ghost untouched he had nothing to say about the theory of the mind…”

So where am I going with all this? Well we got to exorcise the Machine in the Ghost. We got to rise out of the concept of a material existence and a material (machine-like) force that governs our thoughts and actions and begin believing in the Ghost.

Yes, in the spirit and immaterial that we can’t see but is there just as gravity. The body has to be cast out of the mind, because like a tomb that traps a soul, so does the body trap our possible evolution.

© deviadah