Ghost in the machine

This article is about a philosophical critique. For other uses, see Ghost in the machine (disambiguation).

The "ghost in the machine" is the 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.

Much of the following material is from Arthur Koestler's discussion in his 1967 book The Ghost in the Machine, which takes Ryle's phrase as its title. The book's main focus is mankind's movement towards self-destruction, particularly in the nuclear arms arena. It is particularly critical of B. F. Skinner's behaviourist theory. One of the book's central concepts is that as the human brain has grown, it has built upon earlier, more primitive brain structures, and that these are the "ghost in the machine" of the title. Koestler's theory is that at times these structures can overpower higher logical functions, and are responsible for hate, anger and other such destructive impulses.

Official doctrine

There is a doctrine about the nature and place of the mind which is prevalent among theorists, to which most philosophers, psychologists and religious teachers subscribe with minor reservations. Although they admit certain theoretical difficulties in it, they tend to assume that these can be overcome without serious modifications being made to the architecture of the theory." Ryle believes that the central principles of the doctrine are unsound and conflict with the entire body of what we know about the mind. "With the doubtful exceptions of the mentally-incompetent and infants-in-arms, every human being has both a body and a mind. ... The body and the mind are ordinarily harnessed together, but after the death of the body the mind may continue to exist and function."

—^[1] According to the official doctrine each person has direct and unchangeable cognisance. In consciousness, self-consciousness and introspection, he is directly and authentically apprised of the present states of operation of the mind.^[2]

Private and public histories

Bodily processes and states can be inspected by external observations. Thus a person's bodily life is as much a public affair as are the lives of animals. But minds do not exist in space, nor are their operation subject to mechanical laws. The workings of the mind are not witnessable by other observers; its career is private. A person therefore lives through two collateral histories: one consisting of what happens to and with the body (public); the other consisting of what happens to and in the mind (private). However, the problem with this theory is that in order for this to happen there would have to be a division in reality where the mind is not governed by mechanical laws. This creates a dichotomy as reality can not be divided and nothing can exist outside of reality.

Ryle's estimation of the official doctrine

Ryle's philosophical arguments in his essay^[3] largely consist of the suggestion that to speak of mind and body as a substance, as a dualist does, is to commit a Category-mistake. Ryle attempts to prove that the official doctrine is entirely false, not in detail but in principle, by asserting that it arises out of incorrectly confusing two logical-types, or categories, as being compatible; it represents the facts of mental life as if they belonged to one logical type/category, when they actually belong to another. The dogma is therefore a philosopher's myth.

Category mistakes

Category mistakes such as the ones Ryle makes note of are made by people who do not know how to properly wield the concepts with which they are working. Their puzzles arise from the inability to use certain items in human language. The theoretically interesting category mistakes are those made by people who are perfectly competent to apply concepts, at least in the situations with which they are familiar, but are still liable in their abstract thinking to relocate those concepts to logical types to which they do not belong.^{[citation needed]}

One paradigm set forth by Ryle that acts as an exemplary of an archetypal category mistake, is that of a foreign student visiting a university. As the student is shown the various campuses, buildings, libraries, fields, et cetera, the student asks, "But where is the university?" This is to equate the level of existence of the university with that of buildings, libraries, and campuses. However, the being of the university exists above such a level, as an encompassing whole or essence of such things, extending beyond mere plants and buildings (to include staff, students, curricula, etc.), and not among them (i.e., on the same categorical level).

The dualist doctrine establishes a polar opposition between mind and body. At the language level, the mental properties are logical negations (in the Aristotelian sense) of the physical properties. So they belong, in accordance with the concept of category, to the same logical types, given that the expressions that are used for the descriptions of mental events are always mere negatives of the expressions used for the descriptions of material events. Ryle then says that such use implies a 'categorical mistake' for the descriptions of mental events that do not properly belong to the categories used for describing the corporeal events. Hence, 'mind' and 'matter' cannot be the polar opposites that Dualism suggests. Ryle writes that this would be comparable to claiming that "She came home in floods of tears" and "She came home in a sedan chair" (from the sentence "Miss Bolo came home in a flood of tears and a sedan chair", a zeugmatic sentence from Dickens) to be polar opposites. Such mistakes turned out to be, from the Rylean standpoint, the dogma of the mental ghost in the corporeal machine. Then, dualist doctrines are mythic in an analytical sense.^{[citation needed]}

Gilbert Ryle (1900–76) was a philosopher who taught at Oxford and who made important contributions to the philosophy of mind and to "ordinary language philosophy". His most important writings included Philosophical Arguments (1945), The Concept of Mind (1949), Dilemmas (1954), Plato's Progress (1966), and On Thinking (1979).

The Concept of Mind (1949) is a critique of the notion that the mind is distinct from the body, and it is a rejection of the theory that mental states are separable from physical states. According to Ryle, the classical theory of mind, as represented by Cartesian rationalism, asserts that there is a basic distinction between mind and matter. However, the classical theory makes a basic "category-mistake", because it attempts to analyze the relation between "mind" and "body" as if they were terms of the same logical category. This confusion of logical categories may be seen in other theories of the relation between mind and matter. For example, the idealist theory of mind makes a basic category-mistake by attempting to reduce physical reality to the same status as mental reality, while the materialist theory of mind makes a basic category-mistake by attempting to reduce mental reality to the same status as physical reality.^{[citation needed]}

Ryle rejects Descartes' theory of the relation between mind and body, on the grounds that it approaches the investigation of mental processes as if they could be isolated from physical processes. In order to demonstrate how this theory may be misleading, he explains that knowing how to perform an act skillfully may not only be a matter of being able to reason practically but may also be a matter of being able to put practical reasoning into action. Practical actions may not necessarily be produced by highly theoretical reasoning or by complex sequences of intellectual operations. The meaning of actions may not be explained by making inferences about hidden mental processes, but it may be explained by examining the rules that govern those actions.^{[citation needed]}

According to Ryle, mental processes are merely intelligent acts.1 There are no mental processes that are distinct from intelligent acts. The operations of the mind are not merely represented by intelligent acts, they are the same as those intelligent acts. Thus, acts of learning, remembering, imagining, knowing, or willing are not merely clues to hidden mental processes or to complex sequences of intellectual operations, they are the way in which those mental processes or intellectual operations are defined. Logical propositions are not merely clues to modes of reasoning, they are those modes of reasoning.^{[citation needed]}

The rationalist theory that the will is a faculty within the mind and that volitions are mental processes which the human body transforms into physical acts is therefore a misconception. This theory mistakenly assumes that mental acts are distinct from physical acts and that there is a mental world which is distinct from the physical world. This theory of the separability of mind and body is described by Ryle as "the dogma of the ghost in the machine".2 He explains that there is no hidden entity called "the mind" inside a mechanical apparatus called "the body". The workings of the mind are not an independent mechanism which governs the workings of the body. The workings of the mind are not distinct from the actions of the body and may be better conceptualized as a way of explaining the actions of the body.^{[citation needed]}

Cartesian theory holds that mental acts determine physical acts and that volitional acts of the body must be caused by volitional acts of the mind. This theory is "the myth of the ghost in the machine".3

There is no contradiction between saying that an action is governed by physical laws and saying that the same action is governed by principles of reasoning. The motives of observable actions are not hidden mental processes; they are propensities or dispositions that explain why these behaviors occur. For example, the disposition to want or not to want something is not explained by an intellectual act of wanting or not wanting that thing. The disposition to want something is explained by the behaviors that are involved in wanting that thing. Thus, the mind consists of various abilities or dispositions that explain such behaviors as learning, remembering, knowing, feeling, or willing. However, personal abilities or dispositions are not the same as mental processes or events. To refer to abilities or dispositions as if they were mental occurrences is to make a basic kind of category-mistake.^{[citation needed]}

The nature of a person's motives may be defined by the actions and reactions of that person in various circumstances or situations. The nature of a person's motives in a particular situation may not necessarily be determined by any hidden mental processes or intellectual acts within that person. Motives may be revealed or explained by a person's behavior in a situation.^{[citation needed]}

Ryle criticizes the theory that the mind is a place where mental images are apprehended, perceived, or remembered. Sensations, thoughts, and feelings do not belong to a mental world which is distinct from the physical world. Knowledge, memory, imagination, and other abilities or dispositions do not reside "within" the mind as if the mind were a space in which these dispositions could be placed or located. Furthermore, dispositions are not the same as behavioral actions, but actions may be explained by dispositions.^{[citation needed]}

Dispositions are neither visible nor hidden, because they are not in the same logical category as behavioral actions. Dispositions are not mental processes or intellectual acts, they are propensities which explain various modes of behavior. Perceptions, thoughts, emotions, and feelings may be understood as observable behaviors which have various modes of production.^{[citation needed]}

Ryle admits that his approach to the theory of mind is behavioristic in being opposed to the theory that there are hidden mental processes that are distinct from observable behaviors. His approach is based on the view that actions such as thinking, remembering, feeling, and willing are revealed by modes of behavior or by dispositions to modes of behavior. At the same time, however, he criticizes both Cartesian theory and behaviorist theory for being overly mechanistic. While Cartesian theory may insist that hidden mental events produce the behavioral responses of the conscious individual, behaviorism may insist that stimulus-response mechanisms produce the behavioral responses of the conscious individual. Ryle concludes that both Cartesian theory and behaviorist theory may be too rigid and mechanistic to provide us with an adequate understanding of the concept of mind.^{[citation needed]}

See also

• Cognitive revolution
• Dualism (philosophy of mind)
• Ghost in the Shell (philosophy)

Notes

1. ^ Ryle Gilbert The Concept of Mind The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2002, p 11
2. ^ John Cottingham Western philosophy: an anthology Google Books Link
3. ^ See "Descartes' Myth". This is the central article in which Ryle lays out his notion of the mistaken foundations of mind-body dualism conceptions (i.e. "The Ghost in the Machine" doctrines).

References

• Koestler, Arthur (1990-06-05) [1967]. The Ghost in the Machine (1990 reprint edition ed.). Penguin Group. ISBN 0-14-019192-5. 
• Ryle, Gilbert (2000-12-15) [1949]. "Descartes' Myth". The Concept of Mind (New Univer edition ed.). University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0-226-73296-7.