- Gilbert Ryle in his book The Concept of Mind talks about “the ghost in the machine” where the mind/soul is like a ghost inhabiting the machine that is the body, he effectively stigmatised the mind into that form.
- Ryle was well known for his criticism of what he called the “official doctrine” of “Cartesian Dualism” as a theory of mind. (Descartes argued that the body is spatial and exists in space but is non-conscious while the mind is conscious but non-spatial)
“The Newtonian system is no longer the sole paradigm of natural science. Man need not be degraded to a machine by being denied to be a ghost in a machine. He might, after all, be a sort of animal, namely, a higher mammal. There has yet to be ventured the hazardous leap to the hypothesis that perhaps he is a man.” (Ryle)
- The Mind-Body problem is how a non-material mental substance can causally influence the material body. Ryle is somewhat influenced by Ludwig Wittgenstein, who thought many philosophical problems were caused by misuse of language, Ryle said that the categorical mistake was applying properties to a non-material thing that is logically and grammatically appropriate.