Talk:Ghost in the machine

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[edit] "The Official Doctrine"

What is this doctrine? The article doesn't say who's doctrine this is, or even what it's about. As written, this article seems to imply that there is only one official doctrine in the universe of all doctrines that can exist for all topics. This simply isn't true given that there are multiple groups and multiple topics, each of which could have their own "official doctrine."

Also, what is this quote from? The whole article needs to be rewritten. 24.5.146.221 (talk) 03:03, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

[NOTE: a lot of these words are direct quotations from Gilbert Ryle's Ghost in the Machine, and few are ideas take from other people - either anonymus or not] Should these things then be moved to Wikiquote instead?

This page describes Ryle's criticisms of 'Ghost in the Machine', but it does not actually describe the theory he is criticizing. WhiteC 02:28, 9 August 2005 (UTC)
The anonymous original contributor confused the issue by thinking that Ryle wrote the book The Ghost in the Machine, when he instead originated the phrase (which itself refers to Descarte's theory). It was Arthur Koestler who wrote the book of that title which discusses Ryle's concept. It is not clear to me that the material that the editor entered consisted of direct quotations. If they had been, he should have known who wrote the book. There is already quite a bit of material in Wikipedia on Decartes' mind-body problem, so it should not have to be detailed here, just linked. I think for now Ryle's concept should have its own page. But we may end up wanting to merge this article with The Ghost in the Machine which is about Koestler's book, as long as Ryle and Koestler are clearly distinguished. --Blainster 10:09, 9 August 2005 (UTC)
There was a recent article in the New York Times on parasites ability to direct the behavior of hosts [1] that led me to this article. I agree with WhiteC. Before we get critical about the theory, it might be nice to define it and discuss what the theory is attempting to explain in the natural world. (So whatever it is, I'm against it...) patsw 02:21, 7 September 2005 (UTC)
Splitting this article up and merging any relevant bits of it into the article for Koestler's book seems sensible. Right now, the pages for category mistake and The Concept of Mind have a lot of overlap with this. JordanDeLong 03:17, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] NPOV

This article seems to be rather heavily biased against Descartes. It presents the book's criticisms with finality, and conveys the impression that the philosophical community has embraced them and forgotten all about the mind/body problem. I will refrain from attempting any edits since I know virtually nothing about philosophy.

[edit] computers

shouldn't there be some mention of terms use with regards to AI and software development?

No. No one in the AI research community really take those ideas seriously. "Ghosts in The Machine" tend to be just a literary allusion, that are only very tenuously connected to the original philosophical idea. 24.5.146.221 (talk) 02:59, 9 March 2008 (UTC)