Later in the afternoon. You had your appointment and all went well. You
had a late lunch at Smashburgers and began reading Fire and Fury by
Michael Wolff. You are reviewing off-the-cuff as you complete a chapter or two.
This is what you dropped on your Facebook page a few minutes ago. - Amorella
** **
OPINION. I began reading Fire and Fury this
afternoon. I have completed the second chapter. The way it is in the book is
the way it is every day, or so it seems. Nonstop. Round and round and round
Trump and his staffers go, where they stop nobody knows. So far, the book is
worth the read though it is exhausting and depressing. - rho
Today: 1644 hours more or less
** **
You had melted cheese on a bagel and chips for supper, Carol had ham and a cheese of her choice. You watched NBC News then Carol napped while you read another couple chapters of Fire and Fury. Here's your second FB drop in for the day. - Amorella
** **
Chapter
three focusses on how the staffers learned to react to Trump's view of reality.
How to make it a positive spin. In chapter four Bannon works to pare down a
dividing the line between him and Trump and the liberals. How do these things
come about in the real world? People learn to adapt to present their best
advantage. In other words, like in any other line of work, they learn to
survive and eventually, hopefully survive their immediate work environment. Interesting
insight presented by the author/observer in the subtlety growing sense of
surrounding mayhem. Do I the reader want to carry on after chapter four? I'm in
too deep, what choice do I have? Human beings are extremely interesting creatures.
We all are what we choose to do at the moment. All for tonight. Other media diversions
before bed. (1938 hours.) - rho
** **
Post. - Amorella
1943 hours. I am enjoying the exercise. The post writing drills the book's content into me at a personal level. The writing shows me where I am with the book not where the book is with me.
You watched Rachael and the third
episode of "X-Files" tonight. - Amorella
2219 hours. The
"X-Files" had a comment dialogue where Scully says that ghosts are
merely manifestations by left brain residuals or something to that effect. I
wonder why we evolved to develop left brain manifestations simulate or conjure
up ghostly spirits? Why has it been in our best interests to cultivate such
aspects in our cultures? Are we built to believe (in general and specifically) for
reasons of survival? Are we genetically built to believe to help us to cope the
stress sometimes needed to survive. In a similar sense, are we genetically
built to hope? This appears to me to be a major question. (2228)
This, in turn, reminds you of the phrase: ghost in the machine. -
Amorella
** **
Ghost in the machine
From Wikipedia, the free
encyclopedia
This
article is about a philosophical critique.
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 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.
Gilbert Ryle
Gilbert Ryle (1900–76) was a philosopher who lectured at Oxford
and made important contributions to the philosophy of
mind and to "ordinary
language philosophy". His most important writings include Philosophical Arguments (1945), The Concept of Mind (1949), Dilemmas (1954), Plato's Progress (1966), and On Thinking (1979).
Ryle's The
Concept of Mind (1949) is a
critique of the notion that the mind is distinct
from the body, and a rejection of the theory that mental states are
separable from physical states. In this book Ryle refers to the idea of a
fundamental distinction between mind and matter as "the ghost in the
machine".
According
to Ryle, the classical theory of mind, or "Cartesian
rationalism", 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.
The Concept of Mind
Official doctrine
Ryle states that (as of the time of his writing, in 1949) there
was an "official doctrine,"
which he refers to as a dogma,
of philosophers, the doctrine of body/mind
dualism:
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.... [the doctrine states that] 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.
Ryle states that the central principles of the doctrine are
unsound and conflict with the entire body of what we know about the mind. Of
the doctrine, he says "According to the official doctrine each person has
direct and unchangeable cognisance. [Etymology:
From Anglo-Norman conysance (“recognition,"
later, "knowledge”), from Old French conoissance (“acquaintance,
recognition; knowledge, wisdom”), from conoistre (“to know”),
from Latin cognōscō (“know”), from con (“with”) + gnōscō (“know”).]
In consciousness, self-consciousness and introspection, he is directly and
authentically apprised of the present states of operation of the mind.
Ryle's
estimation of the official doctrine
Ryle's philosophical arguments in his essay "Descartes'
Myth" lay out his notion of the mistaken foundations of mind-body dualism
conceptions, comprising a suggestion that to speak of mind and body as a
substance, as a dualist does, is to commit a category mistake. Ryle writes:
Such in outline is the official theory. I shall often speak of
it, with deliberate abusiveness, as "the dogma of the Ghost in the
Machine." I hope to prove that it is entirely false, and false not in
detail but in principle. It is not merely an assemblage of particular mistakes.
It is one big mistake and a mistake of a special kind. It is, namely, a
category mistake.
Ryle then attempts to show that the "official
doctrine" of mind/body dualism is false by asserting that it confuses two
logical-types, or categories, as being compatible. He states "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."
Arthur Koestler brought Ryle's concept to wider
attention 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 this is 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.
Selected
and edited from Wikipedia
** **
You have read Koestler's book, The Ghost in the Machine and have
also read Beyond Freedom and Dignity by B. F. Skinner which is about
behaviorist theory. - Amorella
2246 hours. I essentially
agree with Skinner.
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