Ghost in the Machine: Is there a soul?

[Mr P]

Gilbert Ryle coined the phrase ghost in the machine in his book Concept of Mind as a derogatory term to describe dualism. The book was written in 1949 yet it's only now that his ideas are gaining prominence, mainly thanks to the likes of Dan Dennett and advances in neuro science supporting many of his ideas.

As Dennett says in his introduction to the new edition "it's one of the most underrated works of philosophy of the 20th century".

I believe the phrase actually comes from ancient Greece, deus ex machina, it was literally a machine, a crane that would lower people dressed as gods on to a stage during a play for the purpose of narration.

Unless you mean that Gilbert Ryle was the first to use it in the sense of the idea of a soul that controls a meat puppet?

Ryle was the first to use ghost in the machine in that sense, deus ex machina is used more as literary term (based on its Greek origin) for an unseen plot device that gets the hero out of an impossible scrape.

He opens the book with the following:

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. It will be argued here that the centeral principles of the doctrine are unsound and conflict with the whole body of what we know about minds when we are not speculating about them

Considering when it was written it's stood the test of time well.