The ghost in the machine means the consciousness or mind carried in a physical entity. Gilbert Ryle coined the term in his 1949 work The Concept of Mind as a criticism of René Descartes. Descartes believed in dualism, the idea that the human mind is not physical, that it exists independently of the human brain. Ryle referred to this idea as the ghost in the machine. He believed that human consciousness and mind are very dependent on the human brain. The term ghost in the machine has come to also describe the supposed consciousness in a device that behaves as if it has a will that is independent of what the human operator wants the device to do. Computer programmers have appropriated the term ghost in the machine to explain when a programs runs contrary to their expectations. The idiom ghost in the machine is a metaphor, which is a comparison that is made figuratively.[1]The term is derogatory It refers to natives trying to explain how a steam locomotive can move without houses. Referring to belief in the soul as "ghost in the machine" is like calling religious people primitive and superstitious.
Gilbert Ryle once ridiculed substance dualism, describing it as the view that we are a “ghost in the machine.” Since that time, substance dualism has found few defenders, and a presumption toward naturalism has dominated philosophical inquiry. Here, I offer an unapologetic defense this unfashionable view of the self.[2]To think as a scientific modern one must hold that we are merely very complex clockwork mice. I could not accept that view even as an atheist. There is no reason to reduce us from the mental creature we know ourselves to be. I have always felt that the researchers really hold out for their own specialness.
Atheists who try to reduce God belief to primitive terms equating belief in a transcendent reality with ghost in the machine;God is the ghost in the machine of the universe. But I counter this with the concept of the transcendental signified; It's not pinned down to a specific understanding but is equated to function not substance. In terms of belief in God this can best be understood through the analogy of mind and use the paradigm of universal mind.
(1) universal mind, offers the best understanding of TS
The reason modern thought is missing the unity (the TS, the nature of the universe, and meaning) is because it leaves out mind as the basis of the ἀρχή; minds organize and communicate meaning, thus modern thought is missing the connecting link between the TS and the nature of things (such as hierarchical organizing). Thomas Nagel in his book Mind and Cosmos (the subtitle: of the book says it-- “...the Materialist Noe-Darwinian Conception of Nature is Almost Certainly False”) argued that mind is the missing dimension with which modern thought refuses to deal, and this is why they can't solve the so called “hard problem.”[3] He did not argue that evolution is wrong but that the reductionist understanding will never unlock the hard problem because they can't admit there's an aspect of the world their methods can't grasp. He says it's not just about brain and mind but that “it invades our understanding of the entire cosmos and its history...a true appreciation of the difficulty of the problem must eventually change our conception of the place of the physical sciences in describing the natural order.”[4] Now this doesn’t prove that turning to introduce mind into the equation proves the solution, but it gives us reason to think that if leaving mind out of the equation is a major part of the problem, then including it is probably part of the best hope we have of solving it.
Even so the single first principle by itself is missing the dimension of mind. It's the dimension of mind that really enables an explanation uniting all the major areas of human being: the physical nature of the universe, the moral, and the existential or the dimension of our being where higher meaning and sheer existence meet. This is the full elucidation of being por soir. Science is wiling to stick with en soir. And that's acceptable because it's purpose is not to explain purpose of our being. That's a job for theology. Science really does not require the God hypothesis because it's function is not to unify these noetoic aspects of being. Being in itself is fine for scientific explanation. But we need more. Mind is the missing dimension because mind gives purpose. Consciousness seeks understanding, If the top of the metaphysical hierarchy is mind it would explain how meaning and moral precept and/or virtue could be part of the fabric of what is.
The
elephant in the room on this premise is the insistence by physicalism
and materialist thinkers that mind is merely brain activity. The
skeptic will argue how can there be mind without a brain? The
brain/mind reductionism has become so all pervasive in
atheist circles any discussion of God or mind on the internet will
result in that argument. There are major researchers who don't go
along with the reductionist view. Raymond Tallis former professior at
University of Manchester, denounces
what he calls “neurohype,” “the claims made on behalf of
neuroscience in areas outside those in which it has any kind of
explanatory power….”[5]
The fundamental assumption is that we are our brains and this, I will argue presently, is not true. But this is not the only reason why neuroscience does not tell us what human beings “really” are: it does not even tell us how the brain works, how bits of the brain work, or (even if you accept the dubious assumption that human living could be parcelled up into a number of discrete functions) which bit of the brain is responsible for which function. The rationale for thinking of the kind – “This bit of the brain houses that bit of us...” – is mind-numbingly simplistic.[6]
Aside
from arguments based
upon neuroscience
there's
an even better reason to discount the reductionists. The nature of
the human mind is not the issue here. We are talking about the
assumption of mind in understanding the TS. The nature of biological
organisms is irrelevant. There is no justification for thinking of
God as a big biological organism. God is not analogous to the most
powerful being. He's
not Zeus he's not superman. He's not really a “He.” “He's”
not even analogous to the laws of physics. “He's” the basis upon
which the laws of physics cohere. At that level we can consider God
as
pure mind or mind itself.
It's not
a mind, it is mind. The source and origin of mind.
The
issue here is not the production of mind but the content. The notion
of meaning necessitates purpose. Meaning is the communicated purpose
involved in an utterance. That requires consciousness, self awareness
and rational purpose.
These
are all qualities of mind. We
can't prove mind behind the universe but
we can show that there is no coherence between the various organizing principles (Op's) if we
assume naturalistic ends. Yet we can understand coherent unity
between Ops, moral precepts, an existential meaning if we assume
mind. If we assume a creating mind is responsible for hierarchical
ordering we can see rationale for organizing, moral motions, and a
purposive existence for humans all cohering in the unity of creative
wisdom and purpose. That would seem to indicate that mind is the best
explanation. Thomas Nagel points out that mind is the missing
dimension that naturalism has left out.[7] Nagel
was scathingly criticized as a creationist (he's an atheist) the man
himself avowed in the work that he sought to make the naturalistic
explanation more complete.[8] A theory of everything has to explain mind and reductionism merely
explains it away. The
point is that without linking purpose to meaning we have a sort of
localized meaning, private truth good for each individual not related
to the whole.
I
came into this world,
I understood nothing, I saw many things what they meant they only
meant
that
to me. No one else knows that meaning, no one
cares nor do I know
what those things mean to others. Soon I will be gone. Those things
that meant something to me will soon cease to mean anything to
anyone. They and I will be forgotten.
That is what we get with a purely naturalistic reading of life. That
is truly meaningless in any final or lasting sense. That sort of
existence is a brute fact only. Some revel in the brute nature of
such facts. But we must ask the question, not out of mere personal
feeling but in spite of it: are these brute facts or deep structures?
If the latter the things we have seen, the lives we live the deaths
we all die are not merely brute facts. They are
deep structures because they have meaning. They have a sort of
meaning that lives on after us and is more than us. Of course a lot
skeptics will say that I merely can't take anonymity. They can't
either. If they can why do we leave things for posterity? Why do we
care about how we leave the earth for future generations? While it
seems that so many reductionists want to be robots and don't care
about meaning if it's true they revel in being meaningless why do
they blog? Why social media? Why are we concerned with what violence
is purported upon others or what bigoted things Presidential
candidates utter? Because meaning is more to us than just a private,
relative, and through away. If that weren’t true we would not have
sought so long for a logos or a TS or a theory of everything.
(2)
Concept of God unites TS with
universal mind, therefore,
offers
best explanation for a view
that is RCM
God is Derrida's Prime example of TS. Nancy Murphy and James McClendon, speaking in the context of Derriodian thought, state, "Without God, who has been the ultimate Transcendent Signified, there is no central perspective, no objective truth of things, no real thing beyond language." [9] Creating, ordering, and sustaining the cosmos and grounding meaning and all reality would require a metaphysical ἀρχή (first principal) with God-like attributes (from the glossary: The eternal and necessary foundational aspect of all being which creates all things and chooses to do so is compatible with the definition of "God" found in any many major world religions, including Christianity ).
God
and Mind
I
am arguing for warranted religious belief, and belief in God in a
general sense, not for any particular tradition, I do have Christian
belief and I am committed to the Christian tradition and to a
relationship with Jesus, but I am bracketing that for now to deal
with the ideas in a more general sense. I
understand God to be universal mind which is not only part of the
basis of Christian mysticism and the orthodox Church but also
reflected in such modern thinkers
as Paul Tillich,[10] John Macquarrie[11], and Hans Urs Von Balthasar.[12] Tillich and others filter it through Heidegger, saying God is being
itself. In History
of Christian Thought Tillich
interprets
Dionysius to say God is the
ground of everything, the
super essential
God beyond
everything,
inclining
Platonic
ideas and essences,
he says Dionysius
thought God is God
beyond
God (Ibid). That ties the
Dionysian concept decisively to Tillich's view.[13]
If
we want a rational view of the universe we need to plug mind
back in to
our understanding. There is a problem in that the imposition of a TS
may be understood
as a contradiction to the Heidegerrian/Tlillichian view that
discussed above.
Notes
'[1]Staff, "Ghost In the machine" Grammarist
[2]Matthew Andrew Skene, Putting the Ghost Back in the Machine: A Defense of Common
Sense Dualism, PDF.Dissertation, Syracuse University (2013)
[3]David
Chalmers “Facing up to the Problem of Consciousness,” On line
resource University of Arizona, URL:
http://consc.net/papers/facing.html
accessed 11/25/16
Chalmer's
concept for for summing up the unresolved aspect of consciousness
studies, a precise understanding of what conciousness actually is a
nd how to understand itat the experioential level, and how it
differed from brain function and what causes it,
[4]Thomas
Nagel, Mind
and Cosmos:Why
the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature is Almost
Certainly False,. Oxfor:
Oxford, London: New York University Press, first edition, 2012,3.
(see
chapter 1). The
reason why a rendition of bran functions is not answer to the hard
problem is because the question demands an understanding from the
inside out,
[5] Raymond Tallis, “Ideas for Godless People” New
Haumanist.org.uk
(blog—online researche) volume 124 Issue 6 (Nov/Dec 2009) URL:
http://newhumanist.org.uk/2172/neurotrash
acessed
5/9/12
[6]Ibid
[7]Thomas
Nagel, Mind and Cosmos:...op cit.,
3.
[8]Ibid.
[9] Nancy Murphy and James McClendon jr." Distinguishing Modern and Postmodern Theologies." Modern Theology, 5:3 April 1989, 211
[10]Paul
Tillich, Systematic Theology volume II, Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1957, 10-11.
[11]John
MacQuarrie Principles
of Christian Theology. New
York:
Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1966.
92,97
[12]Hans
Urs Von Balthasar “A
Resume of my Thought,” in David L. Schindler,Hans
Urs Von Balthasar: His Life and Work.
San Francisco:Ignatious Press, 1991,
3.
[13]Paul
Tillich, A History of Christian thought, New York,
NY:TouchStonme books. 1967, 92
6 comments:
If you believe in the evolutionary theory, you are really saying that God never made man perfect, but is bringing him to perfection. Therefore there is no true sin. But the Bible teaching is that man was made perfect and that he fell from that perfection, with the result that this power, this canker, has entered human nature and is there as an evil force within.
To believe in evolution is to deny a universal paradise before Adam, because evolution necessarily implies that before Adam there was struggle, cruelty and brutality, animals eating animals, and death. Is the world going to be restored to that? If you believe in evolution, you must deny a universal paradise before Adam (because you believe that there was death and struggle millions of years before Adam), and also at the end of time (because the Bible teaches the world will be restored to what it used to be). Thus, evolution not only strikes at the heart and the foundation, but at the home of Christianity as well. We all should be out there doing something about it. Many of us have been hoodwinked into thinking that evolution has to do with science and that you need to be a scientist to do anything to combat it.
Anonymous said...
If you believe in the evolutionary theory, you are really saying that God never made man perfect, but is bringing him to perfection. Therefore there is no true sin. But the Bible teaching is that man was made perfect and that he fell from that perfection, with the result that this power, this canker, has entered human nature and is there as an evil force within.
Obviously Genesis creation story is not literal history.But God in Genesis does not declare creation perfect. He says its "good" not prefect.
Anonymous Anonymous said...
To believe in evolution is to deny a universal paradise before Adam, because evolution necessarily implies that before Adam there was struggle, cruelty and brutality, animals eating animals, and death. Is the world going to be restored to that? If you believe in evolution, you must deny a universal paradise before Adam (because you believe that there was death and struggle millions of years before Adam),
worse than that, no Adam.
and also at the end of time (because the Bible teaches the world will be restored to what it used to be). Thus, evolution not only strikes at the heart and the foundation, but at the home of Christianity as well. We all should be out there doing something about it. Many of us have been hoodwinked into thinking that evolution has to do with science and that you need to be a scientist to do anything to combat it.
The creation myths were burrowed from other cultures and reworked to make the God of the Bible the centerpiece. Recognizing evolution is just a means of thinking realistically about history. It's no contradiction to belief in God. You are making idealized understanding of Adam and pre fall Edon that the Bible never gives us.
The actual fall is distributed in the lives of all people who are born it's not a historical moment,
Anonymous said...
If you believe in the evolutionary theory, you are really saying that God never made man perfect, but is bringing him to perfection. Therefore there is no true sin. But the Bible teaching is that man was made perfect and that he fell from that perfection, with the result that this power, this canker, has entered human nature and is there as an evil force within.
I read the Garden of Eden story as an originary myth about each individual person's life. It begins in innocence, then there is temptation and the emergence of moral accountability which entails the possibility, the almost certainty, of morally failing at some point.
I've gotten that same sense, Adam and Eve are an allegory for each individual.
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