Ryle said looking for 'the mind' inside the body is a category mistake

Gilbert Ryle coined 'the ghost in the machine' in 1949 to mock the idea that the mind is a separate, hidden substance riding around inside the body. He compared it to a visitor touring a university's colleges, libraries and playing fields who then asks 'but where is the university?' — mistaking a category of thing for one more individual member of that category. The book helped turn 20th-century philosophy away from strict mind-body dualism.

— Gilbert Ryle, The Concept of Mind — 1949
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