h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I have a small collection of machines that are infested with ghosts.

Some ghosts you can see and hear, others you can only hear. In this one you communicate by tapping on a board.

A keyboard, perhaps?

That is so serendipitous!
I was just thinking about Andy Summers!
Who wrote the book they named the album after?

Arthur Koestler. But his meaning of the term was the spirit that makes turns a human from being just a load of cells connected together (the machine) into a spiritual being (a human).

I do not believe there is a ghost in that particular machine.

Gilbert Ryle coined the phrase to describe (in blatantly pejorative terms) Descartes' dualistic philosophy.

Wow.
What is the connection between Koestler and Ryle and why didn't Ryle like Descarte?

Was it because he was no good at dualing?

Gilbert Ryle (1900-76) wrote about the philosophy of mind "With the doubtful exceptions of idiots and infants in arms every human being has both a body and a mind . . . ordinarily harnessed together . . . But minds are not in space, nor are their operations subject to mechanical laws . . . 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'." (The concept of Mind, 1949). This "official theory" (derived largely from Descartes) Ryle tried to dismantle, because it leads to impossible dead ends: things like comparing "mental health" to health, and supposing that there must therefore be things like mental medicines; or the anomaly that your mind can only be known to you, but other people (examiners, critics, judges) are called on to pronounce about it. He followed to some extent the lead of Wittgenstein, but Wittgenstein (in my view: A1024156) did a better job.

Arthur Koestler (1905-83) was a novelist and social critic who questioned (after serious trial) Zionism, communism, Eastern mysticism and the drug culture (of which he said "Chemically induced hallucinations, delusions and raptures may be frightening or wonderfully gratifying; in either case they are in the nature of confidence tricks played on one's own nervous system."). His book "The Ghost in the Machine" (1967) questions the positive reading of evolutionary "progress" and suggests the possibility that mankind has basically got a screw loose (seeing the absurd behaviour people blindly follow): "To dwell on the glories of man, and ignore the symptoms of his possible insanity is not a sign of optimism, but of ostrichism."

He was amazed and amused to find The Police had called an album (1981) after his book.

Most days, I'll take music over philosophy.

I find philosophy confusing. But not as confusing as cultural mob behavior.

"You're all individuals!"
"Yes, We're all Individuals!"
"I'm not."

"suggests the possibility that mankind has basically got a screw loose (seeing the absurd behaviour people blindly follow): "To dwell on the glories of man, and ignore the symptoms of his possible insanity is not a sign of optimism, but of ostrichism.""

As a possible Asperger's, I find mindless behavior on the part of "normal" people to be very machine-like. The "ghost", if there need be, is their souls, which seem to escape as soon as possible.
Thus, they be walking dead.

I remember some midwestern groupthink minion or other castigating me in High School because I didn't have any "school spirit".
I said,"Since we didn't have any choice in which school we go to, why should we be proud of something that would exist whether we were here or not?"
She blinked,"You think too much. Just get with the program and you'll enjoy yourself."

I also find most philosophy confusing, but it is not incompatible with music. They are both inspiring, when done supremely well. And it's not enough to be good at them: they are only inspiring when the observer has the sense that the performer/philosopher is committed, engaged, communicating. Then, even if the material is still confusing, you feel that it's something you could understand, even if you don't quite yet. This may be an illusion, but the inspiration is arguably worth it.

I know nothing about music. I'm a total ignoramus. However, I do recognise that feeling you mention. To me, it's like listening to a language I don't quite understand. I know there's meaning, I know it's trying to say something, and there is a glorious surface tension between ignorance and understanding. When I'm in a receptive mood there's pushing going on from both sides. Whether I eventually 'get it' or not, the process is part (possibly most) of the fun. It applies to music and philosophy; my personal belief is that they feel similar because they strive to say some of the same things.

"I know there's meaning, I know it's trying to say something, and there is a glorious surface tension between ignorance and understanding."

Well put. I had that feeling with the first film by a woman director I saw, about the patriot Robert Emmet's lover Sarah Curran, from her point of view. I felt it was like hearing a language I didn't understand, but could learn.

I said a similar thing about music at the start of A1339337 "Sol-Fa - The Key to the Riddle of Staff Notation" -- that music has a mixture of the symmetrical and the unsymmetrical in it, that leads to patterns that are mysteriously comprehensible.

The sub changed that to 'incomprehensible'. I had to ask for it to be changed back.

Perhaps that mysterious comprehensibility completely escaped him?

The only time I usually find the word "comprehensive" is in insurance ads...

Actually my memory did me wrong there -- the mysterious comprehensibility reference wasn't in the Sol-fa entry but in A1921114 "The Three Ages of Music".