The Ego Trick (baggini, Julian) / quote 54 of 254
Team spirit and the ghost in the machine
My favourite of Ryle’s many examples is the person who understands that playing cricket requires team-spirit, but thinks that contributing team-spirit is an activity additional to batting, bowling and fielding, rather than being tied up with the manner of doing all of them.3 The weaknesses in the arguments for immaterial souls are so evident that most serious philosophers now agree with Ryle, who famously dismissed Descartes’ notion as the myth of ‘the ghost in the machine’.