Descartes argued that the soul (or mind) controls the body like a puppeteer manipulates a puppet. Gilbert Ryle, refuting Descartes, argued that this would be like a ghost inside a machine, trying to control it. How could something immaterial possibly control the physical movements of the body? It seems that we either have to give up the notion that the soul is immaterial, or that it controls our body.
Outside of the argument, here's some ghosts with a body: another Halloween bake...
Gingerbread Ghosts
Ingredients
350g plain flour
1tsp bicarbonate of soda
1tsp ground cinnamon
2tsp ground ginger
125g butter
175g brown sugar
1 beaten egg
1 tablespoon black treacle
3 tablespoons of honey
Sift the flour, add the rest of the dry ingredients to a bowl then lightly rub in the butter (not quite to the extent you would for pastry).
Stir in the sugar, then add the egg, treacle and honey. Mix this until a firm dough forms.
Knead for a few minutes, you can then leave it to chill around 15 minutes in the fridge whilst the oven heats (to gas mark 4) to ensure the dough stays firm.
Grease at least two baking trays (you may need more). Roll out the dough evenly to about half a cm to a cm thickness. If you don't have suitable cutters, ghost shapes are easily made, and needn't be exact or uniform, just cut the dough with a butter knife into the shape you want.
They'll need up to 15 minutes in the oven, dont worry if they aren't hard when straight out of the oven, they crisp on cooling, as long as the dough no longer seems raw and they have turned slightly darker.
Once the biscuits have cooled, you'll need to mix up a thin white icing to form the edge and eyes, which can be done by dipping the end of a butter knife in the icing and running it along the edges fairly quickly. You can be quite creative ie. put currants in for eyes before baking, use piping icing or sweets etc.
A Halloween & Bonfire Night favourite, and not as scary to make as you'd think!
