KOKORO NO SHINKA
Gilbert Ryle derisively called it “the ghost in the machine,” critiquing René Descartes’ theory of substance dualism, which posits that the mind and body are separate entities and presupposes the existence of the soul.
At a loss to articulate the way a car makes us feel, we often fall back on this philosophy.
Ryle’s argument that the mind and body are one and the same falls mostly on the side of behaviorism. But the less rigidly defined Japanese concept of kokoro no shinka, which considers heart, mind, emotion, and soul as one indivisible entity, best explains how the soul of a vehicle like the Toyota Land Cruiser can be preserved across generations of machine.
Land Cruisers, of course, cannot reproduce and are not self-aware. If artificial intelligence ever comes to cars, the Land Cruiser will be among the last to accept it, if it ever does. Yet the spirit of the Land Cruiser perseveres across decades of mechanical rewrites, variants for different markets, and countless engineers and designers and salesmen. Mechanically, a 2020 Land Cruiser has little in common with one from 1960, but from behind the wheel, their collective soul couldn’t be more obvious.
This FJ40 bouncing down a two-track south of Salt Lake City, Utah, is a 1977 model with front disc brakes and barn doors on the back. On the street, the 40 series will just top 75
