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A soul is needed for cognition. 
I would like now to draw attention to another contradiction in today’s widespread belief system.
Firstly, most of today’s biologists, if pressed, would deny that humans or animals have souls; some might rather evade the issue. But this question is, in truth, not even posed in contemporary biology; let alone answered or avoided. It is long forgotten, ignored as a consequence of the alleged refutation by David Hume[1] of the soul or self. Biologists nowadays are thoroughgoing philosophical Materialists.
For them (very briefly and simply put), living organisms are composed of physical matter; which over time combined into more and more complex chemicals, first mineral ones, then organic ones; which eventually, naturally and inexorably, due to appropriate environmental conditions, combined into living cells; which in time joined together and formed multi-cellular organisms; which through further evolution gave rise to diverse forms of plants and animals, some of which survive today.
For current biological science, life is the end result of physical processes inscribed in matter from the beginning. It is itself a physical process and nothing more. ‘Vitalism’, the assumption that life has something non-physical in it, some substance or essence that distinguishes it from inanimate matter, has long been abandoned. What distinguishes living organisms from inanimate matter is only the complexity and variety of organization and process they involve. ‘Spirituality’, i.e. the possession of a soul, is likewise an unnecessary supposition, a superstition of no relevance to the scientific study of humans or any other species.
Secondly, most (probably all) biologists today sign on unquestioningly to the theory of sense-perception proposed by John Locke[2] which we delineated and criticized in the previous section. That is, the notion that when we perceive a physical object through the sense-organs in our body, we are perceiving a mental image of that object, not the object itself. According to this idea, we do not perceive the physical world of visual, auditory, and other phenomena, but only (at best) mental reproductions of these various qualia. Not physical sights and sounds, smells, tastes, touch-sensations, but mental equivalents of them, presumably caused by them, brought to our minds through the sense-organs. Most biologists go further and deny that mental images are reproductions of material phenomena, at all resembling them, even if caused by them.
As already argued above, that hypothesis is self-contradictory. Because it starts with the assumption that we have and know of physical bodies, graced with various sense-organs, and then ends with a claim that all that we have access to and can know of are mental images (using the term ‘image’ in a broad sense, including sights, sounds, etc.). The contradiction is even greater when the mental images are additionally claimed not to resemble the physical things they are supposed to represent, since one can wonder how they can know that if they only have access to internal things and none to external things.
The inconsistency in this ‘correspondence’ or ‘representative’ theory of sense-perception was immediately noticed by George Berkeley, who went on to deny the very existence of physical phenomena and acknowledged only mental ones. In his reading, we have no physical bodies, no physical sense-organs, no central nervous system – only mental images which mislead us into thinking that we have these things.
Since there is no way to formulate Locke’s indirect perception thesis without self-contradiction, logic requires us to abandon it and replace it with some other thesis. But the problem is, of course, that we have not so far managed to even imagine a possible replacement theory. So, we turn our eyes away from the problem and pretend there is none. As I explained already, this contradiction can only be resolved by admitting that we are able to directly perceive physical matter itself somehow, even if the sense-organs evidently play some sort of significant role.
I now want to point out another contradiction – one between the no-soul theory referred to above and the theory of indirect perception of physical objects[3]. One cannot believe in and advocate both these theories at once: they are mutually exclusive. Why? Because if there is no soul – no Subject with the power of consciousness watching them – then the mental images allegedly displayed in the mind are of no use to anyone! If there is no one to see a visual display in the mind, of what use is it? If there is no one to hear a sound in the mind, of what use is it? Likewise for smells, tastes and touch-sensations. ‘Images’ (sensations of any sort) cannot be said to ‘appear’ if there is no one there to experience them; they might ‘occur’ but not ‘appear’.[4]
Think about that; digest it. If we suppose that we are like computers, physical entities with built-in cameras and microphones, and a CPU processing information coming from them: of what use to such an entity would a screen and a loudspeaker be? If there is no one to see the images on the screen or hear the sounds emitted by the loudspeaker, they are useless appendages. Sure, the computer might well usefully record visual and auditory images of itself and its surroundings; but that would be just to store the recordings in its memory bank for future use. It would never actually need to view or listen to the material recorded when the time came to use it, but could and would simply react directly and mechanically to the electronic data constituting it.
The only reason our existing computers have screens and loudspeakers is because we are there, sitting in front of them, viewing and listening. It is only the added presence of a soul with cognitive powers that makes such accessories necessary. Note well: computers may well need and have physical ‘sensors’ receiving information from their environment; but they would not have or need anything equivalent to mental ‘sensations’. They would simply physically store and process the information received as physical signals. This means that the very fact we are presented with mental images (of sights, sound, feelings, etc.) is empirical proof that we are souls, entities with cognitive powers.
This is, of course, what René Descartes[5] realized when he declared: “cogito, ergo sum” – or “I think, therefore I am.” Sense-organs without mental sensations are conceivable: they would be possible in a soul-less entity. But mental sensations without a soul to watch them would simply be absurd. The moment you accept that images are produced in the mind, apparently through the operation of physical sense-organs, you must logically accept that there is ‘someone’ residing there, watching them. You cannot both affirm the Lockean scenario of sense-perception and deny the soul. Furthermore, the mental phenomena are merely information presented to the soul – the truly cognitive event occurs only when the soul is actually ‘informed’ by this information.
Descartes, of course, wrote some fifty years before Locke did, but he evidently had in mind a similar naive view of sense-perception. He also anticipated Berkeley’s skepticism, some seventy years ahead of him, by clearly realizing that such a view of sense-perception signified an unbridgeable mind-body gap. This is why he sought a solution to that problem, and came to the realization that the very act of cognition, be it of mental instead of physical phenomena, was indicative of someone (oneself) doing the cognizing. The mere occurrence of phenomena, be they mental or physical, would not prove the existence of a self; but the appearance of phenomena certainly does, appearance being cognized occurrence.
Descartes’ solution is not, however, complete, because although he managed to affirm the existence of self or soul, he did not tackle the issue of how the soul could access the body indirectly through the mind if the soul had no direct access to the body. He thought we could somehow infer body (and a larger physical world beyond it) from mind, but he did not clarify just how. This problem remains still unsolved today. Berkeley did not solve it, but merely reiterated it and regarded it as unsolvable. In fact, it seems that Berkeley’s view of the self was (though earlier) closer to Hume’s than to Descartes’ or Locke’s: he does not seem to have believed in a real, unitary, spiritual self (i.e. a soul), but rather imagined the apparent self as a bundle of mental phenomena (i.e. a non-soul).[6]
Self-contradictory hypotheses must be rejected and replaced somehow; it is not scientific to ignore logical problems.
 

[1]              Scotland, 1711-1776. In  A Treatise of Human Nature (1739-40) and An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748).
[2]              England, 1632-1704. In An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689/90). Note that Thomas Hobbes (England 1588-1679) preceded Locke in describing sense perception as a stimulation by external motions of motions in the sense organs resulting in allegedly ‘mental’ events, but it seems that for Hobbes the latter were also physical motions and not distinctively ‘mental’ events (De Homine, 1658). So, Hobbes was more materialistic than Locke.
[3]              Locke of course still believed in the soul, so he was not guilty of this contradiction. But he was guilty of the contradiction inherent in his theory of sense-perception.
[4]              The same is, of course, true regarding direct perception of external objects, be they physical or whatever. If they are perceived, they are necessarily perceived by someone, i.e. a soul. Perception without a perceiver is an oxymoron.
[5]              France, 1596-1650. In Meditations on First Philosophy (1641).
[6]              Note the dates: 1) Descartes, 1641; 2) Locke, 1689-90; 3) Berkeley, 1709; 4) Hume, 1740.
 

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