We dont need a soul?

NOTE. TEXT IMPROVED USING CHAT-GPT. I am currently reading Taylor Carman's foreword to Maurice Merleau-Ponty's *Phenomenology of Perception*. In this foreword, Carman discusses the ambiguous division between the objective and the subjective, a central theme in Merleau-Ponty's philosophy. Carman explains that, for Descartes, the relationship between experience and the body is not one of identity. Descartes viewed the mind and body as distinct, with the body acting as a mere vessel for the mind's experiences. In contrast, Merleau-Ponty argues that we possess a pre-reflective grasp of our own experiences, which are inherently tied to our bodies. This connection is characterized by mutual motivation, meaning that our bodily experiences and our conscious perceptions influence each other in a dynamic, non-causal way. In other words, our experiences are not just linked to our bodies conceptually or causally; they are one with our bodily existence. Carman further notes that, for Merleau-Ponty, the structure of perception is identical to the structure of the body. Our body is not just an object in the world; it is "my point of view upon the world." This suggests that our bodily existence is foundational to how we perceive and engage with the world around us. From what I understand, Merleau-Ponty challenges the need for a concept like the soul, Martin Heidegget also challenges this need. Instead, Merleau-Ponty emphasizes that all we have is the body in the world. Subjective sensations and sensory qualities emerge when we abstract away from our original openness to the world. We do this by focusing on isolated features of things and on bits of experience that we believe (rightly or wrongly) correspond to these isolated features, much like how we abstract from ourselves toward a world that we consider independent of our perspective on it.