Let us consider the car crash example of Politzer: In this accident, if
the crushed person’s nerves travelling from his five senses to his brain, were
connected to another person’s, for instance Politzer’s brain, with a parallel
connection, at the moment the bus hit that person, it would also hit Politzer, who is
sitting at his home at that moment. Better to say, all the feelings experienced by that
person having the accident would be experienced by Politzer, just like the same song is
listened from two different loudspeakers connected to the same tape recorder. Politzer
will feel, see, and experience the braking sound of the bus, the touch of the bus on his
body, the images of a broken arm and shedding blood, fracture aches, the images of his
entering the operation room, the hardness of the plaster cast, and the feebleness of his
arm.
Every other person connected to the man’s nerves in parallel would
experience the accident from beginning to end just like Politzer. If the man in the
accident fell into a coma, they would all fall into a coma. Moreover, if all the
perceptions pertaining to the car accident were recorded in a device and if all these
perceptions were transmitted to a person, the bus would knock this person down many times.
So, which one of the buses hitting those people is real? The
materialist philosophy has no consistent answer to this question. The right answer is that
they all experience the car accident in all its details in their own minds.
The same principle applies to the cake and stone examples. If the
nerves of the sense organs of Engels, who felt the satiety and fullness of the cake in his
stomach after eating a cake, were connected to a second person’s brain in parallel,
that person would also feel full when Engels ate the cake and was satiated. If the nerves
of Johnson, who felt pain in his foot when he delivered a sound kick to a stone, were
connected to a second person in parallel, that person would feel the same pain.
So, which cake or which stone is the real one? The materialist
philosophy again falls short of giving a consistent answer to this question. The correct
and consistent answer is this: both Engels and the second person have eaten the cake in
their minds and are satiated; both Johnson and the second person have fully experienced
the moment of striking the stone in their minds.
Let us make a change in the example we gave about Politzer: let us
connect the nerves of the man hit by the bus to Politzer’s brain, and the nerves of
Politzer sitting in his house to that man’s brain, who is hit by the bus. In this
case, Politzer will think that a bus has hit him although when he is sitting in his house;
and the man actually hit by the bus will never feel the impact of the accident and think
that he is sitting in Politzer’s house. The very same logic may be applied to the
cake and the stone examples.
As is to be seen, it is not possible for man to transcend his senses
and break free of them. In this respect, a man’s soul can be subjected to all kinds
of representations although it has no physical body and no material existence and lacks
material weight. It is not possible for a person to realise this because he assumes these
three-dimensional images to be real and is absolutely certain of their existence because
everybody depends on his sensory organs.