And do believe that I, this random guy on the internet has a soul
I personally don’t believe that I anyone else has a soul. From my standup I don’t se any reason to believe that our consciousness and our so called “soul” would be any more then something our brain is making up.
No.
I self-evidently have a consciousness (cogito ergo sum), but logic, reason and the available evidence all point to that consciousness being a manifestation of brain activity and shaped by my genetics, environment and experiences, as opposed to an entity unto itself.
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Many think that cogito ergo sum somehow says or at least implies something about the nature of existence, when it in fact does not. So in that sense, it’s not the “big hitter it’s made out to be,” but that’s not a failure of the principle, but a failure of people to understand what it in fact says, or more precisely, does not say.
I suspect that the problem is that when people consider “I think, therefore I am,” they think that that “I” refers to the entirety of their self-image, and therefore says that the entirety of their self-image, in all its details, objectively exists.
That’s very much not what it means or even implies. It never did and was never intended to stipulate anything at all about the nature of this entity I call “I.” Not one single thing. All it ever said or intended to say was simply that whatever it is that “I” am, “I” self evidently exist, as demonstrated by the fact that “I” - whatever “I” might be - think I do.
It’s not a coincidence that Descartes himself formulated the original version of the brain-in-a-vat - the “evil demon.” He was not simply aware of the sorts of possibilities you mention - of the ramifications of the fact that we exist behind a veil of perception - he actually originated much of the thinking on that very topic. He was a pioneer in that exact field.
Cogito ergo sum doesn’t fail to account for those sorts of possibilities - it was explicitly formulated with those sorts of possibilities not only in mind, but at the forefront. And that’s exactly why it only stipulates the one and only thing that an individual can know for certain - that some entity that I think of as “I” self evidently exists, as demonstrated by the simple fact that “I” think I do, since if “I” didn’t exist, there would be no “I” thinking I do.
And more to the point, that’s exactly why it very deliberately says absolutely nothing about the nature of that existence.
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The phrase “cogito ero sum” asserts agency, self awareness, and self possessions over oneself as an individual. how is that anything other than a plain and logical establishment of individual self within the natural world (or any context)?
I think, perhaps, the purpose of such a statement is misread and often misused. It is a point of logic, and piece of logical evidence, not a piece of material evidence. And since that evidence is for consciousness and sapiens, not a soul, which is something humans can’t seem to untangle from each other, that’s why people have trouble attributing it to one, the other, or either.
Finally, I would like to stress that, and Socrates would agree, that such a statement is meant to be the beginning of a philosophy, not the end, statement or final declaration. It is a statement intended to begin a conversation, not to shut one down. anyone familiar with the Socratic method would understand this implicitly.