How are Dark Mtter and Consciousness different from Spirit?

[Angrboda]

spir·it
noun

1.
the nonphysical part of a person that is the seat of emotions and character; the soul.
"we seek a harmony between body and spirit"

2.
those qualities regarded as forming the definitive or typical elements in the character of a person, nation, or group or in the thought and attitudes of a particular period.

[robvalue]

Hmm...

Why would we have any reason to believe there is a non-physical part? What indirect evidence of it do we have?

The second definition is clearly metaphorical.

[Angrboda]

Do you have character and emotions? That's indirect evidence for the spirit or soul. Some expand the definition to include the spark of consciousness and hypothesize that the brain, rather than being the seat of consciousness, merely interacts with it. That the true seat of consciousness is the soul. Regardless, it seems as adequate an explanation of the phenomena as the brain being the sole and total source. So what divides these two hypotheses?

[robvalue]

Hmm...

I don't even know what something that was "non-physical" could possibly be. How does that work? It just sounds like "doesn't exist". I agree that it is very tempting to try and put consciousness, emotions and so on down to something mystical. It does "feel" like there's some sort of distinction between "me" and my brain. But I suspect this is an internal illusion.

Of course I'm not saying things can't be non-physical, but I don't understand what is even being proposed. What other method of existence is there? Is it supposed to be in a separate reality, maybe? So that it's not so much non-physical as it is untouchable?

Or... it exists abstractly? Like, consciousness is supposed to be an emergenct process. But existing abstractly sounds suspiciously like not literally existing.

I'm not pretending to understand consciousness. I have an extremely weak grasp at best, even via my own direct experience of it.

[robvalue]

PS:

I'm not trying to be difficult or argumentative, I genuinely have no conception of how something can exist yet be non-physical

Of course, that doesn't mean it's impossible. That would be an argument from incredulity. But to suppose something non-physical as an explanation would appear to require exhausting all physical explanations there could ever be. How could this be done?

Has anything non-physical ever been observed to exist? If not, how can it even be suggested as an explanation? Of course, it could be physical, but just behave very differently to the physical stuff we're used to.

Or like... anti matter or something? My science isn't so good at this stage

[ApeNotKillApe]

Literally everything is physical, you can't have something exist without it being physical. If you're aware of this spirit malarkey, it means it's having some kind of physical effect on your brain. If this spirit affects your life or the universe, it must interact physically.

[Cyberman]

Although different parts of the brain, hemispheres, lobes, chemicals and electricity have been identifies as the cause of our thoughts, emotions and body functions, nothing in the brain has been identified and isolated as the agent/source of consciousness.

That may be because that's a top down approach to the workings of the brain, when you need to be looking at it from the bottom up. What if the thing we call consciousness is the brain's experience of how it feels to be a brain, as the subjective experience of all those causes combined?

It could be said that what we now call dark matter was once known to the ancients as ether.

Well it could, but it actually wasn't. The ether (more correctly 'æther') hypothesis was adopted in the 19th century as a way of making the wave model of light concur with observed reality. Basically, all waves need a medium within which to propagate, be it air, water or whatever. Thus it was assumed that there must exist a medium between the planets and stars for the waves of light to propagate, which was christened æther. Experiments such as those conducted by Michelson and Morley showed that the æther not only doesn't exist, but is an unnecessary and irrelevant complication anyway.

[Angrboda]

I think the non-physical part is a hangup for many. But assuming that all things that exist must have a physical, or shall I say 'natural', existence is a presupposition. As an atheist, I don't believe in the existence of nonphysical entities like ghosts or angels or God, but my disbelief is based on an assumption that only physical things exist. It is an apriori assumption and is therefore merely axiomatic — it has no empirical support. It's just assumed.

[ApeNotKillApe]

[robvalue]

I don't assume everything has to be physical, I just see no indication that it's possible for things to exist in any other form.

Isn't physical simply another way of saying "literally exists"? Does it have any meaning further than that?