A big non answer towards what? My entire reason for posting this thread is because I don't know what "soul" and "spirit" mean. That's literally the whole point.
As far as my views on consciousness itself, I've described it as accurately as I could. There is an inherent breakdown in communication once you address the subjective nature of it. Again, what I'm referring to is the entire reason we have the hard problem of consciousness. Which is to address that subjective thing. Here's straight from the wiki page:
the problem of explaining how and why we have qualia or phenomenal experiences—how sensations acquire characteristics, such as colours and tastes.
Now, ignoring the 'problem' bit (I'm not addressing the problem of how/why itself), the topic of which they are discussing, is what I'm getting at when I use the word consciousness.
This is what I address in the later bit of my opening post. I've had people reject this subjective notion entirely, and saying qualia don't exist and that there's no such thing. Now, I'm not using this post to prove my views, I'm just stating what they are for reference. Again, hence my questions.
See the questions directed at people who don't understand this concept:
In particular, I'd like to ask these individuals (and anyone who feels similarly): What would you say consciousness is? What part of 'subjective experience' are you failing to understand? Does the problem of hard consciousness sound like a nonsensical problem to you?
Do you understand what the hard problem of consciousness is getting at? If so, that's what I consider consciousness (though, broken down a bit more scientifically, since we have studies showing things like blind sightedness [where people think they can see but they can't] and similar phenomenon). Again, the reason it's a hard problem is because we don't have the vocabulary for it, and can't actually prove it exists. It's kind of like synesthesia. There's no real way to prove it or demonstrate it because we don't have the tools or language to do so.
What in particular would you like me to clarify?