Substance is perhaps the greatest mystery of physics. On the one hand we have yet to discover the Higgs field/boson which the Standard Model predicts. Even so, standard matter is only some 5% of the total in the universe. Another 25% of the critical density is dark matter which emits no radiation and a huge 70% is dark energy which causes the universe to accelerate and yet is not detectable in laboratory conditions!
The good news may be that gravity is so weak compared to the other forces (electromagnetism, strong and weak atomic) because it is inter-dimensional. If that is the case – since gravity is a duality of space/time geometry, then the dark energy may be a space/time outdent of negative gravity.
But I digress…
The will – or consciousness or mind – may be the reality in which the geometry itself manifests, thus our sensory perception would be quite deceptive indeed.
The question that should be asked is What is Life? It is a significant question to physicists and mathematicians but doesn’t yet capture the imagination of some of the other disciplines.
Sorry, I think the term "substance" was a bit misleading.
What I meant is that in your model a human mind can only be implemented in spirit but not in matter. Now my problem is that I don't see why this must be the case i.e. that patterns (which a human mind obviously is) which exist in this "spirit" cannot be implemented in matter.
So in other words, what do "ordinary" atoms lack that they cannot be used to make a human mind (where the mind is a process in a brain which consists of "ordinary" atoms)?
Oh, and also keep in mind that the 19th century notion that "matter=determinism" is no longer valid as Doctor Stochastic (and others) has mentioned above.
That is exactly what I am saying except that there is no “stuff” to it.
OK, "stuff" may not be the correct term but still, if this spirit exists then it is something in which these dynamic patterns, which make up our mind, exist.
But this means that in your model a human mind is also a process, although not one in matter.
Matter without information (communication, mind, consciousness, etc.) is dead, inert, not alive.
What is matter without information? Maybe tortoise can shed some light on this because this doesn't make any sense to me.
Also, what we consider to be alive resp. not alive may be quite clear in the case of higher animals or plants at one end and rocks on the other but with viruses or complex organic self-replicating molecules the situation is much more ambiguous.
So at the moment I don't see why some kind of "vital force" (animism) in addition to chemical processes is needed to explain life.