An excellent concise and accurate statement of the interactive dualism theory of mind

[Laird]

P.S. Re this:

I haven't read the pages to which you linked. I might do that later.

Unfortunately, I don't currently have the reading stamina for that. Maybe yet later. Also, the "Free draft version" link in the first post of the Eric Weiss thread no longer works: Eric's domain seems to have fallen into the hands of a gambling venture.

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By "epistemological" do you mean roughly that you're simply describing that which we can know by mere observation or self-reflection, prior to speculating or making any assumptions, inferences, arguments, or extrapolations?


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So, we're agreed as to how to describe at a basic level what seems to be the case for a single experiencer. Now can we bring in multiple experiencers?

Agreed on all points.  

Minor caveat is we might be making some ontological assumptions that someone might dispute - for example those who reject causality altogether - but I feel these are all largely universal assumptions that just about everyone starts with.

[Laird]

Minor caveat is we might be making some ontological assumptions that someone might dispute

Yes, and, as we move on to multiple experiencers, we make another ontological assumption that someone might dispute: that solipsism is false, which I think we both agree is a safe assumption to make, but feel free to raise an objection if you have one.

In any case, given that assumption, we now have multiple experiencers having their own experiences, some of the contents of which might be shared via telepathy, empathy, and common concepts and logic, etc.

Here, I think is where you might want to reaffirm from an earlier post:

Can we say more than this with any confidence? I honestly don't know

I think though that there's an argument to be made that we can. This gets beyond that to which you've been referring as an epistemological approach though.

The argument starts with the observation that if we say no more, and if on that basis we tacitly affirm that this is ontologically sufficient - that is, that no further tangible ontological categories (types) or entities (tokens) exist - then we are left with that to which I've been referring as pluralistic idealism: idealism in the sense that only the ontological category (type) of experience (and the experiencers of those experiences, aka minds) exists; pluralistic in the sense that more than one of those experiencers aka minds actually exist (as tokens).

The argument itself is that the best possible explanation for how the experiences - of each of these bare experiencers - of "the external world" are coordinated such that they are intersubjectively consistent and coherent is far worse than the best possible explanation if we assume a new ontological category which in a sense "is" that external world: some sort of "stuff" which itself is consistent and coherent, some sort of medium embodying "the external world", thus removing the need for the experiencers to - somehow - maintain that consistency and coherence among themselves.

I had understood that you saw this explanatory problem too, and that you agreed that it was a compelling reason to reject pluralistic idealism, when you wrote in another thread:

I guess what confuses me is I don't really get how Pluralistic Idealists - assuming any exist? - would explain the external world.

That's why I was enthusiastic in my response:

Exactly my point! You do, after all, then, understand the argument you originally said you didn't, or at least you arrive at the same conclusion via a related understanding.

Now, I wonder whether I misunderstood you, because you seem to still want to deny the existence of a medium - some sort of "stuff" - via which experiences of "the external world" are kept consistent and coherent.

Have I misunderstood you? If so, how do you defend pluralistic idealism against this argument?

The argument starts with the observation that if we say no more, and if on that basis we tacitly affirm that this is ontologically sufficient - that is, that no further tangible ontological categories (types) or entities (tokens) exist - then we are left with that to which I've been referring as pluralistic idealism: idealism in the sense that only the ontological category (type) of experience (and the experiencers of those experiences, aka minds) exists; pluralistic in the sense that more than one of those experiencers aka minds actually exist (as tokens).

The argument itself is that the best possible explanation for how the experiences - of each of these bare experiencers - of "the external world" are coordinated such that they are intersubjectively consistent and coherent is far worse than the best possible explanation if we assume a new ontological category which in a sense "is" that external world: some sort of "stuff" which itself is consistent and coherent, some sort of medium embodying "the external world", thus removing the need for the experiencers to - somehow - maintain that consistency and coherence among themselves.

Well I think we'd at least have thoughts and [Reason] just by introspection as part of our epistemology? And those don't seem to be *just* experiences, even if we experience them. Similarly, it's by experience + Reason that I'd conclude a Person is something *more* than just experience?

Additionally, AFAIK, there are no actual Pluralist Idealists. I am not sure, however, if certain Monadisms or Subjective Idealists would count under the umbrella of Pluralist Idealist.

If so, we'd probably leave out any Monadism that has God as the Aleph-Monad or existing being all Monads. Which would leave us with Monadism / Subjective Idealism that suggests the shared consensus of first person PoVs which we call the external, third person view is made by something in the nature of all Monads / Minds.

I guess it would be analogous to a Peer to Peer Simulation where the the coordination of shared reality is made by processing within each peer?

And if I understand you correctly you think this is a worse option than assuming some actual existence which is shared because it's difficult to ground the shared nature of each peer without any overarching reason for such Harmony?

[Laird]

Well I think we'd at least have thoughts and reasons just by introspection as part of our epistemology? And those don't seem to be *just* experiences, even if we experience them. Similarly, it's by experience + Reason that I'd conclude a Person is something *more* than just experience?

I'm still bracketing the question of thoughts and reasons. The argument I'm making doesn't reference them directly, although a pluralistic idealist might refer to them as part of the "processing" to which you later refer.

Additionally, AFAIK, there are no actual Pluralist Idealists.

Whether or not that's true is beside the point, which is that if we stop where you think we might not be able to confidently say more, then we are left with pluralistic idealism.

I am not sure, however, if certain Monadisms or Subjective Idealists would count under the umbrella of Pluralist Idealist.

If they don't, then they're monistic idealisms, which we agree can anyway be ruled out even more definitively.

If so, we'd probably leave out any Monadism that has God as the Aleph-Monad or existing being all Monads. Which would leave us with Monadism / Subjective Idealism that suggests the shared consensus of first person PoVs which we call the external, third person view is made by something in the nature of all Monads / Minds.

I guess it would be analogous to a Peer to Peer Simulation where the the coordination of shared reality is made by processing within each peer?

Yes.

And if I understand you correctly you think this is a worse option than assuming some actual existence which is shared because it's difficult to ground the shared nature of each peer without any overarching reason for such Harmony?

I wouldn't put it that way myself, but that's roughly in the ballpark.

Think about what is involved. Science seems to tell us that there's a whole, gigantic universe out there with a long temporal history, and yet our individual experience of the universe is limited: we perceive only a small subset of a vast reality at a single time. If that perception is all the information that we do as individuals maintain (or co-create) about reality at any given instant in time, then there's a lot of information that nobody possesses - about, say, star systems on the other side of the universe which nobody is currently perceiving but, for which, when we look, the information seems to have been there all along, consistent with an objective reality way beyond even the full set of individual experiences.

The first problem, then, is that there's not nearly enough individual experiences of "the external world" by the peers to adequately maintain that external world.

Related to this is that even when we do experience a little subset of the external world, we do so from a unique perspective, which requires translating to turn it into somebody else's experience from their unique perspective. If, say, I as a peer am "responsible" for maintaining the information about the little bit of reality that I'm currently perceiving, but I'm looking from the left, and somebody else enters the scene looking from the right, then my right-looking perspective somehow has to be translated into their left-looking perspective.

OK, not too bad so far, but what if there's an object in the middle? I can't see its right hand side, so I can't as the "maintainer" of this segment of reality provide the necessary information to the new entrant into it who needs to know what it looks like from the right hand side.

Another related problem is that as the conventional theory goes, minds didn't enter reality until a long time after the supposed Big Bang, so there's another whole bunch of information that nobody was perceiving yet seems to have been there all along.

What, then, is the best solution to the problem of all this missing information? It seems we'd have to start by saying two things. Firstly, that that which we perceive, from our own perspective, is not all of the information we hold about reality: somehow, the collective of minds contains all necessary information about the external world. Secondly, that the necessary information in this collective of minds is somehow translated into an individual's perspectival phenomenal experience on their subset of reality via the "processing" to which you referred.

OK, but then in whose mind(s) is/are this vast amount of information stored, and how is it translated into perspectival phenomenal experience? I don't have any awareness of it being stored in my mind.

Is it stored in yours?

Is it even truly distributed among minds - a peer-to-peer scenario - or is there one mind in particular storing it and doing the translating for all other minds - a client-server scenario?

Whatever the best answers to these questions are - and I've only briefly sketched some of the problems into which we could delve in more detail - pluralistic idealism seems to me to be far less plausible as an overall explanation than the simple hypothesis that there really is an objective reality "out there" - some sort of objective medium, allowing for quantum weirdness, etc - that embodies all of that information, eliminating the need for it to be maintained in or by a mind or minds, and that we perceive more or less directly, with the translation into our perspectival phenomenal experience being a natural one rather than a result of some sort of mental information processing.

I'm still bracketing the question of thoughts and reasons...

...

....far less plausible as an overall explanation than the simple hypothesis that there really is an objective reality "out there" - some sort of objective medium, allowing for quantum weirdness, etc - that embodies all of that information, eliminating the need for it to be maintained in or by a mind or minds, and that we perceive more or less directly, with the translation into our perspectival phenomenal experience being a natural one rather than a result of some sort of mental information processing.

My reply won't be in chronological order, so figured it didn't make sense to quote specific lines ->

If we add Thought & Reason, then it seems a Person is someone who has Experiences but also Thoughts and Reasoning. This would seem to already add more to reality than simply Persons & Experience? It arguably adds the entire field of Mathematics into the domain of the Mental, depending on how we regard Platonism?

This is where I think things get tricky, as I am not sure the hypothetical "Atheistic P2P Monadism" is so easily dispatched. [It would depend in part, I think, on what metaphysical assertion we make from the shared consensus of maths as a field...]

My understanding of, for example, Paul Marshall's Monadism is that each Monad actually does contain the information of the Whole in a way akin to each Peer in a P2P Game Network has their own copy of the game world on their hard drive. Citing one of his chapters in Beyond Physicalism: Toward Reconciliation of Science and Spirituality:

In Leibniz’s mature metaphysics, the world consists of a plurality of simple substances, the monads (monas, “unit,” “unity”). Monads are termed “substances” because they are independent beings, existing in their own right, and they are “simple” because they are not composite, not compounded of separable parts. These indivisible beings are the ultimate atoms of nature, the fundamental units on which matter and composite structures are based. However, unlike the atoms of the materialists, monads have inner complexity, each expressing the entire universe from a sequence of points of view as it changes from state to state. In expressing the universe, a monad is a unity, representing together all the other monads, and so a monad is a representation of the many in the one. The representational content of the monad is its perception while the tendency of perceptions to shift from state to state is its appetition, a striving and unfolding toward more distinct perception and knowledge. Active and representational, monads are “living mirrors” of the universe. Uncompounded and indivisible, they cannot be created or destroyed by natural means, but their perceptual states are unities characterized by multiplicity and transformation, for they express the universe, a universe that exists only as the contents of these changing perceptual states.[2] Expressive of the entire universe, monads are complete in themselves, in content and activity, developing from within but in mutual accord because they represent one another and express the selfsame universe. However, they are not entirely self-subsistent, for they have a common origin in God and are sustained through their transformations by the divine power, comparable to the way a thinker produces thoughts. One might say that in creating and sustaining the universe, God thinks it from multiple perspectives, and each of these autonomous but mutually accommodated, parallel trains of thought is a monad.

Kelly, Edward F.; Crabtree, Adam; Marshall, Paul. Beyond Physicalism: Toward Reconciliation of Science and Spirituality . Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. Kindle Edition.

It seems to me the primary contention here would be the last line as this implies a One True Subject metaphysics. This problem doesn't seem limited to Idealisms, however, given some Cosmopanpsychists have said they think there is only One True Subject. I'd even suggest that despite his reference to Vedanta at the end of his essay (arguably a book really) What is Life? Schroedinger actually posits a One True Subject Dualism where the One uses physical form to experience different possible streams of experience.

I also don't think Berkeley and his religious-metaphysical descendants, as Christian Idealists, would consider their Idealism to have only One True Subject despite being, AFAICTell, Monists in their assertion that the Ground of Reality is mental?

OTOH, where the Atheistic P2P Monadist seems to lose their way is the lack of God to provide Harmony to the Monads rather than their denial of some exterior world? Of course once we have God then it would seem we have our external Medium, though not necessarily an External Reality unless we affirm that causal continuity between God's Will and the Monads demands such a world?

But this question of Causal Harmony between the internal nature of the Monads in the Atheistic P2P Monadism also remains if we posit an actual external world, given that said Monadist can ask, "Why does any division of the External have Causal Harmony with the rest of the supposed External Reality?"

The other possible route, it seems to me, that our Atheistic P2P Monadist could take is to suggest a porosity between Monads? But then would we say the overlap in the "Venn Diagram" of Monads just *is* is the medium?

To be clear I am not a Monadist, at least not in the sense that there's nothing but extenstionless Persons engaging in some kind of Peer to Peer "Network". But I am not sure I could beat Paul Marshall in a debate to the point he'd believe [there's an External Reality beyond Monads & God]...

[Laird]

If we add Thought & Reason, then it seems a Person is someone who has Experiences but also Thoughts and Reasoning. This would seem to already add more to reality than simply Persons & Experience? It arguably adds the entire field of Mathematics into the domain of the Mental, depending on how we regard Platonism?

Yes, and I've been bracketing all of that. There's of course also memory, volition, and the subconscious to add to bare persons and their phenomenal experiences, and probably a few other faculties as well.

This is where I think things get tricky, as I am not sure the hypothetical "Atheistic P2P Monadism" is so easily dispatched. [It would depend in part, I think, on what metaphysical assertion we make from the shared consensus of maths as a field...]

My understanding of, for example, Paul Marshall's Monadism is that each Monad actually does contain the information of the Whole in a way akin to each Peer in a P2P Game Network has their own copy of the game world on their hard drive. Citing one of his chapters in Beyond Physicalism: Toward Reconciliation of Science and Spirituality:

Huh, well, that's one way to answer the "in whose mind(s) is/are this vast amount of information stored" question: in each and every single darn one of our minds - including each and every component of reality, which is a mind too - and the whole kit and kaboodle, from one end of the universe to the other, and from start to finish.

I mean, what can one say to that? It's a bit like solipsism: you can't strictly disprove it by logical contradiction, but should we take much more seriously the guy who says, "You're not really talking to me: you're talking to your representation of me in your monad, which is a universe unto itself, manifest from your own perspective, created and harmonised by God with every other monad, including mine, in which I'm likewise talking to a mere representation of you", than the guy who says, "You're not really talking to me, because only you exist"?

It seems to me the primary contention here would be the last line as this implies a One True Subject metaphysics.

That's one contentious aspect. Another is that it seems to imply a metaphysical system in which, essentially, a bunch of separate video tapes (monads) are set up to run, each completely isolated from all others, but containing in advance the whole "drama" of reality, and happening to have been recorded such that the drama each one "plays" is consistent with all of the others although from a different perspective.

It's only a slight step up from solipsism in that at least you know that others exist, even though you can never interact with them directly: all of their monads could be eliminated and for all intents and purposes you wouldn't know the difference, given that you only ever interact with representations of them in your own monad.

It also brings free will into serious question, implying a sort of predetermination.

I read the chapter you referenced, and it didn't answer the other part of my question - how is all of this information translated into perspectival phenomenal experience? - but presumably some sort of answer could be given, so I wouldn't say that that's a fatal problem.

More problematic is how our minds could contain this unimaginably vast amount of information without us even being aware of its existence.

Also problematic is that, like monistic idealism, its accounting for the role of body and brain is sketchy. Paul seems to impute a causal efficacy to body and brain, and yet all they are are phenomenal experiences: is it really plausible that these phenomenal experiences limit and alter one's phenomenal experience in general? Along with causal efficacy there's an imputation that they have some sort of objective existence, but, again, on idealism all they are are experiences, not objects "out there". This sort of implicitly trades on dualistic concepts and sentiments while more explicitly denying them.

This problem doesn't seem limited to Idealisms, however, given some Cosmopanpsychists have said they think there is only One True Subject. I'd even suggest that despite his reference to Vedanta at the end of his essay (arguably a book really) What is Life? Schroedinger actually posits a One True Subject Dualism where the One uses physical form to experience different possible streams of experience.

I also don't think Berkeley and his religious-metaphysical descendants, as Christian Idealists, would consider their Idealism to have only One True Subject despite being, AFAICTell, Monists in their assertion that the Ground of Reality is mental?

I can't offer an informed respond because I don't know enough about those metaphysics, but you could be right about all that.

OTOH, where the Atheistic P2P Monadist seems to lose their way is the lack of God to provide Harmony to the Monads rather than their denial of some exterior world?

I don't think monadism actually is P2P though. There's no actual communication between monads; they just internally represent one another.

A true P2P pluralistic idealism with genuine communication between minds - to synchronise their internal model of reality - is possible, but then my argument cuts in: having to do all of that communicating and synchronising and updating of internal models is far less parsimonious than just interfacing directly with an objective reality that updates itself.

Of course once we have God then it would seem we have our external Medium, though not necessarily an External Reality unless we affirm that causal continuity between God's Will and the Monads demands such a world?

That sounds more like a client-server model than a P2P model, with God's mind as server and our minds as clients. It's more parsimonious than the P2P model, but still less parsimonious than a mind-independent reality.

But this question of Causal Harmony between the internal nature of the Monads in the Atheistic P2P Monadism also remains if we posit an actual external world, given that said Monadist can ask, "Why does any division of the External have Causal Harmony with the rest of the supposed External Reality?"

I don't understand the premise behind the question. Why wouldn't it? Why would we expect causality to operate harmoniously only in subsets of substances?

The other possible route, it seems to me, that our Atheistic P2P Monadist could take is to suggest a porosity between Monads?

By this do you mean the genuine communication to which I referred above, where they share - presumably by some sort of subconscious telepathy - relevant information with each other so as to update their own internal models and maintain inter-monad consistency?

But then would we say the overlap in the "Venn Diagram" of Monads just *is* is the medium?

...or do you mean here part of one mind sort of literally "being part of" another mind too? That seems problematic for similar reasons as monistic idealism (that to which you refer as One True Self idealism).

To be clear I am not a Monadist, at least not in the sense that there's nothing but extenstionless Persons engaging in some kind of Peer to Peer "Network". But I am not sure I could beat Paul Marshall in a debate to the point he'd believe [there's an External Reality beyond Monads & God]...

Is that really the yardstick though? Whether or not we can convince the guy entertaining an implausible idea that it's wacky? When has that ever worked out?

Yes, and I've been bracketing all of that. There's of course also memory, volition, and the subconscious to add to bare persons and their phenomenal experiences, and probably a few other faculties as well.

Yeah Persons seem to be many things, all at once. [Yet this complexity, if it can be called that, doesn't seem reducible. One of the strong reasons, IMO, to accept Survival evidence is telling us the truth - no one has a good clue not only how a Person can be destroyed, but also no one has a good clue how Persons come into being.]

Huh, well, that's one way to answer the "in whose mind(s) is/are this vast amount of information stored" question: in each and every single darn one of our minds - including each and every component of reality, which is a mind too - and the whole kit and kaboodle, from one end of the universe to the other, and from start to finish.

It is very strange, though I'm not sure the proponent can object too much given many (most?) of us believe there is a vast amount of memory the soul has which is repressed while alive?

The question of anomalous knowledge was even something Plato believed played a role in mathematical knowledge.

I mean, what can one say to that? It's a bit like solipsism: you can't strictly disprove it by logical contradiction, but should we take much more seriously the guy who says, "You're not really talking to me: you're talking to your representation of me in your monad, which is a universe unto itself, manifest from your own perspective, created and harmonised by God with every other monad, including mine, in which I'm likewise talking to a mere representation of you", than the guy who says, "You're not really talking to me, because only you exist"?

I don't know. Marshall seems pretty intelligent, so I would hesitate to reject his view on the grounds it sounds weird. Idealism sounds absolutely crazy to some people, and a large chunk of academia would find the Interaction Problem to be fatal to Dualism?

That's one contentious aspect. Another is that it seems to imply a metaphysical system in which, essentially, a bunch of separate video tapes (monads) are set up to run, each completely isolated from all others, but containing in advance the whole "drama" of reality, and happening to have been recorded such that the drama each one "plays" is consistent with all of the others although from a different perspective.

From what I've read a Monadist is not by necessity a determinist. What's pre-established is the parallelism. It does seem, however, to need some kind of outside source for Causal Harmony. Otherwise what good reason, besides Luck, is there for any pre-established parallelism between Monads to hold?

It's only a slight step up from solipsism in that at least you know that others exist, even though you can never interact with them directly: all of their monads could be eliminated and for all intents and purposes you wouldn't know the difference, given that you only ever interact with representations of them in your own monad.

Yeah, without the One/God providing and the preserving Causal Harmony Monadism seems to fail to avoid a solipsism problem. God has to be there supporting the parallelism, but then God would seem to need to have causal access to all Moands.

So there has to be something in the nature of all Monads that is amenable/receptive to God's power, as well as something in God that allows It/His/Her power to actively affect Monads.

It also brings free will into serious question, implying a sort of predetermination.

I think without God this would probably be the only way it could work, but with God I think the parallelism would avoid that problem?

I read the chapter you referenced, and it didn't answer the other part of my question - how is all of this information translated into perspectival phenomenal experience? - but presumably some sort of answer could be given, so I wouldn't say that that's a fatal problem.

Apologies but what is "Information" in this context? What is "perspectival phenomenal experience"?

More problematic is how our minds could contain this unimaginably vast amount of information without us even being aware of its existence.

I don't think storage issues would make that much difference here, if they aren't a problem for past-life memory?

Marshall seems to accept the Survival evidence, so he likely sees a parallel here between Earth-embodie[d] Monads potentially forgetting billions of years of knowledge from past lives. Which aligns with Plato's own thoughts on the topic.

Also problematic is that, like monistic idealism, its accounting for the role of body and brain is sketchy. Paul seems to impute a causal efficacy to body and brain, and yet all they are are phenomenal experiences: is it really plausible that these phenomenal experiences limit and alter one's phenomenal experience in general? Along with causal efficacy there's an imputation that they have some sort of objective existence, but, again, on idealism all they are are experiences, not objects "out there". This sort of implicitly trades on dualistic concepts and sentiments while more explicitly denying them.

I don't see the problem here? There's always a functional Dualism between the Self-Soul and [corporeal] Body, I don't think any proponent accepting Survival evidence would dispute that.

Causal efficacy is always going to be an issue for all metaphysics, given the only causality we really know from the inside is our own volitional acts involving selecting from possibilities.

If The One aka "God" is the author and preserver of Casual Harmony, there has to be a way for It/Her/His' mental causation to have effect on whatever substance makes up reality.

I don't think monadism actually is P2P though. There's no actual communication between monads; they just internally represent one another.

A true P2P pluralistic idealism with genuine communication between minds - to synchronise their internal model of reality - is possible, but then my argument cuts in: having to do all of that communicating and synchronising and updating of internal models is far less parsimonious than just interfacing directly with an objective reality that updates itself.

That sounds more like a client-server model than a P2P model, with God's mind as server and our minds as clients. It's more parsimonious than the P2P model, but still less parsimonious than a mind-independent reality.

Yeah, you need the One to uphold the parallelism, otherwise the causal histories could only line up by coincidence. But the idea of patterns of causal relations holding across time is a problem that has to be addressed by all metaphysics, unless one is willing to accept the "Humean" view that causality is convenient fiction with nothing actually binding any observed causal relation....yet even accepting this for the external, third person consensus would leave the issue of our logical reasoning also be mere Luck...which would make all rational argumentation worthless.

I don't understand the premise behind the question. Why wouldn't it? Why would we expect causality to operate harmoniously only in subsets of substances?

Physicalists sometimes accept there are no actual Laws of Nature, just patterns we discover. Yet then without anything to bind the nature of the "physical" - which our current evidence tells us is stochastic anyway - there isn't any reason to expect consistency in causal relations either across time or in different locations.

But the problem is the same for all metaphysics, without something/someone holding Causal Harmony causal relations have no reason to be or stay Universal.

By this do you mean the genuine communication to which I referred above, where they share - presumably by some sort of subconscious telepathy - relevant information with each other so as to update their own internal models and maintain inter-monad consistency?

...or do you mean here part of one mind sort of literally "being part of" another mind too? That seems problematic for similar reasons as monistic idealism (that to which you refer as One True Self idealism).

I was thinking more tha[t] Monads would be akin to subtle bodies, where the bodies have some overlap. Not sure if Minds have to overlap in that scheme, but I think part of the issue is it isn't clear what Monads are in Marshall's metaphysics. Sometimes they seem to be the minimal physical particle, other times they seem to be extensionless....yet how can extensionless Monads figure into the claims of panpsychism he makes?

Can something extensionless provide a basis for extension? I accept something extensionless could, by way of some kind of bridge laws, affect that which is extended...though of course we need the One / God to continually preserve such laws....which suggests God has to be not just extended but Everywhere....

But Marshall is saying the extensionless Monads can serve as atoms, akin to Whiteheadian Occasions of "lower grade" being atoms...yet AFAICTell Whiteheadian Occasions *are* extended?

Is that really the yardstick though? Whether or not we can convince the guy entertaining an implausible idea that it's wacky? When has that ever worked out?

It's less "I can't argue with a fanatic" and more "I don't know if I can genuinely refute this metaphysics".

The former is the Physicalist who will just refuse to accept their metaphysics doesn't work due to the Something (Mind) from Nothing (Matter w/ no mental character) problem.

Atheistic Monadism seems to go off the rails because no One is there to hold Causal Harmony in place. Marshall, because he believes in a God that holds Causal Harmony in place, doesn't have that problem.

@Laird 

Another point I think we do agree on, but is worth checking to ensure, is that “immaterial” in a strong sense does not mean ectoplasm, or whatever the afterlife realms are made of.

For me, and I believe for you, that could only be “immaterial” in a weak sense, different from our Earth-bound corporeal existence in degree - the difference between matter and subtle-matter.

To me the strong sense of something being “immaterial” is a radical difference in kind. For example when I say no arrangement of structure has to be intrinsically *about* anything I am not just referring to the organic stuff of the brain. Ectoplasm, ether, and so on would have the same issue. There is no arrangement of spiritual material that is intrinsically about anything else any more than, as per Alex Rosenberg, there can be neurons actually about Paris. Or, as Tallis would say, there is no engram that is intrinsically tied to memories.

IIRC we agree on this but figured it’s best to be sure. 

[Laird]

From what I've read a Monadist is not by necessity a determinist.

Yes, not by necessity, but it does seem to be entailed by Paul's (re)interpretation:

"a monad carries within itself something of all its past and future states, and also the past and future states of all the other monads."

"There is no direct interaction between monads (“transeunt” causation), no transfer of properties or contents, for they are self-contained wholes, but since they express the same universe they are accommodated to one another. What we call interaction or causation is, at this level, mutual accommodation or “pre-established harmony” in Leibniz’s terminology."

What's pre-established is the parallelism.

That's preestablished, yes, but since there is no true causal interaction between them (see above quote), yet they remain in harmony, the entire history of each from beginning to end must be preestablished too.

It is possible though as you suggest that there could be true causal interaction between them, with, say, God doing the shuttling of information from one to the other in real-time: Sci posts in his monad, so God duly shuttles that information across into my monad, and - presto! - your post appears in mine too.

At this point, my argument takes hold though: a straightforward dualism in which the external world genuinely exists, without God having to shuttle around information about it via a set of parallel virtual worlds, is much more parsimonious.

It does seem, however, to need some kind of outside source for Causal Harmony. Otherwise what good reason, besides Luck, is there for any pre-established parallelism between Monads to hold?

Well, it could be as I described immediately above, except that rather than God doing the shuttling of information (a client-server model), it occurs via a distributed system preestablished among the monads (a peer-to-peer model).

Then, though, my argument really takes hold, because this is even less parsimonious than a really-existent external world which requires no shuttling at all, let alone via a presumably complex peer-to-peer system (P2P is always more complex than client-server).

Apologies but what is "Information" in this context? What is "perspectival phenomenal experience"?

These are important questions. Note that according to Paul:

"These “monads” are not the atoms of the materialists but complete perceptions of the universe organized from centers."

and

"monads have inner complexity, each expressing the entire universe from a sequence of points of view as it changes from state to state."

That provides the basis for (what I mean by) a "perspectival phenomenal experience": an experienced, phenomenal perception (via the senses or ESP) of the external world from a "physical" location "within" that world.

Here's the important bit: for another monad's perspectival phenomenal experience from it's own perspective to be consistent with that of all of the others, that perspectival experience needs to be based on a common objective model of the external world. By that I mean the sort of modelling that goes on behind the scenes in a first-person computer game, which you referenced earlier in the exchange.

When I talk about information in this context, I mean the information in that model. For our universe, given the fidelity to which we can probe it via scientific instruments, the information would seem to need to go down to the subatomic level.

So, the question I was asking was: how do we go from information model (of "the external world") to a perspectival phenomenal experience derived from the (information) model?

There's another important question: does each monad actually store all of this information, or does it only store a series of perspectival phenomenal experiences of the external world which is modelled by all of that information?

In an interactive peer-to-peer scenario, if each monad doesn't store all of that information, then the question I posed in an earlier post arises again: where is this information stored?

In the client-server scenario, in which God shuffles around changes between the monads, it's presumably stored in God's mind.

I don't think storage issues would make that much difference here, if they aren't a problem for past-life memory?

I think there's a problem of parsimony here relevant to my argument: it's far more parsimonious to embody all of this information in a really-existing external reality than for it to be stored multiple times, once for each of the many, many monads.

I don't see the problem here? There's always a functional Dualism between the Self-Soul and [corporeal] Body, I don't think any proponent accepting Survival evidence would dispute that.

Recall that we're exploring pluralistic idealism, for which you provided Paul Marshall's interpretation of monadism as an example.

So, we're assuming idealism: there is no actual (physical/material) brain or body, merely (a model comprising) information describing a brain or body, and perspectival phenomenal experiences of brain and body based on that information.

Most of the time though, we have no perspectival phenomenal experience of our brains - we don't sense them in any way - so it seems impossible for the brain in this sense to be causally efficacious. Even when we do have perspectival phenomenal experiences of our brains, it seems absurd that some sort of view on (as a perceptual experience) our brains is what causally affects the rest of our experience.

I suppose that the brain might be causally efficacious on pluralistic idealism in the sense that the information about it in the model describing external reality somehow constrains the monad's experience of reality, but then how does this work?

I was thinking more tha[t] Monads would be akin to subtle bodies, where the bodies have some overlap.

That raises a similar problem as immediately above: like brains, subtle bodies are not "real"; they are only experiences (really: experienced) or the information from which the experience is derived. It's not clear that it's meaningful for them in this sense to "overlap". In fact, it seems clear to me that they can't.

I think part of the issue is it isn't clear what Monads are in Marshall's metaphysics. Sometimes they seem to be the minimal physical particle, other times they seem to be extensionless....yet how can extensionless Monads figure into the claims of panpsychism he makes?

It is a little unclear, but recall that we're treating monadism as an example of pluralistic idealism, so they can't be physical in any sense.

If they're in some sense physical, then we have some form of dualism, which is what I've been arguing for all along.

(I've snipped a lot simply to keep the conversation focussed. A lot (but far from all) of that was to do with causality: we already know that we disagree that it's problematic, and I don't think it's worth rehashing that disagreement in this exchange).