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

Fascinating... it does ring true with my musings that the emotion, rather, the power of love is tied to the power of creation somehow. And love can be... far more powerful than anything else. I've certainly experienced that during my more intense Ayahuasca journeys ~ love that feels boundless, limitless, utterly profound. Nothing really compares to it. A powerful unifying force through which something new can emerge.


Yes, I would certainly say so ~ though words cannot do the sensation proper justice. It's a sort of knowing that far transcends mere form. A resonance through profound spiritual love.


Yeah... maybe something Transpersonal and Transcendent, perhaps.


Makes more sense than Panpsychism's weirdness of consciousness being another particle in the particle zoo. Makes more sense that the entirety of the fabric of reality is underpinned by consciousness. As an analogy... in our dreams and imaginations, we can create entire worlds, yet within those worlds, we can have inanimate objects that are composed of dream-stuff, imagination-stuff, within our consciousness that are nonetheless without consciousness or awareness. Form with quality, yet an existence without that spark of awareness or consciousness.

A microcosmic universe of sorts within our mindscape.


Indeed... for psychics, they describe it as their mind feeling the energy around them. They must be... extending or reaching out, or the other energies extending or reaching out for them to feel. Whatever the nature of the energy, it isn't physical in any sense of the word, though it may be correlated with space and time somehow.

The only thing that partially explains it for me is the idea of... gradients of energy, from physical to... auric, psychic, astral(?) to mental, to... the perceiver. Lots of gradients... levels, layers of... vibration on some... up-down axis, from... dense to subtle to, uh... well, you can see how language utterly fails to capture these experiences properly, with their sheer, intricate nuances, and how much fine-grainedness there seems to be to it. Even though I can feel it, I still struggle immensely to conceptualize it. Metaphors barely seem to work for it.

At best, I can only sort of describe it as that this physical layer, level, vibration, of incarnate reality, this subreality of physicality within an infinity, is just a very limited subset of the higher realities ~ a very curated design with very curated qualities, to allow for a very certain sort of set of experience.

The only solution seems to be for the skeptic to have a sufficiently powerful paranormal experience of their own that they cannot rationalize away within their existing framework of reality. You cannot really convince those who already have their minds made up. Indeed... I wouldn't have my current beliefs without the powerful experiences that have by and large reshaped my perspectives on reality.

I used to have lots of doubts about the spiritual ~ I entertained it, having read spiritual stuff, but I could never really truly accept it. There was just nagging doubts in the back of my mind. A sort of... what if it's all just make-believe, what if it's not real, what if it's just fantasy, and there's really just nothing to any of it? Even when I encountered my spirit guides, those doubts never fully went away until a few years had passed. Perhaps it was depression and anxiety that interfered. But it took some very powerful Ayahuasca experiences that I couldn't actually explain in relation to anything else to truly believe ~ those experiences of parallel lives that shocked me something fierce. It's really something else to come... face-to-face with another reality that is physical, another mind that is also embodied, that acknowledges your presence and is just as perplexed as you, wondering just as much as you are that, hey, this is... real?


This would seem to make sense, though it is the case... then the nature of the fields can seem to have any scale or size, given that mystical experiences can expand one to become one with the godhead, or shrink one so as to experience the microcosm of the cell and beyond to the atom. Spiritual experiences seem to have no limit to how they can manifest ~ space and time pose not a limitation.

I have toyed with the idea that perhaps it is our subtle body, our astral body, for want of better words, that extends, as our minds embody it. Or maybe a particular layer of it. I don't know, because it seems so casually transparent and easy, to the point that it doesn't even feel like reaching out. It doesn't feel like anything special.


Yeah, this is something that I am uncertain about as well... because how would it work? Frankly, though, we could ask that about many things...


Makes sense ~ though that also raises an interesting question of what actual consciousness is... what defines it? We seem to have no issue often identifying ourselves fully with our physical body, in the case of Physicalists, or astral body, in the case of astral projectors.

Perhaps one way to approach it is to ask ~ what if we didn't identify ourselves with the physical or astral body or whatever? Where do we draw the line? How do we draw the line? How do we determine who we are, what we are, what the limits of our consciousness is?


Indeed ~ it makes sense that Cosmically Immense Souls can interact, given that during NDE life reviews, many state that they are shown the direct perspectives of those that they have impacted, suggesting interactions at a Soul level that the NDEr is allowed to see snippets of.


These sources suggest he had leanings of that sort:

https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/que...philosophy

https://hollowverse.com/nikola-tesla


Keep in mind that is only true in Kastrup's Analytic Idealism. Other branches make no such statement. I don't agree with Kastrup at all on this. It makes more sense that the astral body is what is the "image", that groups and holds together the physical atoms that make up the physical form.


Makes sense.


Fascinating... makes a lot of sense, intuitively.


Indeed. During astral projection, they have a body that defines their existence and limits within in that space, whatever its nature.

Yeah, the game design metaphor is rather interesting ~ we model it perhaps unconsciously... even in say tabletop RPGs like Dungeons and Dragons where you take on a persona of a character and play that role. Perhaps its a microcosm of this reality, like this reality is a microcosm of the higher reality of the Soul.


There are definitely certain "rules" in this reality, though as Sheldrake puts it, they seem more like habits of nature ~ patterns that are strongly defined, but seem able to be bent, with enough effort put behind it, in the rare cases of purported telekinesis, or poltergeist activity, or even cases where emotions can unconsciously cause purported telekinetic stuff to happen.

I think in the Dialogue on the Speed of Gravity Vernon mentions that Newton may have been inspired by the idea of Daimons, a sort of Animist spirit type that directed aspects of Nature. Specifically he mentions the Daimon of Eros. In Symposium one of the ideas there is that Love serves a role much like gravity, and recently computer scientist/engineer Bill Mensch suggested something similar. All to say I think this idea of equating certain unifying/attractive aspects of Nature is making a comeback of sorts...also aligns with what Dante says at the end of the Divine Comedy is the "Love that moves the Sun & other Stars".

Your mention of dreamscapes does make me wonder about the nature of all dreams. I've had dreams that seemed quite real yet I don't think were more than my mere imagination. I've also had dreams that almost seem like they could be a past life or even a life lived in another reality at a faster time scale. Perhaps some are just imagination, and some are in the Imaginal? If Cosmically Immense Souls are fields they can interpenetrate each other, so that a dead loved one can appear to one or more people to comfort the grieving or announce their imminent return through reincarnation. And those dreams - some shared between shamans I believe - to other realities may actually be the refocusing of attention within our Cosmic Souls to other embodiment such as astral bodies or possibly even biological embodiment in another universe.

On the nature of energy, I think it could be aspects of reality that end up localized into "lesser" form. A field in physics seems like an attenuated Cosmic Soul, energy in physics is a faded form of Daimons or Elan Vital, etc. Not sure if they are genuinely weakened aspects or "sleeping" spirits...or perhaps these entities enjoy holding up the Laws of Physics?

I do think people who have had paranormal experiences differ fundamentally from those that don't or at least don't remember. I suspect a lot of pseudo-skeptics have had negative paranormal experiences in this life - perhaps at a young age - or in a previous life. Maybe in a dream reality?

Never done psychedelics, perhaps some day heh. I am a bit wary as part but I can see myself trying it at least once.

I'm glad you brought up mystical experiences, because it seems to me these really make sense under the idea of a Cosmic Soul within which we have these biological bodies. Some mystic visions even shift the locus of attention from the human body into a plant or some other entity.

Backward in Time causation is one of the few paranormal claims I'm very skeptical of...maybe that's a good thing. If I'm going to talk about Cosmic Souls and having an entire life in some other reality while dreaming maybe it's good there's at least one thing that hits my boggle threshold!  

I think the reason to posit a Cosmic Soul over the idea that apparitions or OOBE astral forms are one's actual soul is that at least some of the problems that are fatal to Physicalism end up crossing over, so to speak, with subtle bodies. What if they are torn apart? What structure within them would store memories or be intrinsically isomorphic to thoughts about anything? It also helps deal with certain issues regarding Super Psi...I think...maybe....

Thanks for the Tesla links, will read through them and get back to you!

Speaking of Idealism, I agree that AFACITell Kastrup's Idealism is pretty untenable. Not necessarily because it negates the possibility of Survival, but because it has various other flaws...

Table Top Role Playing Games are a good example of how a whole world can be a microcosm of imagination. JF Martel and Gordon White actually suggested these games were born from the old seance practices, not necessarily due to direct in-world historical influence but perhaps more a kind of...resonance toward mediumship..

Yeah my guess is the rules of this Universe are maintained, if not by God, then Daimons like the ones that supposedly inspired Newton...So they are really habitual behavior as you say rather than hard Laws...

[Laird]

What are the qualities of the impersonal realm? I assume the "primary qualities" usually assumed for the physical

Pretty much, yes.

with the "secondary qualities" as Experiences?

I'm not 100% sure I know what you mean here, but, provisionally: no, I don't think the impersonal realm has experiential qualities. It might have qualities that are perceived via experience though, like an actual redness as opposed to mere wavelengths of light that get translated by the senses into redness (as we've canvassed in other threads).

So there has to be a physical world, as Physicalists define it?

There doesn't strictly "have to" be, but I've presented an argument for it from parsimony which I think is compelling. At least it makes more sense to me than a mind-only reality.

Do causal networks need to be a different substance? I'm not sure this is clear, given God's Will doesn't seem like a substance to me?

It depends on what you mean by a "causal network". I'm understanding it as implying an extended medium beyond the minds themselves (the "net" over which "work" is carried).

If all you mean though is the exercise of God's volitional power in creating the pre-harmonised Monads, then I don't see any dualism implied here by Monadology: the "causal network" still doesn't entail anything other than minds.

Well I was thinking the rest of the physicalisms - the Type A IIRC - would fit but I guess you are saying the Person isn't physical but the rest of reality is?

Yes.

TBH...I'm not sure I do...it's unclear to me what the impersonal is if it lacks secondary qualities & participation in the Universals, because then it's unclear what grounds the physical's relational properities. By this I mean how does it deal with the problem noted by Casper Wilstrup:


Not sure if it helps but the physicist Smolin says something similar, as I've admittedly noted ad nauseam:

All that needs to be done to clear this up is to posit that the physical is substantive despite that we can't directly probe and determine the nature of that substance beyond its relational properties.

I don't see a problem here.

[Laird]

@Valmar, in response to your last to me: my sentiments as expressed in the last paragraph of my previous response haven't changed.

Pretty much, yes.


I'm not 100% sure I know what you mean here, but, provisionally: no, I don't think the impersonal realm has experiential qualities. It might have qualities that are perceived via experience though, like an actual redness as opposed to mere wavelengths of light that get translated by the senses into redness (as we've canvassed in other threads).


There doesn't strictly "have to" be, but I've presented an argument for it from parsimony which I think is compelling. At least it makes more sense to me than a mind-only reality.


It depends on what you mean by a "causal network". I'm understanding it as implying an extended medium beyond the minds themselves (the "net" over which "work" is carried).

If all you mean though is the exercise of God's volitional power in creating the pre-harmonised Monads, then I don't see any dualism implied here by Monadology: the "causal network" still doesn't entail anything other than minds.


Yes.


All that needs to be done to clear this up is to posit that the physical is substantive despite that we can't directly probe and determine the nature of that substance beyond its relational properties.

I don't see a problem here.

So there can be redness, in the sense of qualia, in the exterior world? Is color blindness then an issue with how the immaterial Person receives this qualia?

The parsimony part is confusing me, if God's volition is all that's needed for a causal network. If there's God, and a bunch of other Persons, and they all are in some telepathic communication...isn't that more parsimonious than an actual physical world that then has to maintain causal stability between not just the Persons and the "physical" but also within the physical itself?

Perhaps it's my issue with physical causality, that it can always be "Humean" - meaning only Luck holds it together across time with no true causation...so having to maintain the exterior impersonal reality seems less parsimonious to me? My understanding has always been that the Monist - whether Idealist or Physicalist or whatever - is the one on the side of Parsimony because they are positing just a single substance?

Beyond that the other problem is this seems to insist on some kind of coordinated parallelism or just a "brute fact" that Persons which are immaterial - and maybe extensionless - can interact with the impersonal world? It seems the Person's experience of the world is a hallucination that, thanks to this parallelism, mimics causal contact?

I accept I might be missing something, so perhaps asking a Dualist and/or Idealist to evaluate the argument would be better because I unfortunately just can't make sense of it...

@Valmar, in response to your last to me: my sentiments as expressed in the last paragraph of my previous response haven't changed.

So, you're not even going to meet me halfway? Well, then. It is what it is.

I think in the Dialogue on the Speed of Gravity Vernon mentions that Newton may have been inspired by the idea of Daimons, a sort of Animist spirit type that directed aspects of Nature. Specifically he mentions the Daimon of Eros. In Symposium one of the ideas there is that Love serves a role much like gravity, and recently computer scientist/engineer Bill Mensch suggested something similar. All to say I think this idea of equating certain unifying/attractive aspects of Nature is making a comeback of sorts...also aligns with what Dante says at the end of the Divine Comedy is the "Love that moves the Sun & other Stars".

Fascinating... it raises questions of... what exactly is Love? It does seem to be almost gravitational or magnetic in ways... it's links to creation in mysticism are still a mystery to me. It might be one of those ineffable things that defy comprehension.

Your mention of dreamscapes does make me wonder about the nature of all dreams. I've had dreams that seemed quite real yet I don't think were more than my mere imagination. I've also had dreams that almost seem like they could be a past life or even a life lived in another reality at a faster time scale. Perhaps some are just imagination, and some are in the Imaginal? If Cosmically Immense Souls are fields they can interpenetrate each other, so that a dead loved one can appear to one or more people to comfort the grieving or announce their imminent return through reincarnation. And those dreams - some shared between shamans I believe - to other realities may actually be the refocusing of attention within our Cosmic Souls to other embodiment such as astral bodies or possibly even biological embodiment in another universe.

I do think so... perhaps it is the capability for spiritually-powerful enough embodiments within the Soul to then... I don't know, resonate with other embodiments in the Soul. It is imagination in a fantasy sense... until it is something more. The nature of the imagination is so rather curious...

The shaman uses the power of the imagination to project into the Imaginal, and communicate with real entities, to learn knowledge that is later verified. I forget the source... but an native American shaman learned about some impending disaster that could affect their tribe ~ something to do with a volcanic eruption? They received symbolism during a journey about it somehow. Wish I could recall it. I'm not sure if it was... Black Elk?

On the nature of energy, I think it could be aspects of reality that end up localized into "lesser" form. A field in physics seems like an attenuated Cosmic Soul, energy in physics is a faded form of Daimons or Elan Vital, etc. Not sure if they are genuinely weakened aspects or "sleeping" spirits...or perhaps these entities enjoy holding up the Laws of Physics?

Perhaps. It's an interesting idea. Astral bodies, subtle bodies, auras... they are all fields, in a sense, fields of energy. The spirits I commune with... they definitely have fields of energy, of differing natures to those energies. Enjoyment could certainly be part of it ~ if a Cosmically Immense Soul is a concept, then a Soul could happily partake in helping maintain aspects of reality that are of interest to it. This reality would therefore be an immensely collaborative effort. Indeed, we incarnates are, in a sense, playing our roles too, as our Souls choose to participate, giving and receiving. So much for "survival of the fittest"...

Perhaps, also... the distinct entities within the world that aren't a product of human activity ~ minerals, plants, animals, planets, stars, etc ~ are all a result of incarnate souls playing a role in maintaining this reality because they find it interesting. The Earth is definitely an incarnation ~ Mother Ayahuasca ~ and it was communicated to me by her that the Sun itself is also an incarnate entity, though details were... sparse. I did get the impression that I wouldn't be able to understand the finer details, so I just got the basics. So... planets and stars are incarnate entities that are conscious... what about moons? Heck, asteroids?

I do think people who have had paranormal experiences differ fundamentally from those that don't or at least don't remember. I suspect a lot of pseudo-skeptics have had negative paranormal experiences in this life - perhaps at a young age - or in a previous life. Maybe in a dream reality?

I think many of them might just have been wounded by Christianity or have been induced to hate Christianity because of what they perceive of the damage Christianity has done, to others, to relatives, to friends, etc.

Never done psychedelics, perhaps some day heh. I am a bit wary as part but I can see myself trying it at least once.

Psychedelics are not for everyone, certainly ~ their potential depends on the strength and direction of the mind. Not all minds can handle them, or are ready for them. Some minds, like mine, are specifically called to them because that is what my Soul decided was necessary for this lifetime. Some minds, are specifically told, during an Ayahuasca journey, to not come back, as Ayahuasca or psychedelics, are not for them ~ in this lifetime?

I'm glad you brought up mystical experiences, because it seems to me these really make sense under the idea of a Cosmic Soul within which we have these biological bodies. Some mystic visions even shift the locus of attention from the human body into a plant or some other entity.

That does remind me of this:

https://www.thechinastory.org/yearbooks/...%E5%A4%A2/

IN ZHUANGZI 莊子, an ancient Chinese text written by Daoist philosopher Zhuangzi during the late Warring States period (476–221 BCE), a story tells that Zhuang Zhou once dreamed he was a butterfly, flitting and fluttering around, happy, and doing as he pleased. As a butterfly, he did not know he was Zhuang Zhou. All of a sudden, he awoke and found he was Zhuang Zhou, solid and unmistakably human. But then he did not know whether he was Zhuang Zhou dreaming he was a butterfly or a butterfly dreaming he was Zhuang Zhou. In the end, Zhuangzi wrote, there was necessarily a difference between Zhuang Zhou and the butterfly; this difference was the ‘transformation of things’ 物化. The transformation is a change in consciousness between reality and illusion. The constant flux between dreams and awakening leads the ‘self’ to change from being unaware of the distinction of things to being aware of the definite distinction between and among things.

I've always wondered that the story meant... maybe he recalled a past-life as a butterfly ~ or maybe a parallel incarnation. Who knows. But it's popular in Chinese mythology and Taoist thought.

Backward in Time causation is one of the few paranormal claims I'm very skeptical of...maybe that's a good thing. If I'm going to talk about Cosmic Souls and having an entire life in some other reality while dreaming maybe it's good there's at least one thing that hits my boggle threshold!  

Yeah, haha. Though, I do wonder... as some claim that they have time-slipped backwards in time before coming back to the present.

But how would it work? Does the past get altered? Or, perhaps... does more information just enter the past and affect memories and possible photographs and such so as to add extra information, therefore not violating anything?

If possible, it means that the law of the Conservation of Energy is simply false. After all, physics is no absolute that cannot be "violated", as some claim, as it has been altered many times. There is simply incorrect or incomplete models that conflict with reality as experienced, and must logically therefore shift to accommodate new information.

I think the reason to posit a Cosmic Soul over the idea that apparitions or OOBE astral forms are one's actual soul is that at least some of the problems that are fatal to Physicalism end up crossing over, so to speak, with subtle bodies. What if they are torn apart? What structure within them would store memories or be intrinsically isomorphic to thoughts about anything? It also helps deal with certain issues regarding Super Psi...I think...maybe....

Indeed... when we die, we leave our physical body, but then... the astral body must also dissolve too. Yet memories and personality are not lost. The Soul must be something far more fundamental than the physical or astral. Apparently even astral entities, spirits, just incarnated Souls, too, as I have learned through the loong spirit. They have a concept of... evolving, after having lived for a long time, compared to our flow of time, anyways. They don't have a concept of "death" ~ just dissolving or fading, or perhaps they ascend into the white light like we do. Apparently, astral forms are sort of... born, as well, incarnating new aspects of Soul. Energy coalesces and shapes into an astral body.

Actually, that also reminds me of something else... memories of pre-birth states, where people recall having been brought into this life by "God" or other entities. Maybe there is an incarnate astral state before we incarnate properly into the fetus in the womb. Prospective parents have recalled paranormal events of having dreamed about their future children, telling them that they were chosen to be their parents, and that they were happy that they were going to be their children. Some have also reported feeling energy or life or spirit entering into their womb around or after conception.

Thanks for the Tesla links, will read through them and get back to you!

Cheers.

Speaking of Idealism, I agree that AFACITell Kastrup's Idealism is pretty untenable. Not necessarily because it negates the possibility of Survival, but because it has various other flaws...

Hence why I have become dissatisfied with it ~ it feels rather incomplete to me, lacking the information of survival or psychic phenomena.

Kant's Transcendental Idealism does feel pretty bulletproof conceptually, though, within what it does address, though being still incomplete:

https://www.philosophybasics.com/branch_idealism.html

Transcendental Idealism (or Critical Idealism) is the view that our experience of things is about how they appear to us (representations), not about those things as they are in and of themselves. Transcendental Idealism, generally speaking, does not deny that an objective world external to us exists, but argues that there is a supra-sensible reality beyond the categories of human reason which he called noumenon, roughly translated as the "thing-in-itself". However, we can know nothing of these "things-in-themselves" except that they can have no independent existence outside of our thoughts, although they must exist in order to ground the representations.

The doctrine was first introduced by Immanuel Kant (in his "Critique of Pure Reason") and was also espoused by Johann Gottlieb Fichte and Friedrich Schelling, and later resurrected in the 20th Century by Edmund Husserl.

This type of Idealism is considered "transcendental" in that we are in some respects forced into it by considering that our knowledge has necessary limitations, and that we can never know things as they really are, totally independent of us. The name may, however, be considered counter-intuitive and confusing, and Kant himself preferred the label Critical Idealism.

Perhaps Kant was wrong, though, because it would seem necessary for the soul, the creators, the maintainers, of this reality to be fully aware of the nature of this reality, the things-in-themselves that compose this reality.

Table Top Role Playing Games are a good example of how a whole world can be a microcosm of imagination. JF Martel and Gordon White actually suggested these games were born from the old seance practices, not necessarily due to direct in-world historical influence but perhaps more a kind of...resonance toward mediumship..

Interesting... they do seem good at triggering and inspiring the imagination, with how we come up with certain worlds, characters, etc. Might not be literal, but definitely unconsciously inspired.

Yeah my guess is the rules of this Universe are maintained, if not by God, then Daimons like the ones that supposedly inspired Newton...So they are really habitual behavior as you say rather than hard Laws...

Indeed ~ though it does raise questions as to what the nature of these Daimons actually are.

The voids in the universe where there are no stars or anything... it does just seem entirely lifeless and empty.

So, perhaps the Daimons might include stars and planets... not sure about the nature of moons, asteroids, etc.

[Laird]

So there can be redness, in the sense of qualia, in the exterior world?

I don't know. Perhaps. I haven't thought about it carefully, so I'm just leaving the possibility open for now. Do you not remember our previous discussions on this?

Is color blindness then an issue with how the immaterial Person receives this qualia?

Presumably. Again, we've discussed this previously.

The parsimony part is confusing me, if God's volition is all that's needed for a causal network. If there's God, and a bunch of other Persons, and they all are in some telepathic communication...isn't that more parsimonious than an actual physical world that then has to maintain causal stability between not just the Persons and the "physical" but also within the physical itself?

No, because it means God has to model an entire universe in His mind, and then translate that in real time, for each person, into a perspectival perceptual experience of that simulated world, while at the same time receiving volitional input from each person, and updating His universe model based on that input. That's a lot of mental work that is more parsimoniously offloaded to an independent physical reality.

Aside from parsimony, this also reduces God: is He really just some sort of glorified game engine, performing a bunch of complex calculations for his "clients"?

Another way of looking at parsimony is as application of the principle that unless we have good reason not to, we should posit the most straightforward explanation for any given phenomenon. For example, if we see a person shoot a gun at another person, and that other person starts bleeding, we should posit that that other person started bleeding because (s)he had been shot, because that's the most straightforward explanation - not that, say, the bullet missed and a preexisting wound spontaneously reopened and started bleeding.

In the current case, the most straightforward explanation of a perceived physical world is an actual physical world, not the convoluted explanation that there only appears to be a physical world, but really it's being telepathically implanted into our minds by God, who's modelling it in His mind as though he were a giant game engine, calculating how it would look for each of us (whose "physical location" he's tracking in perfect detail) if we really were inside a real physical world, while at the same time we're telepathically transmitting our volitional movements to Him, and He's updating His mental model accordingly.

Why would anyone take that alternative explanation seriously when there's a far more straightforward one available?

Perhaps it's my issue with physical causality, that it can always be "Humean" - meaning only Luck holds it together across time with no true causation...

Really? Again, that's an alternative explanation that I can't take seriously, especially as part of a proponent community that takes statistical significance seriously when it comes to parapsychology experiments.

so having to maintain the exterior impersonal reality seems less parsimonious to me?

Why would there be a need for maintenance?

My understanding has always been that the Monist - whether Idealist or Physicalist or whatever - is the one on the side of Parsimony because they are positing just a single substance?

There is more than one way to conceive of and apply principles of parsimony. See above.

Beyond that the other problem is this seems to insist on some kind of coordinated parallelism

Parallelism is another explanation I don't take seriously, hence interaction.

or just a "brute fact" that Persons which are immaterial - and maybe extensionless - can interact with the impersonal world?

If we can take telepathy - mind-mind interaction - as brute fact, then why not mind-matter interaction?

It seems the Person's experience of the world is a hallucination that, thanks to this parallelism, mimics causal contact?

It's not parallelism, it's interaction, so there's no mimicry involved.

I accept I might be missing something, so perhaps asking a Dualist and/or Idealist to evaluate the argument would be better because I unfortunately just can't make sense of it...

That's fine. We might have reached the end of the road in this particular exchange then.

[Laird]

So, you're not even going to meet me halfway?

Don't be disingenuous. As I've pointed out already, I tried that approach and you rejected it. In truth, you're just as rigid as anybody else here, if not more so. Take your own signature to heart.

That's fine. We might have reached the end of the road in this particular exchange then.

Sadly as you note I actually don’t recall certain past discussions grounding the argument. I fear I am wasting your time, especially since my view of causality is so radically different from yours.

But I think the argument *is* interesting, I would just suggest posting somewhere like the Analytic Idealism Discord or one of the related Reddit Subs. There’s also the old Idealist-centric forum Metaphysical Speculations.

I am happy to follow the debate, I just fear I am not capable of properly evaluating the argument on my own. 

[Laird]

Sadly as you note I actually don’t recall certain past discussions grounding the argument.

Oh, they weren't related to this argument, only to the idea that qualities like colour are "out there" in the physical world, and that physics doesn't capture them.

I fear I am wasting your time, especially since my view of causality is so radically different from yours.

But I think the argument *is* interesting, I would just suggest posting somewhere like the Analytic Idealism Discord or one of the related Reddit Subs. There’s also the old Idealist-centric forum Metaphysical Speculations.

I am happy to follow the debate, I just fear I am not capable of properly evaluating the argument on my own. 

No worries. I've still got the finalisation of my page arguing against monistic idealism, along with related page updates, on my to-do list.