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I have had to rethink the whole question of the similarity as well as the difference between materialism (and / or dualism) and objective idealism / psychicalism as alternative metaphysical positions.

If my argument is sound that what Hartshorne takes the metaphysician to be saying "analogically," as distinct from either "symbolically" or "literally," cannot, in fact, be so distinguished except verbally, and that the metaphysician, therefore, must be saying something in one of these other two ways if it is to count as saying anything meaningful at all, then to speak of mind (or psyche) "in general," or "in some form," is utterly nichtssagend – nichtssagend—not a whit less so than to speak of matter in the same completely generalized sense. In other words, if Hartshorne is right, as I agree he is, that "matter," used thus analogically, explains absolutely nothing that can't be explained without it, I don't see why I'm not likewise right, that "mind" so used explains just as little. If you can't even say what "mind in general," or "mind in some form," means, you certainly can't use it to explain anything!

I submit that the burden of explaining things metaphysically can be borne only by terms used neither "symbolically" nor "analogically," but strictly "literally." Of course, once such a strictly literal explanation has been provided, it may well be "interpreted," for one purpose or another, in symbolic terms. But any such "interpretation" adds nothing whatever to the explanation itself, which can be provided, if at all, only in strictly literal terms. Thus X is the effect of Y, or X is caused by Y, not because X "somehow experiences" Y, or Y is "somehow experienced by" X, but because, or insofar as, X is really, internally related to Y, while Y, in that relation, at least, is only logically, externally related to X. Or, again, atoms act as they do, not – as Hartshorne says – because not—as Hartshorne says—because "they sense and feel as they do," but because "they are internallly internally related as they are (to the future as (well as to the past), i.e., as concrete singulars that, as such, instantiate all three of Peirce's categories: [t]hirdness as well as [s]econdness and [f]irstness" (Notebooks, 21 July 2008).

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