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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!

Wiki MarkupI 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).

If one claims in reply, then, that, to say, "atoms act as they do because they sense and feel as they do," is to say "more" than that "atoms act as they do because they are internally / externally related as they are," wherein does the "more" consist? And can one specify it at once clearly and consistently, without logical fallacy?

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