Yes, they do. All dualists have open themselves up to questions like this, though I suspect few have thought too hard about it. How many people believe in a soul that exists beyond the corporal body? Billions, probably.

When asked, why is it when specific parts of the physical brain are damaged, specific (and often predictable) types of deficits occur, the answer given is something like this: if you damage a radio receiver, it is normal that it can't receive certain signals.

That is why I asked about what smallmouth's model was for situations like this: if the physical mind is damaged, does the non-physical mind remain intact but simply gets frustrated that the physical mind isn't carrying out its wishes?

I've also heard this kind of talk from some in the psychedelic community. They've had experiences that feel so real yet are incoherent with their understanding of the apparent "real world." Rather than concluding that these small molecules have simply interfered with our brain's ability to model reality and their drug-induced experience was an illusion, they instead think their mind lives in a larger reality and communicates with their earth-bound physical brain, and that a lot gets lost in the translation.

> Rather than concluding that these small molecules have simply interfered with our brain's ability to model reality and their drug-induced experience was an illusion, they instead think their mind lives in a larger reality and communicates with their earth-bound physical brain, and that a lot gets lost in the translation.

Oh boy, have I been there.

Psychedelic experiences really test the foundations of your world view. I am definitely not a dualist, but I can still vividly remember experiencing existence outside of time. When the dust settled I arrives at a panpsychic explanation, in that I expect consciousness to be a property of the computation that occurs in the universe, whereas brains are a particularly sophisticated nested computer. It just doesn't seem right any more that consciousness would occur in the brain, but not outside of it. It's all space dust anyway - to believe that brain space dust is somehow special for some reason seems as unreasonable as the beliefs of a dualist. Not sure how crazy I am to be thinking this (doesn't everyone think their own worldview is the sane one?), but I can very easily imagine people coming up with all sorts of even crazier interpretations of their experience.