Boris, you raise so many points to which I personally resonate, I strongly doubt I can reply to all of them tonight. It's late, and it's time for bed.
But we can begin with the italics, above. Have you ever seen the Mandelbrot set? I mean, the graphical representation of same, which I've seen in a couple different books by now?
The way I see it, determinism and causality are surely "fundamentally connected," just as you have said. I gather that you understand this as something being imposed on one. But the point of what Grandpierre is doing here, which seems to be supported by Kafatos and Draganescu, is that you have justification for supposing that you are equally the creative "doer," as you are the one being "done to." For the nature of the Fundamental Consciousness and your own natural consciousness are not fundamentally unalike. Indeed, they so resemble each other, that many people today still believe that God made man "in His image." Just think about that. The implications are staggering. Science has never demonstrated that as an ill-founded supposition....
What these guys are saying is the physical laws hold completely within the stuctural (physical/electromagnetic/chemical -- material) sphere. This is the "structural side" of the integrative science they propose.
Regarding the phenomenal side, however, they seem agreed that this dimension of human existence and experience is subject to different laws entirely. And free will has traction and purchase in that domain.
This is not an "either/or" situation/decision. It is the description of the "living tension" in which human life is lived -- with all its reason and free will, and the choices that follow from same.
Have I seen it?...When I first read of it in Scientific American (August 1987?) I wrote my own code to explore it. I found the exact area shown on the magazine's cover. I've read Mandelbrot's "popular" books.
Also Stephen Wolfram's sterile, self-aggrandizing, and narcissistic gigantic hunk of nothing.
--Boris