(February 3, 2015 at 6:42 am)bennyboy Wrote: When I say ideas in the context of a candidate for reality, I don't mean ideas, like me sitting around thinking up stuff. I mean those elemental principles which make up the framework by which "stuff" operates, and of which stuff is better said to be an expression than vice versa.Okay... so you're not really advocating idealism here at all, which, as I understand it (and to quote a dictionary definition), asserts that "objects of knowledge are held to be in some way dependent on the activity of mind." Perhaps what you're trying to express is more similar to the neutral monism of two of my favorite thinkers, William James and Bertrand Russell?
I don't mean we think up ideas with our monkey brains, and that suddenly becomes our reality.
He who loves God cannot endeavour that God should love him in return - Baruch Spinoza