Proof Mind is Fundamental and Matter Doesn't Exist

[Captain Scarlet]

No I have responded by saying that they have values in spacetime and are therefore not ideas.

Really?  These values establish that they are not ideas?  How, pray tell.

The form is that determined by the maths  What are you after here, the describtion of a billiard ball (which it probably isn't for example?).

No.  What I want is an unambiguous description of a thing, which is necessary to call it a thing rather than an idea.  A collection of formulae and "values" isn't really convincing in this regard, since those are, exactly, ideas.

 You keep asking me to define a form and I keep referring you to the models which will give you that.  I cannot describe the form in a platonic or Newtonian sense.

I think form is a pretty simple word.  What does a QM particle look like?  What's it's volume?  What's it's shape?  What are the properties by which you can infer that it is a thing, and not an idea or an expression of one or more ideas?

I mean to say what I said.  They really exist.  We can detect them.  I am not sure what would count as evidence of a photon to you?  If your standard of evidence is a want to see a photon, as a billiard ball, in 3D space or I am forced to believe photons dont really exist, they are just an idea, materialism is false or significantly flawed... well you might just be disappointed.

The issue isn't whether photons exist.  It's whether they are the expression of physical mechanisms or the expression of ideas.  I think for something to be said to exist physically, it would need to be expressable unambiguously in spacetime.  If it is ambiguous in nature, then it is paradoxical-- and that which is paradoxical is easily expressed in mind, but not easily expressed in any sense that one should call "physical."

You state that for example 'photons' are ethereal, formless and therefore more like the idea of a thing rather than a thing. Then when you receive an answer that states they are not formless, have an instantiation in reality and have values in spacetime, and are pointed at models explaining it.Then you shift the goalpost and ask....

....what do they look like then. You do realise how small and fast these things are right?  What exactly are you expecting to be shown? Other than describing them mathematically, I am not sure how anyone could show that.

Photons are not ideas, they may be approximations of quantised fields.  But that still does not make them merely ideas or in anyway validate Idealism or invalidate Realism.  Your failure to imagine photons from the models describing them is your incredulity and not a wider point of deeper meaning.

You can of course examine and reject any and all of those models and hold that photons are just ideas. But then you would need to do that by presenting a positive model and case of your own.