Proof Mind is Fundamental and Matter Doesn't Exist

[bennyboy]

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.

If you think that's shifting the goalpost, then you'll have to tell me what "form" means to you. Because in my world, if someone says something has form, asking what that form is is a perfectly sensible next question.

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.

Since it is my position that something only describable mathematically is probably an idea, then that's not too surprising, is it?

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.

My failure to imagine photons shames me deeply. I mean, everyone else knows just what they look like, and just what they are, and here is silly me, thinking they are ambiguous, undefined, and describable only in statistical terms. I'm ashamed to represent the shitty Canadian school system.

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.

No, I don't have to do that. I take idealism as default because literally 100% of everything I know, and (assuming non-solipsism) 100% of everything everyone else knows is presented to them as a collection of ideas. That's how we experience reality, and assuming there's something "behind" that, without being able to very strongly demonstrate it, seems like a philosophically weak and completely unnecessary assumption.