Seeing red

[bennyboy]

So, in your world, an idea is no-thing, and reality is made up of no-things.  Very illuminating.

And in your totally material world view, material means math functions. Deepity. Cuz I always thought stuff was. . . you know. . . stuff. As in, occupying space, having form, and being unambiguously observable. But if "material" means "math functions and other abstract ideas," then I guess I'll be happy to drop the word Idealist and be a materialist. . . because apparently you've just taken Idealism and given it a new label.

I don't think you know what the word etymological means.  Our understanding of the world consists of ideas.  You are taking this brute fact and using it as a shield against knowledge.  But you do so at a cost, and that cost consists in making your model of the world a useless one.  I may have a tough time explaining self-awareness but so what?  A difficult problem does not equal an insolvable problem.  The evidence from science and medicine is that the mind behaves consistent with it being an object like any other.  Complex in its action, but material.  Your preference for the notion of a world of ideas is nothing more than a strategic retreat from the question of how your mind works.  That materialism explains phenomena outside of mind makes you willing to accept mechanistic explanations otherwise.  Because you personally can't comprehend how ideas can be things, you recoil into a position of epistemic insularity.  You can't solve the problem of consciousness, so you assert that it cannot be solved.  And you retreat into a nest of words that mean nothing, and explain less.

That's quite the string of projections and strawmen you have there. Pray tell me more about who I am and what I think.

Well that's vague.  It's also the resort of the religious.  Ideas are immaterial.  So they really are no-thing.  What makes you think ideas are immaterial?

Because you can't see them, touch them or measure them. What does immaterial mean to you?