Seeing red

[bennyboy]

Devils advocate for what or whom ?  I think that any definition of idea that does not distinguish between a rock and an idea is likely to yield poor inferences no matter what way you go with it.  

I'm investigating a new set of ideas, not rooted in my ideas about idealism. I'm trying to look at this through a materialist world view and see if it sheds any new light on things for me.

Our conceptualizations of dna are ideas.  DNA itself is an expression of organic chemistry.  The concepts themselves are as much(and as little) a code for building life as bernoulli's principle is a code for building a plane.  

Everything in the brain is an expression of organic chemistry, too. It is the organization which represents ideas, according to you, no?

A definition that's too broad runs the risk of defining nothing at all.  You probably answered your own question -in- the question above, we don;t refer to -any- representation of state as an idea.  You said it yourself.  Expressed in certain ways, for certain reasons.  I'm sure you could draw those analogies without any fuss over whether or not dna is an idea, in any case.  The things built by dna, for example, are generally temporary themselves, requiring metabolism and growth of new cells or structures to persist, as we do, as living examples of the ship of theseus.

Well, if we are talking about physics rather than qualia, then DNA both represents an interaction between things and events, and serves as the formative pattern for new life. I'd certainly categorize that as an idea, since it's essentially memory + "will."