Physical idealism

[bennyboy]

  Clearly, the DNA has ideas

Imma stop you right there........

Unrelated to the above, but....that thing about numbers of toes - it's actually fascinating..more going on than dna.  Ever wondered why we see alot of even limbed (and digited) creatures, as opposed to odd?  8 legs, 6 legs, 4 legs, 2 legs.  10 digits, 8, 6.  DNA might "say" -build toes-...but it doesn't actually have to specify a particular number and it will still arrive at a pattern which we would, likely, interpret to be significant.  As to the OP, I think it's easy to agree.  DNA doesn't tell you whether or not a particular human body has a scar on it's face, for example, and so, like the legs and toes above...DNA might tell us something, but there are obviously other constraints and metrics to which we'd have to refer to give us a complete representation (or explanation) of any particular human body.  How that leads in to idealism (of any kind) I'm not sure.  In the case of legs and toes it leads in to yet another slew of materialist propositions - the manner in which division is accomplished by living cells, bilateralism, environmental and structural requirements...

It's a different kind of idealism than I've talked about in the past.  In this post, I'm talking about ideas as formative principles, without reference to any conscious entity.

tbh I'm not even arguing against materialism, except to say this: that formal principles clearly precede materialism, and that the way that matter in a chaotic system organizes itself is better seen as an expression of those principles, than to say that the organization is a happenstance of material properties.  Whatever it is that caused matter to have its particular properties must also be said to be the fundamental idea on which evolution, for example, is founded.

Yes, I know that sounds like an appeal to Deism, but I'm not necessarily saying that ideas imply consciousness or intent.