(May 12, 2016 at 11:35 pm)Mudhammam Wrote: My concern is whether or not it is meaningful to speak of "principles" or "ideas" as subsisting "out there" in some Platonic heaven; perhaps these are no more related to the external world than the color red, and are only useful to minds in categorizing their experiences, which, more or less result from phenomenon that, although can be described by principles or ideas, cannot actually be said to exist by what are terms of reflection and ratiocination in conjunction with sensation.
What can be said to exist? Certainly, anything which can be placed in both time and space can be said to exist-- it exists in the context of the framework of space and time. Certainly space and time can also be said to exist: they are the framework that allow the things to exist.
Does evolution exist? No, it doesn't, in a simple material sense. It's a description of a set of principles, which while not being locatable, certainly represent very real observable phenomena. In fact, evolution has never "happened." No object has evolved into another object. So implicitly, even scientists take the IDEA of a species-- what features of the species overall seem to represent, and show how that IDEA is modified through the passage of time in subsequent organisms.
However, I'd argue that intrinsic to the Earth's environment-- fluids of certain temperatures, certain compositions, etc. there are hidden real physical ideas-- the inevitable tendency of certain forms in a chaotic system to resolve themselves to other forms-- and that simple material "existence" doesn't really matter.
