Physical idealism

[bennyboy]

Perhaps -you- should demonstrate that you understand what your own claims are?   Provide greater clarity.  As I alluded to above, if these "ideas" (however you define them) which are fundamental and somehow informative as to the relationship between order and chaos are interchangeable with material objects and interactions, then you aren't digging deeper...you're just re-branding.

Given a specific instance of an idea-- say the idea of animal reproduction, there's no difference between what I call an idea and what you might call something else. However, I think that the formative principles or ideas transcend their mechanisms. I don't mean that they don't NEED a mechanism, but that they may be expressed in a number of different mechanisms-- much as an .mp3 song is one whether it's in RAM, on a CD, or encoded in colored seashells on a beach.

For example, I think any watery Earth-sized planet, if it has life, will have what we would recognize as fish, whether they use the same genetic encoding system that Earthbound animals use. There is, implicit in the chaos of a primordial soup at certain temperatures, etc. the idea of "fishiness." They may develop totally different evolutionary mechanisms, but they will have fins, because fins allow for better propulsion, and they will have skin and teeth, and probably backbones, brains, etc.

The rule is, and I've been here before in very different threads: if something is expressible in multiple media, but requires SOME media, then that thing is a physical idea, and the media is simply the mechanism of the expression of that idea.