[fnord_too]

I think this dwindles to definitions. For instance, if you say something exists if it impacts the physical world, do pure ideas exist? (Math, for instance, is a pure idea that is often used to model or explain the physical.) Do ideas only exist if they are codified? Thought? These sorts of excursions usually deteriorate into semantics pretty quickly, which is not necessarily bad, but gets old pretty quickly and offers declining intellectual rewards IMO. (That is, the exact question matters less than the exercize, but you get less and less from each subsequent exercize.)