and they can even be seen using scanning devices to the point its possible to watch a movie being viewed by a subject. When a lion looks at a gazelle and thinks: "Yum", I think we would agree the creature is having an idea not much different from the idea in the mind of a salivating dog. Most higher animals seem to have ideas and seem to be able to plan in order to hunt, pick up animal chicks and dudes, tend to their young and just generally operate in the world. Is this brain stuff mysterious and inadequately explained at present? Yes - sure it is. But installing magic as a creative force for this all this seems to me more mysterious still.

If all brains cease to exist, then do ideas exist?

Why all the variations on the transcendental argument? Why aren't you sticking around to actually engage in conversation?

Are, they, now?

Tell me: where do ideas exist? How do they exist? What is the nature of an idea?

There are perfectly naturalistic explanations. I'm just curious why you believe ideas are beyond the material realm, and what evidence you have to support it. This is critical to support your assertion, as so far, all the evidence points to naturalistic causes.

This gets into the holographic theory of mind.

Ideas, are pretty much directly related to memory; past experiences. Your ideas are influenced by your past, your actions are influenced by your past. So memories are the key, but how does memory work?

Previously memory was thought to be localized in the brain in cells called engrams. Scientists never found such engrams and were completely ignorant as to what they could be made of. Brain surgery is great stuff, most neurosurgery is done in conscious patients so doctors can stimulate their brain and check to see if everything is all good to go. One thing that neurosurgeons have noticed that that people would recollect on past events when their brain was stimulated. And not just any random memory, it would be something very simple and it would always be the same when they stimulate that same spot. Not to mention it would be a seemingly random spot in the brain each time such phenomena happened. These memories were also incredibly vivid, patients could recall entire conversations! This proposed the idea that memory permeated the entire brain.

Obviously some grotesque animal testing would be done in order to test this. There were experiments done in lab mice, in which they had to travel through a maze and then remember the path when parts of their brains were taken out. After failed attempts to get the mice to forget the path after cutting virtually every portion of different mice brains blood started to boil. Frustration led to even larger chunks of brain being taken out. Yet the mice still clumsily stumbled to their destination without fail.

Ok, so memory is pervasive what do holograms have to do with this? What is a hologram anyway? Holograms are interesting, they are images that change orientation depending on the angle you view it. In simpler terms, it appears to be a 3D image, but it really isn't. Actually, they hardly exist at all, you can touch a hologram and your hand would pass right through. Holography is possible through interference and diffraction, what exactly is interference and diffraction? Interference occurs when two waves overlap. Picture a lake, if you have two stones and drop them both in the ripples will cause interference. Diffraction is when a wave hits and object. Light is a collection of waves. You don't see objects, you just see the light reflected off of objects.

How does this tie into memory? Well, when your brain functions, it emits waves. These waves are bound to overlap and cause interference. So it's possible that our brains create sort of holograms, and these holograms are memories.

Isn't the world interesting? What I do find interesting is that this actually tends to deny free will, how unsettling. In other words I may be able to calculate your thoughts.

If you're in for more of a mystical point of view I could also get into novelty theory and the fractal time software.

This is silly to me, but here it is anyway.

Novelty is the measurement of uniqueness in the universe. Novelty fluctuates throughout time. In other words, novelty can be described almost as free thought; free will, and how much of it there is. The fractal time software is a chart of novelty throughout a selected period of time. One way of thinking of this is that your thoughts and ideas have already been thought and contemplated before in concept throughout time.

Where do these ideas come from? Are they independent of the mind? How are thoughts independent of Matter?

What do you mean?

I can think and generate the idea that I have a million dollars in the bank, I can think that as hard as I can it's just not going to happen. Can you explain this phrase further?

Whoa there, that is a huge logical jump. You just posited the idea of an immaterial realm and somehow that equals deity? Please check your logic with that one. And no, the fact that ideas spawn from matter is proof that ideas remain part of the material 'realm'.

Matter isn't ALL there is in the universe.

You have energies:

Kinetic

Chemical

Electric

Nuclear

Thermal

Surface

Rest (Matter/Antimatter)

etc.

The four forces:

Gravitational

Electromagnetic

Strong Nuclear

Weak Nuclear

And wonderful wonderful antimatter.

Ideas are electric energy and electromagnetism. So you are right, ideas aren't matter per se, but you need a brain for ideas, and brains are made up of matter.