Amos... at the risk of repeating some points I have made before in these discussions, I will again suggest that there is a LARGE linguistic confusion quotient at work.

Here is a famous classic example, from William James and the link below mentions some other examples.

http://mauricefstanley.com/bewitch/48.html


"William James told the story of a group of hunters in the forest. One of the men sees a squirrel on a tree, and the squirrel sees him. The squirrel scrambles to the opposite side of the tree from the man. The man circles the tree, and the squirrel cautiously stays on the opposite side of the tree from him, and around and around they go, The other hunters disagree. One says the man goes around the tree and the squirrel, and another objects that the man goes around the tree, but not the squirrel. They turn to James to get the opinion of a philosopher. "It's all a matter of defining your terms," James answers. "If by 'going around' you mean 'going east, south, west, north, east, etc.,' then the man certainly goes around the squirrel. But if by 'going around' you mean 'going from side to back to side to belly to side, etc.' then the man does not go around the squirrel.""

Now I KNOW this is not something that will directly address your supposition, Amos, that somehow 'ideas' and mental constructs have a real 'existence' apart from the material 'stuff' that juggles them, but it does address the pragmatic issue of what various people mean by 'reality'. Plato's notion of a realm of 'eternal forms' has led to several thousand years of ...ummm... semantic bantering over what such a realm might 'be'. *I* can appreciate the interest, but I can't see how it can ever be anything except a way to play with language...or justify religious concepts such as 'heaven'.