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Ideas are not material. Even if they are stored in material brains.

Especially not when they can be independently rediscovered without having any trace of them stored anywhere.

Ideas are not material, but thevardanian has a point in the context of this thread. Unless you believe in some kind of supernatural force, all you have is matter and matter-based thought. Ideas are not material but they still need a brain to be held. And a very conscious one.

About rediscovering, you can simply argue that ideas are matter properties so an intelligent being can recognize them.

You can not distinguish ideas from material reality. That is sensory perception, and your ideas that result are basically the accumulation of material structures, or simply knowledge. So ideas are not anything more than the knowledge that you have which interprets, and reinterprets the sensory perception.

Is difference (the distinction in question) something intrinsic to the world, or something imposed upon the world?

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