> many philosophers
If only this was the stuff humans wasted their energy on not shooting explosives to improve their ego. :-)
> If humans never even developed, many philosophers would say the concepts of "number" and "7" and "star" would not exist.
Yes, I'm in the camp that thinks this is just plain wrong.
> abstract mathematical concepts are more privileged than physical categories like stars.
I agree to that.
> I can't even tell if you're arguing one side or the other
Sorry, if I was unclear. You wrote:
> Do or can concepts and categories exist without the beings that create them?
This takes it a priori, that the categories are created by the beings. If this is true, then I think by definition this categories can't precede the beings. That's why I wrote "of course not". When things are created by beings, they don't precede them, when they are not, they do.
What I already disagree with is what you already implied as a given. Honestly I don't even know how to argue for that, because this is what I think is part of the definition of the concepts and categories. When I coin some term it always happens in reaction to things I perceived with my senses. So given my senses don't lie to me, of course this is outside of me.
There are also things that are in fact invented by humans, for example color names. This doesn't mean that colors don't exist independently, but the exact boundary is arbitrary.
There are also concepts where I think they can be both. For example beauty. When applied to skin or shape, these are just invented, but the beauty of complexity or completeness exists outside of us. And beauty in general only exists as it points as to a thing that exists independently of us.