Idea

For other uses, see Idea (disambiguation).

An idea (Greek: ἰδέα) as a philosophical vocabulary generally means an image in mind. Concepts basically mean generalized ideas and categories are the most fundamental concepts.

Whether ideas exist in mind alone or they have extra-mental objective existence, whether ideas are generated or they innately exist in mind, whether some types of ideas (such as God, soul, and world) should be considered special or all ideas are basically the same, and other questions concerning ideas were raised as one of central issues in the history of philosophy. Perspectives to the nature, essence, origin, and types of ideas have been integrated and contextualized into each philosophical thought, both in ontology and epistemology, and the meaning of idea is thus configured accordingly.

For Plato, for example, ideas are not simply images in mind but they are permanent existence with which Demiurge, the divine crafter, created the cosmos. Those ideas are, according to Plato, also inscribed in the soul prior to experience. Medieval scholastics understood those ideas as the existence in God's mind by which the Creator created the universe. Modern philosophers since Descartes, however, interpreted ideas as mental images existing within the mind of a cognitive subject. The concept of ideas as a mental image still continues today.

In a popular sense, an idea arises in a reflex, spontanious manner, even without thinking or serious reflection, for example, when we talk about the idea of a person or a place.

History of the term "Idea"

The word "Idea" originated from Greek and it is the feminine form of εἶδος (Greek eidos: something seen; form, shape; related to idein "to see," eidenai "to know" ). "Idea" meant at first a form, shape, or appearance and in it implied the meaning of "visual aspect" in classical Greek.

Idea, within Plato's philosophy, as contrary to modern acceptance, meant something outside of the mind, i.e. primarily and emphatically objective. It was the universal archetypal essence in which all individuals coming under a universal concept participate. According to Plato, by sensuous perception we obtain an imperfect knowledge of individual objects and by notions we reach a higher knowledge of the idea of these objects. In Plato's view, the universal notions (concepts) constitute science (general knowledge) as it is in our mind, there correspond ideas, standing outside of our mind. Ideas are seen as truly universal. Each universal idea has its own separate, independent existence, which determines the nature of an object related to it. Ideas dwell in a sort of celestial universe. In contrast with the individual objects of sense experience, which undergo constant change and flux, the ideasare perfect, eternal, and immutable.

Plato felt that there must be some sort of community between the individual object and the corresponding idea. This community consists in "participation." The concrete individual participates, or shares, within the universal idea, and this participation constitutes an individual of a certain kind or nature. The participation seems to consist in imitation. The idea, that is models and prototypes, while sensible objects are copies, very imperfect, of these models. Ideas are reflected in a feeble and obscure way in them. The idea is the archetype (original model of a given thing) and individual objects are merely images. Such ratiocinations posses the questions:

• What precisely is the celestial universe in which ideas have eternally existed? (Aristotle and Plato had contrary viewpoints as to a doctrine of independent ideas.)
• What is their relationship to the Idea of the Good? (Here Saint Augustine allots a unique position in the transcendental region of Plato's ideas to that relating to a God.)

Philosophy

Plato and Platonism

The Platonic Forms are sometimes called "Ideas" (Greek ἰδέαι alongside εἴδη). See Theory of Forms.

Francesco Petrarch

Petrarch, founder of Renaissance humanism, was the originator of a new interest in Plato's ideas and Platonism.^¹b The references to Plato which Petrarch discovered personally in letters of Cicero led him to proclaim Plato's superiority to Aristotle.[1] Petrarch even declared to four Venetian critics that he possessed a lost manuscript of sixteen dialogues by Plato of these ancient ideas.[2] It was seen that the Plato ideas throughout the Renaissance were a newly discovered pre-Christian sage whose exciting doctrines, wrapped in esoteric mythology, challenged the cut and dry teachings of Aristotle.[3] Platonism played a major role throughout the Renaissance from the time of its introduction by Petrarch as a countervailing force against the traditional Aristotelian teachings. Petrarch's Canzoniere was the most influential lyric poetry of all time with Augustinian Platonism. Platonism and Petrarchism walked hand in hand throughout the Renaissance.

Ideas, which are transcendent universals, alone constitute reality as against the shadowy existence of particular material objects.[4] Chief among these ideas is the Idea of the Good. This was seen as supreme both as the goal of knowledge and as the guide to morality.[5] Petrarch followed Plato's idea that the only real knowledge was the knowledge of ideas. It was pictured mythically as a sort of reminiscence of the transmigrated soul's earlier existence. The Christianizing tendency of Renaissance Platonists with its ideas of the Platonic idealism is seen in Petrarch when he says, "Of Plato, Augustine does not in the least doubt that he would have become a Christian if he had come to life again in Augustine's time or had foreseen the future while he lived. Augustine relates also that in his time most of the Platonists had become Christians and he himself can be supposed to belong to their number." Petrarch wrote a personal book called Secretum which was about the Idea of the Good as related to his moral ideals in imaginary discussions with Augustine.^²a

René Descartes

Descartes often wrote of the meaning of idea as an image or representation, often but not necessarily "in the mind," which was well known in the vernacular. In spite of the fact that Descartes is usually credited with the invention of the non-Platonic use of the term, we find him at first following this vernacular use.^b In his Meditations on First Philosophy he says, "Some of my thoughts are like images of things, and it is to these alone that the name 'idea' properly belongs." He sometimes maintained that ideas were innate and uses of the term idea diverge from the original primary scholastic use. He provides multiple non-equivalent definitions of the term, uses it to refer to as many as six distinct kinds of entities, and divides ideas inconsistently into various genetic categories. [6] For him knowledge took the form of ideas and philosophical investigation is the deep consideration of these ideas. Many times however his thoughts of knowledge and ideas were like those of Plotinus and Neoplatonism. In Neoplatonism the Intelligence (Nous) is the true first principle—the determinate, referential 'foundation' (arkhe)—of all existents; for it is not a self-sufficient entity like the One, but rather possesses the ability or capacity to contemplate both the One, as its prior, as well as its own thoughts, which Plotinus identifies with the Platonic Ideas or Forms (eide)[7]. A non-philosophical definition of Nous is good sense (a.k.a. "common sense"). Descartes is quoted as saying, "Of all things, good sense is the most fairly distributed: everyone thinks he is so well supplied with it that even those who are the hardest to satisfy in every other respect never desire more of it than they already have."[8]

John Locke

In striking contrast to Plato’s use of idea is that of John Locke in his masterpiece Essay Concerning Human Understanding in the Introduction where he defines idea as "It being that term which, I think, serves best to stand for whatsoever is the object of the understanding when a man thinks, I have used it to express whatever is meant by phantasm, notion, species, or whatever it is which the mind can be employed about in thinking ; and I could not avoid frequently using it." He said he regarded the book necessary to examine our own abilities and see what objects our understandings were, or were not, fitted to deal with. In his philosophy other outstanding figures followed in his footsteps - Hume and Kant in the 18th century, Arthur Schopenhauer in the 19th century, and Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Karl Popper in the 20th century. Locke always believed in good sense - not pushing things to extremes and on taking fully into account the plain facts of the matter. He considered his common sense ideas "good-tempered, moderate, and down-to-earth." ^c

David Hume

Hume differs from Locke by limiting "idea" to the more or less vague mental reconstructions of perceptions, the perceptual process being described as an "impression." Hume shared with Locke the basic empiricist premise that it is only from life experiences (whether our own or other's) that out knowledge of the existence of anything outside of ourselves can be ultimately derived. We shall carry on doing what we are prompted to do by our emotional drives of all kinds. In choosing the means to those ends we shall follow our accustomed association of ideas.^d Hume is quoted as saying: "Reason is the slave of the passions."

Walk of Ideas

Immanuel Kant

Immanuel Kant defines an "idea" as opposed to a "concept." "Regulator ideas" are ideals that one must tend towards, but by definition may not be completely realized. Liberty, according to Kant, is an idea. The autonomy of the rational and universal subject is opposed to the determinism of the empirical subject. Kant felt that it is precisely in knowing its limits that philosophy exists. The business of philosophy he thought was not to give rules, but to analyze the private judgements of good common sense.^e

Rudolf Steiner

Whereas Kant declares limits to knowledge ("we can never know the thing in itself"), in his epistemological work, Rudolf Steiner sees ideas as "objects of experience" which the mind apprehends, much as the eye apprehends light. In "Goethean Science" (1883), he declares, "Thinking… is no more and no less an organ of perception than the eye or ear. Just as the eye perceives colors and the ear sounds, so thinking perceives ideas." He holds this to be the premise upon which Goethe made his natural-scientific observations.

Wilhelm Wundt

Wundt widens the term from Kant's usage to include conscious representation of some object or process of the external world. In so doing, he includes not only ideas of memory and imagination, but also perceptual processes, whereas other psychologists confine the term to the first two groups. One of Wundt's main concerns was to investigate conscious processes in their own context by experiment and introspection. He regarded both of these as exact methods, interrelated in that experimentation created optimal conditions for introspection. Where the experimental method failed, he turned to other objectively valuable aids, specifically to those products of cultural communal life which lead one to infer particular mental motives. Outstanding among these are speech, myth, and social custom. Wundt designed the basic mental activity apperception - a unifying function which should be understood as an activity of the will. Many aspects of his empirical physiological psychology are used today. One is his principles of mutually enhanced contrasts and of assimilation and dissimilation (i.e. in color and form perception and his advocacy of objective methods of expression and of recording results, especially in language. Another is the principle of heterogony of ends - that multiply motivated acts lead to unintended side effects which in turn become motives for new actions.

Charles Sanders Peirce

C. S. Peirce published the first full statement of pragmatism in his important works "How to Make Our Ideas Clear" (1878) and "The Fixation of Belief" (1877). In "How to Make Our Ideas Clear" he proposed that a clear idea (in his study he uses concept and idea as synonymic) is defined as one, when it is apprehended such as it will be recognized wherever it is met, and no other will be mistaken for it. If it fails of this clearness, it is said to be obscure. He argued that to understand an idea clearly we should ask ourselves what difference its application would make to our evaluation of a proposed solution to the problem at hand. Pragmatism (a term he appropriated for use in this context), he defended, was a method for ascertaining the meaning of terms (as a theory of meaning). The originality of his ideas is in their rejection of what was accepted as a view and understanding of knowledge by scientists for some 250 years, i.e. that, he pointed, knowledge was an impersonal fact. Peirce contended that we acquire knowledge as participants, not as spectators. He felt "the real" is which, sooner or later, information acquired through ideas and knowledge with the application of logical reasoning would finally result in. He also published many papers on logic in relation to ideas.

G. F. Stout and J. M. Baldwin

G. F. Stout and J. M. Baldwin, in the Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology [9], define "idea" as "the reproduction with a more or less adequate image, of an object not actually present to the senses." They point out that an idea and a perception are by various authorities contrasted in various ways. "Difference in degree of intensity," "comparative absence of bodily movement on the part of the subject," "comparative dependence on mental activity," are suggested by psychologists as characteristic of an idea as compared with a perception.

It should be observed that an idea, in the narrower and generally accepted sense of a mental reproduction, is frequently composite. That is, as in the example given above of the idea of chair, a great many objects, differing materially in detail, all call a single idea. When a man, for example, has obtained an idea of chairs in general by comparison with which he can say "This is a chair, that is a stool," he has what is known as an "abstract idea" distinct from the reproduction in his mind of any particular chair (see abstraction). Furthermore a complex idea may not have any corresponding physical object, though its particular constituent elements may severally be the reproductions of actual perceptions. Thus the idea of a centaur is a complex mental picture composed of the ideas of man and horse, that of a mermaid of a woman and a fish.

In anthropology and the social sciences

Diffusion studies explore the spread of ideas from culture to culture. Some anthropological theories hold that all cultures imitate ideas from one or a few original cultures, the Adam of the Bible or several cultural circles that overlap. Evolutionary diffusion theory holds that cultures are influenced by one another, but that similar ideas can be developed in isolation.

In mid-20th century, social scientists began to study how and why ideas spread from one person or culture to another. Everett Rogers pioneered diffusion of innovations studies, using research to prove factors in adoption and profiles of adopters of ideas. In 1976, Richard Dawkins suggested applying biological evolutionary theories to spread of ideas. He coined the term 'meme' to describe an abstract unit of selection, equivalent to the gene in evolutionary biology.

Validity of ideas

In the objective worth of our ideas there remains the problem of the validity. As all cognition is by ideas, it is obvious that the question of the validity of our ideas in this broad sense is that of the truth of our knowledge as a whole. Otherwise to dispute this is to take up the position of scepticism. This has often been pointed out as a means intellectual suicide. Any chain of reasoning (common sense) by which it is attempted to demonstrate the falsity of our ideas has to employ the very concept of ideas itself. Then in so far as it demands assent to the conclusion, it implies belief in the validity of all the ideas employed in the premises of the argument.

To assent the fundamental mathematical and logical axioms, including that of the principle of contradiction, implies admission of the truth of the ideas expressed in these principles. With respect to the objective worth of ideas, as involved in perception generally, the question raised is that of the existence of an independent material world comprising other human beings. The idealism of David Hume and John Stuart Mill would lead logically to solipsism (the denial of any others besides ourselves). The main foundation of all idealism and scepticism is the assumption (explicit or implicit), that the mind can never know what is outside of itself. This is to say that an idea as a cognition can never go outside of itself. This can be further expressed as we can never reach to and mentally apprehend anything outside of anything of what is actually a present state of our own consciousness.

• First, this is based on a prior assumption for which no real proof is or can be given
• Second, it is not only not self-evident, but directly contrary to what our mind affirms to be our direct intellectual experience.

What is possible for a human mind to apprehend cannot be laid down beforehand. It must be ascertained by careful observation and by study of the process of cognition. This postulates that the mind cannot apprehend or cognize any reality existing outside of itself and is not only a self-evident proposition, it is directly contrary to what such observation and the testimony of mankind affirms to be our actual intellectual experience.

John Stuart Mill and most extreme idealists have to admit the validity of memory and expectation. This is to say that in every act of memory or expectation which refers to any experience outside the present instant, our cognition is transcending the present modifications of the mind and judging about reality beyond and distinct from the present states of consciousness. Considering the question as specially concerned with universal concepts, only the theory of moderate realism adopted by Aristotle and Saint Thomas can claim to guarantee objective value to our ideas. According to the nominalist and conceptualist theories there is no true correlate in rerum naturâ corresponding to the universal term.

Mathematics, astronomy, physics, chemistry, and the rest claim that their universal propositions are true and deal with realities. It is involved in the very notion of science that the physical laws formulated by the mind do mirror the working of agents in the external universe. The general terms of these sciences and the ideas which they signify have objective correlatives in the common natures and essences of the objects with which these sciences deal. Otherwise these general statements are unreal and each science is nothing more than a consistently arranged system of barren propositions deduced from empty arbitrary definitions. These postulates then have no more genuine objective value than any other coherently devised scheme of artificial symbols standing for imaginary beings. However the fruitfulness of science and the constant verifications of its predictions are incompatible with such a hypothesis.[10]

History of ideas

The history of ideas is a field of research in history that deals with the expression, preservation, and change of human ideas over time. The history of ideas is a sister-discipline to, or a particular approach within, intellectual history. Work in the history of ideas may involve interdisciplinary research in the history of philosophy, the history of science, or the history of literature. In Sweden, the history of ideas has been a distinct university subject since the 1930s, when Johan Nordström, a scholar of literature, was appointed professor of the new discipline at Uppsala University. Today, several universities across the world provide courses in this field, usually as part of a graduate program.

The Lovejoy approach

The historian Arthur O. Lovejoy (1873–1962) coined the phrase history of ideas and initiated its systematic study, in the early decades of the twentieth century. For decades Lovejoy presided over the regular meetings of the History of Ideas Club at Johns Hopkins University, where he worked as a professor of history from 1910 to 1939.

Aside from his students and colleagues engaged in related projects (such as René Wellek and Leo Spitzer, with whom Lovejoy engaged in extended debates), scholars such as Isaiah Berlin, Michel Foucault, Christopher Hill, J. G. A. Pocock and others have continued to work in a spirit close to that with which Lovejoy pursued the history of ideas. The first chapter/lecture of Lovejoy's book The Great Chain of Being lays out a general overview of what is intended (or at least what he intended) to be the program and scope of the study of the history of ideas.

Unit-ideas

Lovejoy's history of ideas takes as its basic unit of analysis the unit-idea, or the individual concept. These unit-ideas work as the building-blocks of the history of ideas: though they are relatively unchanged in themselves over the course of time, unit-ideas recombine in new patterns and gain expression in new forms in different historical eras. As Lovejoy saw it, the historian of ideas had the task of identifying such unit-ideas and of describing their historical emergence and recession in new forms and combinations.

Modern work

Quentin Skinner has been influential with his critique of Lovejoy's "unit-idea" methodology. Instead, he proposes a sensitivity to the cultural context of the texts being analysed and the ideas they contained.

See also

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Idea

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At Wikiversity, you can learn about:

Idea

• Form
• Meme
• Opinion
• Ideology
• Think tank
• Mental image
• Brainstorming
• Portal: thinking
• Perception related
• Object of the mind
• Notion (philosophy)
• Thought experiment
• Diffusion of innovations
• Universal (metaphysics)
• Introspection and Extrospection

Bibliography

• Arthur Lovejoy: The Great Chain of Being: A Study of the History of an Idea, (ISBN 0-674-36153-9)
• Arthur Lovejoy: Essays in the History of Ideas, (ISBN 0-313-20504-3)
• Isaiah Berlin: Against the Current: Essays in the History of Ideas, (ISBN 0-691-09026-2)
• Mark Bevir: The Logic of the History of Ideas (ISBN 0-521-64034-2)
• A.G. Balz, Idea and Essence in the Philosophy of Hobbes and Spinoza (New York 1918)
• An Encyclopedia of World Literature
• Dictionary of the History of Ideas Charles Scribner's Sons, New York , 1973-74. ISBN 684-16425-6
• E. Garin, La Theorie de I'idee suivant I'ecole thomiste (Paris 1932)
• J. W. Yolton, John Locke and the Way of Ideas (Oxford 1956)
• Lawrence Lessig, The Future of Ideas (New York 2001)
• M.H. Carre, Realists and Nominalists (Oxford 1946)
• Melchert, Norman (2002). The Great Conversation: A Historical Introduction to Philosophy. McGraw Hill. ISBN 0-19-517510-7.
• Paul Natorp, Platons Ideenlehre (Leipzig 1930)
• Peter Watson, Ideas: a history from fire to Freud, Weidenfeld & Nicolson (London 2005).
• The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, MacMillian Publishing Company, New York, 1973 ISBN 0028949501 ISBN 978-0028949505
• The Reader's Encyclopedia, 2nd Edition 1965, Thomas Y. Crowell Company
• The Story of Philosophy, Dorling Kindersley Publishing, 2001, ISBN 0-7894-7994-X
• The Story of Thought, DK Publishing, Bryan Magee, London, 1998, ISBN 0-7894-4455-0
• W.D. Ross, Plato's Theory of Ideas (Oxford 1951)
• William Rose Benet, The Reader's Encyclopedia 1965.

External links

• Catholic Encyclopedia entry "idea"
• Plato's Middle Period Metaphysics and Epistemology
• Sunil Thacker Procedure for Patenting/Copyrighting an idea
• Francesco Petrarch and his relationship to Renaissance Humanism
• Dictionary of the History of Ideas: Studies of Selected Pivotal Ideas. Ed. Philip P. Wiener. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1973-74. (Online edition from the University of Virginia library's Electronic Text Center.) Studies of selected pivotal ideas. This book also appeared in Chinese- and Japanese-language editions.

General Philosophy Sources

• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved December 7, 2007.
• The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved December 7, 2007.
• Philosophy Sources on Internet EpistemeLinks. Retrieved December 7, 2007.
• Guide to Philosophy on the Internet. Retrieved December 7, 2007.
• Paideia Project Online. Retrieved December 7, 2007.
• Project Gutenberg. Retrieved December 7, 2007.

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