In philosophy, the term idea has been used to cover a range of
concepts. Ideas are often construed as mental representational
images; i.e., images of some object . In other contexts, ideas
are taken to be concepts , although abstract concepts do not
necessarily appear as images. [1] Many philosophers have
considered ideas to be a fundamental ontological category of
being . The capacity to create and understand the meaning of
ideas is considered to be an essential and defining feature of
human beings. In a popular sense, an idea arises in a reflex,
spontaneous manner, even without thinking or serious
reflection , for example, when we talk about the idea of a
person or a place.
Innate and adventitious ideas
Main articles: Innate idea and Adventitious idea
One view on the nature of ideas is that there exist some ideas
(called innate ideas ) which are so general and abstract, that
they could not have arisen as a representation of any object of
our perception , but rather were, in some sense, always in the
mind before we could learn them. These are distinguished from
adventitious ideas which are images or concepts which are
accompanied by the judgment that they are caused or
occasioned by some object outside of the mind. [1]
Another view holds that we only discover ideas in the same
way that we discover the real world, from personal experiences.
The view that humans acquire all or almost all their behavioral
traits from nurture (life experiences) is known as tabula rasa
("blank slate"). Most of the confusions in the way of ideas arise
at least in part from the use of the term "idea" to cover both
the representation percept and the object of conceptual
thought. This can be illustrated in terms of the doctrines of
innate ideas , " concrete ideas versus abstract ideas ", as well as
"simple ideas versus complex ideas". [2]
However, Md. Ziaul Haque, a poet, columnist, scholar,
researcher and a faculty member at Sylhet International
University , Bangladesh, has invented a term viz, prosaic-ideas
keeping in mind that our thoughts are not poetic but prosaic in
general. In other words, "...thinking is translating 'prosaic-
ideas' without accessories" since ideas (in brain) do not follow
any metrical composition." [3]
?Jump back a section
Philosophy
Plato
Main article: Theory of Forms
Plato was one of the earliest philosophers to provide a detailed
discussion of ideas (it must be noted that in Plato's Greek the
word idea (?dea) carries a rather different sense from our
modern English term). Plato argued in dialogues such as the
Phadeo , Symposium, Republic, and Timaeus that there is a
realm of ideas or forms ( eidei), which exist independently of
anyone who may have thoughts of these ideas, and it is the
ideas which distinguish mere opinion from knowledge, for unlike
material things which are transient and liable to contrary
properties, ideas are unchanging and nothing but just what they
are. Consequently, Plato seems to assert that material things
can only be the objects of opinion; real knowledge can only be
had of unchanging ideas. Furthermore , ideas for Plato appear
to serve as universals; consider the following passage from the
Republic:
Ren 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. Despite that Descartes is
usually credited with the invention of the non-Platonic use of
the term, he at first followed 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 [4] 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. [1] For him
knowledge took the form of ideas and philosophical
investigation is the deep consideration of these entities.
John Locke
In striking contrast to Plato's use of idea [5] is that of John
Locke . In his Introduction to An Essay Concerning Human
Understanding , Locke defines idea as "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." [6] Hume shared
with Locke the basic empiricist premise that it is only from life
experiences (whether their own or others') that humans'
knowledge of the existence of anything outside of themselves
can be ultimately derived, that they shall carry on doing what
they are prompted to do by their emotional drives of varying
kinds. In choosing the means to those ends, they shall follow
their accustomed associations of ideas. d Hume has contended
and defended the notion that "reason alone is merely the 'slave
of the passions'." [7][8]
Immanuel Kant
"Modern Book
Printing" from the
Walk of Ideas
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.
[9] 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. [10]
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). [11] 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 [2] , 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 .
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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, in his book The Selfish Gene , Richard
Dawkins suggested applying biological evolutionary theories to
the spread of ideas. He coined the term meme to describe an
abstract unit of selection , equivalent to the gene in evolutionary
biology.
?Jump back a section
Semantics
Dr. Samuel Johnson
James Boswell recorded Dr. Samuel Johnson 's opinion about
ideas. Johnson claimed that they are mental images or internal
visual pictures. As such, they have no relation to words or the
concepts which are designated by verbal names.
?Jump back a section
Relationship of ideas to modern legal time- and
scope-limited monopolies
Main articles: Intellectual property and Idea-expression divide
Relationship between ideas and patents
On Susceptibility to Exclusive Property
Thomas Jefferson, letter to Isaac McPherson, 13 August
1813
It has been pretended by some, (and in England
especially,) that inventors have a natural and exclusive
right to their inventions, and not merely for their own
lives, but inheritable to their heirs. But while it is a moot
question whether the origin of any kind of property is
derived from nature at all, it would be singular to admit a
natural and even an hereditary right to inventors. It is
agreed by those who have seriously considered the
subject, that no individual has, of natural right, a
separate property in an acre of land, for instance.
By a universal law, indeed, whatever, whether fixed or
movable, belongs to all men equally and in common, is
the property for the moment of him who occupies it, but
when he relinquishes the occupation, the property goes
with it. Stable ownership is the gift of social law, and is
given late in the progress of society. It would be curious
then, if an idea, the fugitive fermentation of an individual
brain, could, of natural right, be claimed in exclusive and
stable property.
If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all
others of exclusive property, it is the action of the
thinking power called an idea, which an individual may
exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself;
but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the
possession of every one, and the receiver cannot
dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is
that no one possesses the less, because every other
possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from
me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine;
as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without
darkening me.
That ideas should freely spread from one to another over
the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man,
and improvement of his condition, seems to have been
peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when
she made them, like fire, expansible over all space,
without lessening their density in any point, and like the
air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical
being, incapable of confinement or exclusive
appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a
subject of property.
Society may give an exclusive right to the profits arising
from them, as an encouragement to men to pursue ideas
which may produce utility, but this may or may not be
done, according to the will and convenience of the
society, without claim or complaint from anybody.
Accordingly, it is a fact, as far as I am informed, that
England was, until we copied her, the only country on
earth which ever, by a general law, gave a legal right to
the exclusive use of an idea. In some other countries it is
sometimes done, in a great case, and by a special and
personal act, but, generally speaking, other nations have
thought that these monopolies produce more
embarrassment than advantage to society; and it may be
observed that the nations which refuse monopolies of
invention, are as fruitful as England in new and useful
devices.
To protect the cause of invention and innovation, the legal
constructions of Copyrights and Patents was established.
Patent law regulates various aspects related to the functional
manifestation of inventions based on new ideas or incremental
improvements to existing ones. Thus, patents have a direct
relationship to ideas.
Relationship between ideas and copyrights
This section does not cite any references or
sources . Please help improve this section by adding
citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may
be challenged and removed . (November 2012)
A picture of a
lightbulb is often used
to represent a person
having a bright idea
In some cases, authors can be granted limited legal
monopolies on the manner in which certain works are
expressed. This is known colloquially as copyright , although the
term intellectual property is used mistakenly in place of
copyright . Copyright law regulating the aforementioned
monopolies generally does not cover the actual ideas. The law
does not bestow the legal status of property upon ideas per se.
Instead, laws purport to regulate events related to the usage,
copying, production, sale and other forms of exploitation of the
fundamental expression of a work, that may or may not carry
ideas. Copyright law is fundamentally different to patent law in
this respect: patents do grant monopolies on ideas (more on
this below).
A copyright is meant to regulate some aspects of the usage of
expressions of a work, not an idea. Thus, copyrights have a
negative relationship to ideas.
Work means a tangible medium of expression. It may be an
original or derivative work of art, be it literary, dramatic, musical
recitation, artistic, related to sound recording, etc. In (at least)
countries adhering to the Berne Convention, copyright
automatically starts covering the work upon the original
creation and fixation thereof, without any extra steps. While
creation usually involves an idea, the idea in itself does not
suffice for the purposes of claiming copyright.
Relationship of ideas to confidentiality agreements
Confidentiality and nondisclosure agreements are legal
instruments that assist corporations and individuals in keeping
ideas from escaping to the general public. Generally, these
instruments are covered by contract law.
?Jump back a section
See also
Thinking portal
Philosophy portal
Religion portal
Look up idea in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:
ideas
Idealism
Brainstorming
Creativity techniques
Diffusion of innovations
Form
Ideology
List of perception-related topics
Notion (philosophy)
Object of the mind
Think tank
Thought experiment
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Bibliography
A.G. Balz, Idea and Essence in the Philosophy of Hobbes
and Spinoza (New York 1918)
Gregory T. Doolan, Aquinas on the divine ideas as exemplar
causes (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America
Press, 2008)
Patricia A. Easton (ed.), Logic and the Workings of the
Mind. The Logic of Ideas and Faculty Psychology in Early
Modern Philosophy (Atascadero, Calif.: Ridgeview 1997)
Pierre Garin, La Thorie de l'ide suivant l'cole thomiste
(Paris 1932)
Marc A. High, Idea and Ontology. An Essay in Early Modern
Metaphysics of Ideas ( Pennsylvania State University Press,
2008)
Lawrence Lessig , The Future of Ideas (New York 2001)
Paul Natorp, Platons Ideenlehre (Leipzig 1930)
W.D. Ross, Plato's Theory of Ideas (Oxford 1951)
Peter Watson, Ideas: A History from Fire to Freud,
Weidenfeld & Nicolson (London 2005)
J.W. Yolton, John Locke and the Way of Ideas (Oxford
1956)
Melchert, Norman (2002). The Great Conversation: A
Historical Introduction to Philosophy . McGraw Hill.
ISBN 0-19-517510-7 .
?Jump back a section
Notes
1. ^ a b Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy
2. ^ The Encyclopedia of Philosophy , MacMillian Publishing
Company, New York, 1973 ISBN 0-02-894950-1 ISBN
978-0-02-894950-5 Vol 4: 120–121
3. ^ Haque, Md. Ziaul. "Translating Literary Prose: Problems
and Solutions" , International Journal of English Linguistics ,
vol. 2, no. 6; 2012, p. 98. Retrieved on 2013-02-28.
4. ^ Vol 4: 196–198
5. ^ Vol 4: 487–503
6. ^ Vol 4: 74–90
7. ^ http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hume-moral/#inmo
8. ^ Hume, David: A Treatise of Human Nature: Being an
Attempt to introduce the experimental Method of Reasoning
into Moral Subjects. (1739–40)
9. ^ Vol 4: 305–324
10. ^ Vol 8: 349–351
11. ^ Peirce's pragmatism
?Jump back a section
References
The Encyclopedia of Philosophy , MacMillian Publishing
Company, New York, 1973 ISBN 0-02-894950-1 ISBN
978-0-02-894950-5
Dictionary of the History of Ideas Charles Scribner's Sons,
New York 1973-74, Library of Congress Catalog Card Number
72-7943 ISBN 684-16425-6
- Nous
Volume IV 1a, 3a
Volume IV 4a, 5a
Volume IV 32 - 37
Ideas
Ideology
Authority
Education
Liberalism
Idea of God
Pragmatism
Chain of Being
The Story of Thought, DK Publishing, Bryan Magee, London,
1998, ISBN 0-7894-4455-0
aka The Story of Philosophy , Dorling Kindersley Publishing,
2001, ISBN 0-7894-7994-X
(subtitled on cover: The Essential Guide to the History
of Western Philosophy)
a Plato, pages 11 - 17, 24 - 31, 42, 50, 59, 77, 142,
144, 150
b Descartes, pages 78, 84 - 89, 91, 95, 102, 136 - 137,
190, 191
c Locke, pages 59 - 61, 102 - 109, 122 - 124, 142, 185
d Hume, pages 61, 103, 112 - 117, 142 - 143, 155, 185
e Kant, pages 9, 38, 57, 87, 103, 119, 131 - 137, 149,
182
f Peirce, pages 61, How to Make Our Ideas Clear 186 -
187 and 189
g Saint Augustine, pages 30, 144; City of God 51, 52, 53
and The Confessions 50, 51, 52
- additional in the Dictionary of the History of Ideas for
Saint Augustine and Neo-Platonism
h Stoics, pages 22, 40, 44; The governing philosophy of
the Roman Empire on pages 46 - 47.
- additional in Dictionary of the History of Ideas for
Stoics , also here , and here , and here .
The Reader's Encyclopedia , 2nd Edition 1965, Thomas Y.
Crowell Company, Library of Congress No. 65-12510
An Encyclopedia of World Literature
a page 774 Plato (c.427-348 BC)
a page 779 Francesco Petrarca
a page 770 Charles Sanders Peirce
b page 849 the Renaissance
This article incorporates text from the old Catholic
Encyclopedia of 1914, a publication now in the public domain.
This article incorporates text from the Schaff-Herzog
Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, a publication now in the
public domain.
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the
public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). Encyclopdia
Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.
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Last modified on 13 May 2013, at 19:01
"
"We both assert that there are," I said, "and distinguish
in speech, many fair things, many good things, and so
on for each kind of thing."
"Yes, so we do."
"And we also assert that there is a fair itself, a good
itself, and so on for all things that we set down as many.
Now, again, we refer to them as one idea of each as
though the idea were one; and we address it as that
which really is."
"That's so."
"And, moreover, we say that the former are seen, but not
intellected, while the ideas are intellected but not seen."
—Plato, Bk. VI 507b-c
Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi 2
Bade Achhe Lagte Hain
CID
