Editing Idea (section)

==Philosophy==

===Plato===
{{Main|Theory of Forms}}
[[Plato]] in [[Ancient Greece]] was one of the earliest philosophers to provide a detailed discussion of ideas and of the thinking process (in Plato's Greek the word ''idea'' carries a rather different sense of our modern English term). Plato argued in dialogues such as the ''Phaedo'', ''Symposium'', ''Republic'', and ''Timaeus'' that there is a realm of ideas or forms (''eidei''), which exist independently of anyone who may have thoughts on 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 forcefully 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'':
{{Blockquote|
"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}}

===René Descartes===
[[Descartes]] often wrote of the meaning of the ''idea'' as an image or representation, often but not necessarily "in the mind", which was well known in the [[vernacular]]. Despite Descartes' invention of the non-Platonic use of the term, he at first followed this vernacular use.<sup>b</sup> 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 idea|innate]]<ref>Vol 4: 196–198</ref> 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.<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/descartes-ideas |title=Descartes's Ideas |access-date=2007-05-15 |archive-date=2007-06-09 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070609135420/http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/descartes-ideas/ |url-status=live }}</ref> For him knowledge took the form of ideas and philosophical investigation is devoted to the consideration of these entities.

===John Locke===
[[John Locke]]'s use of idea stands in striking contrast to Plato's.<ref>Vol 4: 487–503</ref> 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."<ref>{{cite wikisource |title=An Essay Concerning Human Understanding |wslink=An Essay Concerning Human Understanding/Introduction |section=Introduction |first=John |last=Locke |at=§ What Idea stands for. |year=1689}}</ref> He said he regarded the contribution offered in his essay as necessary to examine our own abilities and discern what objects our understandings were, or were not, fitted to deal with. In this style of ideal conception 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 the ''good sense'' — not pushing things to extremes and while taking fully into account the plain facts of the matter. He prioritized common-sense ideas that struck him as "good-tempered, moderate, and down-to-earth."

As John Locke studied humans in his work "An Essay Concerning Human Understanding" he continually referenced Descartes for ideas as he asked this fundamental question: "When we are concerned with something about which we have no certain knowledge, what rules or standards should guide how confident we allow ourselves to be that our opinions are right?"<ref name="ReferenceA">Locke, John. "An Essay Concerning Human Understanding." (n.d.): An Essay Concerning Human Understanding Book, I: Innate Notions.</ref> Put in another way, he inquired into how humans might verify their ideas, and considered the distinctions between different types of ideas. Locke found that an idea "can simply mean some sort of brute experience."<ref>{{cite book |last1=Fitzpatrick |first1=John R. |title=Starting with Mill |date=2010 |publisher=Bloomsbury Publishing |isbn=978-1-4411-0044-3 }}{{page needed|date=April 2021}}</ref> He shows that there are "No innate principles in the mind."<ref>Locke, John. "An Essay Concerning Human Understanding" (n.d.): An Essay Concerning Human Understanding Book, I: Innate Notions</ref> Thus, he concludes that "our ideas are all experienced in nature."<ref>{{cite book |last1=Sheridan |first1=Patricia |title=Locke: A Guide for the Perplexed |date=2010 |publisher=A&C Black |isbn=978-0-8264-8983-8 }}{{page needed|date=April 2021}}</ref> An experience can either be a sensation or a reflection: "consider whether there are any innate ideas in the mind before any are brought in by the impression from sensation or reflection."<ref name="ReferenceA"/> Therefore, an idea was an  experience in which the human mind apprehended something.

In a Lockean view, there are really two types of ideas: complex and simple. Simple ideas  are the building blocks for more complex ideas, and "While the mind is wholly passive in the reception of simple ideas, it is very active in the building of complex ideas…"<ref>{{cite book |last1=Sheridan |first1=Patricia |title=Locke: A Guide for the Perplexed |date=2010 |publisher=A&C Black |isbn=978-0-8264-8983-8 }}{{page needed|date=April 2021}}</ref> Complex ideas, therefore, can either be ''modes'', ''substances'', or ''relations''.

''Modes'' combine simpler ideas in order to convey new information. For instance, David Banach <ref>Banach, David. "Locke on Ideas." Locke on Ideas. St. Anselm College, 2006{{page needed|date=April 2021}}</ref> gives the example of beauty as a mode. He points to combinations of color and form as qualities constitutive of this mode. ''Substances'', however, are distinct from modes. ''Substances'' convey the underlying formal unity of certain objects, such as dogs, cats, or tables. ''Relations'' represent the relationship between two or more ideas that contain analogous elements to one another without the implication of underlying formal unity. A painting or a piece of music, for example, can both be called 'art' without belonging to the same substance. They are related as forms of art (the term 'art' in this illustration would be a 'mode of relations'). In this way, Locke concluded that the formal ambiguity around ideas he initially sought to clarify had been resolved.

===David Hume===
[[David Hume|Hume]] differs from Locke by limiting ''idea'' to only one of two possible types of perception. The other one is called "impression", and is more lively: these are perceptions we have "when we hear, or see, or feel, or love, or hate, or desire, or will." ''Ideas'' are more complex and are built upon these more basic and more grounded perceptions.<ref>{{Citation |last=Hume |first=David |title=Of the Origin of Ideas |work=An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding |date=2008 |url=https://oxfordworldsclassics.com/display/10.1093/owc/9780199549900.001.0001/isbn-9780199549900-book-part-4 |access-date=2024-01-28 |publisher=Oxford University Press |language=en-US |doi=10.1093/owc/9780199549900.003.0004 |isbn=978-0-19-192173-5}}</ref><ref name=EB1911>{{EB1911 |wstitle=Idea |volume=14 |pages=280–281 |inline=1}}</ref><ref>Vol 4: 74–90</ref> 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.<sup>d</sup> Hume has contended and defended the notion that "reason alone is merely the 'slave of the passions'."<ref>{{cite web |url=http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hume-moral/#inmo |title=Hume's Moral Philosophy (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) |publisher=Plato.stanford.edu |access-date=2013-06-15 |archive-date=2021-01-26 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210126100244/http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hume-moral/#inmo |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>Hume, David: A Treatise of Human Nature: Being an Attempt to introduce the experimental Method of Reasoning into Moral Subjects. (1739–40)</ref>

===Immanuel Kant===
[[File:Printing4 Walk of Ideas Berlin.JPG|left|thumb|135px|"Modern Book Printing" from the [[Walk of Ideas]]]]
[[Immanuel Kant]] defines ''ideas'' by distinguishing them from ''[[Concept#A priori concepts|concepts]]''. ''Concepts'' arise by the compositing of experience into abstract categorial representations of presumed or encountered empirical objects whereas the origin of ''ideas,'' for Kant, is a priori to experience. ''Regulative ideas'', for example, are ideals that one must tend towards, but by definition may not be completely realized as objects of empirical experience. [[Liberty]], according to Kant, is an ''idea'' whereas "tree" (as an abstraction covering all species of trees) is a ''concept''. The [[wikt:autonomy|autonomy]] of the rational and [[Universality (philosophy)|universal]] [[subject (philosophy)|subject]] is opposed to the [[determinism]] of the [[empirical]] subject.<ref>Vol 4: 305–324</ref> 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 judgement of good common sense.<sup>e</sup>

===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 of perception 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 [[psychologist]]s confine the term to the first two groups.<ref name=EB1911/> 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 (philosophy)|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.<ref>Vol 8: 349–351</ref>

===Charles Sanders Peirce===
[[Charles Sanders Peirce|C. S. Peirce]] published the first full statement of [[pragmatism]] in his important works "[[s:How to Make Our Ideas Clear|How to Make Our Ideas Clear]]" (1878) and "[[s:The Fixation of Belief|The Fixation of Belief]]" (1877).<ref>[[Charles Sanders Peirce#Pragmatism|Peirce's pragmatism]]</ref> 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 as impersonal facts which had been accepted by scientists for some 250 years. Peirce contended that we acquire knowledge as ''participants'', not as ''spectators''. He felt "the real", sooner or later, is composed of information that has been acquired through ideas and knowledge and ordered by the application of logical reasoning.  The rational distinction of the empirical object is not prior to its perception by a knowledgeable subject, in other words. He also published many papers on logic in relation to ''ideas''.

===G. F. Stout and J. M. Baldwin===
[[George Stout|G. F. Stout]] and [[James Mark Baldwin|J. M. Baldwin]], in the ''Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology'', define the ''idea'' as "the reproduction with a more or less adequate [[image]], of an object not actually present to the senses."  <ref>{{Cite web |url=http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Baldwin/Dictionary |title=Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology |access-date=2007-05-15 |archive-date=2007-04-13 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070413000149/http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Baldwin/Dictionary/ |url-status=live }}</ref> 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]].<ref name=EB1911/>

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 a 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]].<ref name=EB1911/>

=== Walter Benjamin ===
"Ideas are to objects [of perception] as constellations are to stars,"<ref name=":0">{{Cite book |last=Benjamin |first=Walter |url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/51839777 |title=The origin of German tragic drama |date=2003 |publisher=Verso |isbn=1-85984-413-8 |location=London |pages=34, 36, 23 |oclc=51839777}}</ref> writes [[Walter Benjamin]] in the introduction to his ''[[The Origin of German Tragic Drama]]''. "The set of concepts which assist in the representation of an idea lend it actuality as such a configuration. For phenomena are not incorporated into ideas. They are not contained in them. Ideas are, rather, their objective virtual arrangement, their objective interpretation."

Benjamin advances, "That an idea is that moment in the substance and being of a word in which this word has become, and performs, as a symbol." as George Steiner summarizes.<ref name=":0" /> In this way ''techne--''art and technology—may be represented, ideally, as "discrete, fully autonomous objects...[thus entering] into fusion without losing their identity."<ref name=":0" />