Plato, one of the first philosophers to discuss ideas in detail.

An idea is a concept or mental impression. ^[1] Very often, ideas are construed as 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.^[2] Many philosophers consider 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[link]

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 by some object outside of the mind.^[2]

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".^[3]

Philosophy[link]

Plato[link]

Plato was one of the earliest philosophers to provide a detailed discussion of ideas. He considered the concept of idea in the realm of metaphysics and its implications for epistemology. He asserted that there is a realm of Forms or Ideas, which exist independently of anyone who may have thought of these ideas. Material things are then imperfect and transient reflections or instantiations of the perfect and unchanging ideas. From this it follows that these Ideas are the principal reality (see also idealism). In contrast to the individual objects of sense experience, which undergo constant change and flux, Plato held that ideas are perfect, eternal, and immutable. Consequently, Plato considered that knowledge of material things is not really knowledge; real knowledge can only be had of unchanging ideas.

René Descartes[link]

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. Many times however his thoughts of knowledge and ideas were like those of Plotinus and the Neoplatonists. 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)[2]. 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."q:René Descartes

John Locke[link]

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[link]

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[link]

"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[link]

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[link]

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[link]

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[link]

G.F. Stout and J.M. Baldwin, in the Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology [3], 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[link]

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 dibe an abstract unit of selection, equivalent to the gene in evolutionary biology.

Semantics[link]

Dr. Samuel Johnson[link]

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.

He was particularly indignant against the almost universal use of the word idea in the sense of notion or opinion, when it is clear that idea can only signify something of which an image can be formed in the mind. We may have an idea or image of a mountain, a tree, a building; but we cannot surely have an idea or image of an argument or proposition. Yet we hear the sages of the law 'delivering their ideas upon the question under consideration;' and the first speakers in parliament 'entirely coinciding in the idea which has been ably stated by an honourable member;' — or 'reprobating an idea unconstitutional, and fraught with the most dangerous consequences to a great and free country.' Johnson called this 'modern cant.'

— Boswell's Life of Johnson, Tuesday, 23 September 1777

Relationship of ideas to modern legal time- and scope-limited monopolies[link]

Relationship between ideas and patents[link]

On Susceptibility to Exclusive Property[link]

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[link]

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[link]

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.

See also[link]

	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

Publications[link]

• Paul Natorp, Platons Ideenlehre (Leipzig 1930)
• W.D. Ross, Plato's Theory of Ideas (Oxford 1951)
• M.H. Carre, Realists and Nominalists (Oxford 1946)
• Lawrence Lessig, The Future of Ideas (New York 2001)
• J.W. Yolton, John Lock and the Way of Ideas (Oxford 1956)
• Eugenio Garin, La Theorie de I'idee suivant I'ecole thomiste (Paris 1932)
• Peter Watson, Ideas: A History from Fire to Freud, Weidenfeld & Nicolson (London 2005).
• A.G. Balz, Idea and Essence in the Philosophy of Hobbes and Spinoza (New York 1918)
• William Rose Benet, The Reader's Encyclopedia 1965, Library of Congress Card No. 65-12510
• Melchert, Norman (2002). The Great Conversation: A Historical Introduction to Philosophy. McGraw Hill. ISBN 0-19-517510-7. 

Notes[link]

References[link]

• 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

¹ Volume IV 1a, 3a

² Volume IV 4a, 5a

³ 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

^¹apage 774 Plato (c.427-348 BC)

^²apage 779 Francesco Petrarca

^³apage 770 Charles Sanders Peirce

^¹bpage 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). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.