In philosophy, ideas are usually taken as
mental representational images of some object.
Ideas can also be abstract concepts that do
not present as mental images. 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 reflexive, spontaneous
manner, even without thinking or serious reflection,
for example, when we talk about the idea of
a person or a place. A new or original idea
can often lead to innovation.
== Etymology ==
The word idea comes from Greek ἰδέα idea
"form, pattern," from the root of ἰδεῖν
idein, "to see."
== Innate and adventitious ideas ==
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 an
object of our perception but rather were in
some sense always present. These are distinguished
from adventitious ideas which are images or
concepts which are accompanied by the judgment
that they are caused or occasioned by an external
object.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
ideas arise is at least in part due to the
use of the term "idea" to cover both the representation
perceptics and the object of conceptual thought.
This can be always illustrated in terms of
the scientific doctrines of innate ideas,
"concrete ideas versus abstract ideas", as
well as "simple ideas versus complex ideas".
== Philosophy ==
=== 
Plato ===
Plato in Ancient Greece was one of the earliest
philosophers to provide a detailed discussion
of ideas and of the thinking process (it must
be noted that in Plato's Greek the word idea
carries a rather different sense from 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:
"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."
=== 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. 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
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. 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
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."
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?”
A simpler way of putting it is how do humans
know ideas, and what are the different types
of ideas. An idea to Locke “can simply mean
some sort of brute experience.” He shows
that there are “No innate principles in
the mind.”. Thus, he concludes that “our
ideas are all experiential in nature.” 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.” 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 much 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…”
Complex ideas, therefore, can either be modes,
substances, or relations. Modes are when ideas
are combined in order to convey new information.
For instance, David Banach gives the example
of beauty as a mode. He says that it is the
combination of color and form. Substances,
however, is different. Substances are certain
objects, that can either be dogs, cats, or
tables. And relations represent the relationship
between two or more ideas. In this way, Locke
did, in fact, answer his own questions about
ideas and humans.
=== 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
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'."
=== 
Immanuel Kant ===
Immanuel Kant defines an idea as opposed to
a concept. "Regulative 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", sooner or later, is 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, 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 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.
== 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 the 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.
== Semantics ==
=== 
Samuel Johnson ===
James Boswell recorded 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 with 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.'
== 
Relationship of ideas to modern legal time-
and scope-limited monopolies ==
=== 
Relationship between ideas and patents ===
==== 
On susceptibility to exclusive property ====
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 a 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 an 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 my mine, receives light without darkening
me.
Those 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.
To protect the cause of invention and innovation,
the legal constructions of Copyrights and
Patents were 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
===
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 from
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.
== See also ==
Idealism
Brainstorming
Creativity techniques
Diffusion of innovations
Form
Ideology
List of perception-related topics
Notion (philosophy)
Object of the mind
Think tank
Thought experiment
History of ideas
Intellectual history
Concept
Philosophical analysis
== Notes
