Idea
"[3] The argument over the underlying nature of ideas is opened by Plato, whose exposition of his theory of forms—which recurs and accumulates over the course of his many dialogs—appropriates and adds a new sense to the Greek word for things that are "seen" (re.
As this argument is disseminated the word "idea" begins to take on connotations that would be more familiarly associated with the term today.
Plato advances the theory that perceived but immaterial objects of awareness constituted a realm of deathless forms or ideas from which the material world emanated.
Aristotle challenges Plato in this area, positing that the phenomenal world of ideas arises as mental composites of remembered observations.
This schism in theory has never been resolved to the satisfaction of thinkers from both sides of the disagreement and is represented today in the split between analytic and continental schools of philosophy.
Persistent contradictions between classical physics and quantum mechanics may be pointed to as a rough analogy for the gap between the two schools of thought.
Despite Descartes' 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 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.
Locke always believed in the good sense — not pushing things to extremes and while taking fully into account the plain facts of the matter.
[14][15][16] 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'.
The business of philosophy he thought was not to give rules, but to analyze the private judgement of good common sense.e 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.
Wundt widens the term from Kant's usage to include conscious representation of some object or process of the external world.
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.
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.
[20] 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).
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.
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.
G. F. Stout and 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."
[15] "Ideas are to objects [of perception] as constellations are to stars,"[23] writes Walter Benjamin in the introduction to his The Origin of German Tragic Drama.
[23] In this way techne--art and technology—may be represented, ideally, as "discrete, fully autonomous objects...[thus entering] into fusion without losing their identity.
In 1976, in his book The Selfish Gene, Richard Dawkins suggested applying biological evolutionary theories to the spread of ideas.
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.
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.
[24]Patent law regulates various aspects related to the functional manifestation of inventions based on new ideas or incremental improvements to existing ones.
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.
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.
[25][26][27][28][29] Confidentiality and nondisclosure agreements are legal instruments that assist corporations and individuals in keeping ideas from escaping to the general public.
