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66-417: An idea is an image existing or formed in the mind. Idea or IDEA or similar may also refer to: Idea 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 an original idea can often lead to innovation . The word idea comes from Greek ἰδέα idea "form, pattern", from

132-411: A universal innate grammar , which is determinate and has a highly organized directive component, and enables the language learner to ascertain and categorize language heard into a system. Chomsky states that the ability to learn how to properly construct sentences or know which sentences are grammatically incorrect is an ability gained from innate knowledge. Noam Chomsky cites as evidence for this theory,

198-412: A certain disease might be 'innate' to signify that a person might be at risk of contracting such a disease. He suggests that something that is 'innate' is effectively present from birth and while it may not reveal itself then, is more than likely to present itself later in life. Descartes’ comparison of innate knowledge to an innate disease, whose symptoms may show up only later in life, unless prohibited by

264-414: 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 . "Ideas are to objects [of perception] as constellations are to stars," writes Walter Benjamin in

330-401: A direct relationship to ideas. 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

396-402: A factor like age or puberty, suggests that if an event occurs prohibiting someone from exhibiting an innate behaviour or knowledge, it doesn't mean the knowledge did not exist at all but rather it wasn't expressed – they were not able to acquire that knowledge. In other words, innate beliefs, ideas and knowledge require experiences to be triggered or they may never be expressed. Experiences are not

462-711: 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

528-470: 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. 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

594-434: 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 . An idea, in the narrower and generally accepted sense of a mental reproduction, is frequently composite. That is, as in

660-427: 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. Hume differs from Locke by limiting idea to only one of two possible types of perception. The other one

726-412: A situation where his mentor Socrates questioned a slave boy about geometry. Though the slave boy had no previous experience with geometry, he was able to answer correctly. Plato reasoned that this was possible because Socrates' questions sparked the innate knowledge of math the boy had from birth. Descartes conveys the idea that innate knowledge or ideas is something inborn such as one would say, that

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792-425: 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

858-422: A word in which this word has become, and performs, as a symbol." as George Steiner summarizes. In this way techne-- art and technology—may be represented, ideally, as "discrete, fully autonomous objects...[thus entering] into fusion without losing their identity." Diffusion studies explore the spread of ideas from culture to culture. Some anthropological theories hold that all cultures imitate ideas from one or

924-526: Is ." "That's so." "And, moreover, we say that the former are seen, but not intellected, while the ideas are intellected but not seen." 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. In his Meditations on First Philosophy he says, "Some of my thoughts are like images of things, and it

990-577: 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. 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

1056-402: 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

1122-411: 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. C. S. Peirce published

1188-404: Is in agreement; in short universal assent proves that there is universal assent and nothing else. Moreover, Locke goes on to suggest that in fact there is no universal assent. Even a phrase such as "What is, is" is not universally assented to; infants and severely mentally disabled adults do not generally acknowledge this truism . Locke also attacks the idea that an innate idea can be imprinted on

1254-440: 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 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

1320-488: Is our linguistic faculty. Our linguistic systems contain a systemic complexity which supposedly could not be empirically derived: the environment seems too poor, variable and indeterminate , according to Chomsky, to explain the extraordinary ability to learn complex concepts possessed by very young children. Essentially, their accurate grammatical knowledge cannot have originated from their experiences as their experiences are not adequate. It follows that humans must be born with

1386-411: 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

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1452-513: Is still the same as was raised by the rationalists ; the human mind of a newborn child is not a tabula rasa but is equipped with an inborn structure. Although individual human beings vary in many ways (culturally, ethnically, linguistically, and so on), innate ideas are the same for everyone everywhere. For example, the philosopher René Descartes theorized that knowledge of God is innate in everybody. Philosophers such as Descartes and Plato were rationalists . Other philosophers, most notably

1518-591: 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

1584-423: 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

1650-401: 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

1716-425: 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 judgement of good common sense. 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

1782-727: The empiricists , were critical of innate ideas and denied they existed. The debate over innate ideas is central to the conflict between rationalists (who believe certain ideas exist independently of experience) and empiricists (who believe knowledge is derived from experience). Many believe the German philosopher Immanuel Kant synthesized these two early modern traditions in his philosophical thought. Plato argues that if there are certain concepts that we know to be true but did not learn from experience, then it must be because we have an innate knowledge of it and that this knowledge must have been gained before birth. In Plato's Meno , he recalls

1848-439: The phenotypes of certain genotypes that all humans share in common. Nativism is a modern view rooted in innatism. The advocates of nativism are mainly philosophers who also work in the field of cognitive psychology or psycholinguistics : most notably Noam Chomsky and Jerry Fodor (although the latter adopted a more critical attitude toward nativism in his later writings). The nativist's general objection against empiricism

1914-400: The philosophy of mind , innatism is the view that the mind is born with already-formed ideas, knowledge, and beliefs. The opposing doctrine, that the mind is a tabula rasa (blank slate) at birth and all knowledge is gained from experience and the senses , is called empiricism . Innatism and nativism are generally synonymous terms referring to the notion of preexisting ideas in

1980-833: 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?" Put in another way, he inquired into how humans might verify their ideas, and considered

2046-435: The apparent invariability, according to his views, of human languages at a fundamental level. In this way, linguistics may provide a window into the human mind, and establish scientific theories of innateness which otherwise would remain merely speculative. One implication of Noam Chomsky's innatism, if correct, is that at least a part of human knowledge consists in cognitive predispositions, which are triggered and developed by

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2112-463: The distinctions between different types of ideas. Locke found that an idea "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 experienced 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

2178-403: The dynamism of the argument over the theory of ideas up to the present. 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

2244-465: 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 , 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." They point out that an idea and

2310-408: 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,

2376-441: 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

2442-458: 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

2508-458: 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

2574-429: The eyes (re. ἰδέα ). As this argument is disseminated the word "idea" begins to take on connotations that would be more familiarly associated with the term today. In the fifth book of his Republic , Plato defines philosophy as the love of this formal (as opposed to visual) way of seeing. Plato advances the theory that perceived but immaterial objects of awareness constituted a realm of deathless forms or ideas from which

2640-428: 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

2706-496: 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

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2772-412: The form of ideas and philosophical investigation is devoted to the consideration of these entities. John Locke 's use of idea stands in striking contrast to Plato's. 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

2838-662: The gap between the two schools of thought. 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

2904-424: 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

2970-402: The innate idea, not because they do not possess it. Leibniz argues that empirical evidence can serve to bring to the surface certain principles that are already innately embedded in our minds. This is similar to needing to hear only the first few notes to recall the rest of the melody. The main antagonist to the concept of innate ideas is John Locke , a contemporary of Leibniz. Locke argued that

3036-703: The inquirer is not cognizant of this fact; thus, he experiences what he believes to be a priori knowledge. In his Meno , Plato raises an important epistemological quandary: How is it that we have certain ideas that are not conclusively derivable from our environments? Noam Chomsky has taken this problem as a philosophical framework for the scientific inquiry into innatism. His linguistic theory, which derives from 18th century classical-liberal thinkers such as Wilhelm von Humboldt , attempts to explain in cognitive terms how we can develop knowledge of systems which are said, by supporters of innatism, to be too rich and complex to be derived from our environment. One such example

3102-420: 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

3168-432: 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

3234-457: The material world emanated. Aristotle challenges Plato in this area, positing that the phenomenal world of ideas arises as mental composites of remembered observations. Though it is anachronistic to apply these terms to thinkers from antiquity, it clarifies the argument between Plato and Aristotle if we call Plato an idealist thinker and Aristotle an empiricist thinker. This antagonism between empiricism and idealism generally characterizes

3300-407: The means to those ends, they shall follow their accustomed associations of ideas. Hume has contended and defended the notion that "reason alone is merely the 'slave of the passions'." Immanuel Kant defines ideas by distinguishing them from concepts . Concepts arise by the compositing of experience into abstract categorial representations of presumed or encountered empirical objects whereas

3366-481: 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. Wundt widens the term from Kant's usage to include conscious representation of some object or process of

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3432-513: The mind is in fact devoid of all knowledge or ideas at birth; it is a blank sheet or tabula rasa . He argued that all our ideas are constructed in the mind via a process of constant composition and decomposition of the input that we receive through our senses. Locke, in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding , suggests that the concept of universal assent in fact proves nothing, except perhaps that everyone

3498-496: The mind without the owner realizing it. For Locke, such reasoning would allow one to conclude the absurd: "All the Truths a Man ever comes to know, will, by this account, be, every one of them, innate." To return to the musical analogy, we may not be able to recall the entire melody until we hear the first few notes, but we were aware of the fact that we knew the melody and that upon hearing the first few notes we would be able to recall

3564-563: The mind. However, more specifically, innatism refers to the philosophy of Descartes , who assumed that God or a similar being or process placed innate ideas and principles in the human mind. The innatist principles in this regard may overlap with similar concepts such as natural order and state of nature , in philosophy. Nativism represents an adaptation of this, grounded in the fields of genetics , cognitive psychology , and psycholinguistics . Nativists hold that innate beliefs are in some way genetically programmed in our mind—they are

3630-444: 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

3696-411: 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 autonomy of the rational and universal subject is opposed to

3762-441: 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. 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. Innate idea In

3828-439: The phrase, "What is, is" or "It is impossible for the same thing to be and not to be". Leibniz argues that such truisms are universally assented to (acknowledged by all to be true); this being the case, it must be due to their status as innate ideas. Often some ideas are acknowledged as necessarily true but are not universally assented to. Leibniz would suggest that this is simply because the person in question has not become aware of

3894-410: The present; the observation of one apple and then another in one instance, and in that instance only, leads to the conclusion that one and another equals two. However, the suggestion that one and another will always equal two requires an innate idea, as that would be a suggestion of things unwitnessed. Leibniz called such concepts as mathematical truisms "necessary truths". Another example of such may be

3960-418: The rest. Locke ends his attack upon innate ideas by suggesting that the mind is a tabula rasa or "blank slate", and that all ideas come from experience; all our knowledge is founded in sensory experience. Essentially, the same knowledge thought to be a priori by Leibniz is, according to Locke, the result of empirical knowledge, which has a lost origin [been forgotten] in respect to the inquirer. However,

4026-480: The root of ἰδεῖν idein , "to see." 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. εἶδος) that highlights those elements of perception which are encountered without material or objective reference available to

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4092-409: The source of knowledge as proposed by John Locke, but catalysts to the uncovering of knowledge. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz suggested that we are born with certain innate ideas, the most identifiable of these being mathematical truisms . The idea that 1 + 1 = 2 is evident to us without the necessity for empirical evidence . Leibniz argues that empiricism can show us show that concepts are true in

4158-476: The spread of ideas. He coined the term meme to describe an abstract unit of selection , equivalent to the gene in evolutionary biology . 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

4224-470: 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

4290-411: 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

4356-513: 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…" Complex ideas, therefore, can either be modes , substances , or relations . Modes combine simpler ideas in order to convey new information. For instance, David Banach gives

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