Idea
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
|
"An idea is always a generalization, and generalization is a property of thinking. To generalize means to think [...]."-- Hegel "When Plato was discoursing about his "ideas," and using the nouns "tableness" and "cupness;" "I, O Plato!" interrupted Diogenes, "see a table and a cup, but I see no tableness or cupness." Plato made answer, "That is natural enough, for you have eyes, by which a cup and a table are contemplated; but you have not intellect, by which tableness and cupness are seen." --Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers |
![Diagram of the human mind, from Utriusque cosmi maioris scilicet et minoris metaphysica, page 217[1] by Robert Fludd](/Image:Diagram_of_the_human_mind%2C_from_Robert_Fludd_%281574-1637%29%2C_Utriusque_cosmic_maioris_scilicet_et_minoris_metaphysica.jpg)
|
Related e |
|
Featured: |
An idea is a name or mental impression. Ideas are often 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. 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.
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
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." <ref>Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology</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/>
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.<ref name=EB1911/>
