What is an idea?

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joshrp

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Hi,

What I want to know more than anything right now is what an idea is. I feel like unless I understand what an idea is, then I will not be able to adequately know and communicate any truthful principles effectively to anyone, and everything will just be a flurry of information and meaningless data without any relevant organizational principles behind it.

As far as I know, the first recorded instance of an “idea of an idea” was written by Plato in one of his dialogues, I don’t know which. Does anyone know which dialogues of Plato and other philosophers explicate this principle of the idea? Is there a name for a philosophy or study of ideas?

Joshua
 
An idea is an image in your mind.

You can use it, but it has no existence beyond the walls of your head.

ICXC NIKA
 
Ahimsa said:
“Mind” doesn’t equal “head”.
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No. Your mind resides in your head.

Your head, however, contnues being while your mind is in abeyance, due to coma, for example.

Still, because your mind resides there and is in fact inseparable from there, we can say that ideas are stored there.

ICXC NIKA
 
GEddie said:
An idea is an image in your mind.

You can use it, but it has no existence beyond the walls of your head.

ICXC NIKA
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First of all, the mind is immaterial and does not reside in any one part of the body. “Mind” refers to the power of reason, which is a faculty of the soul and is not confined, by deinition, to the head or any other matter or place.

Secondly, this view that an idea has no existence beyond the walls of one’s head is a materialist view, and not a Catholic one.

Ideas are, as St Thomas teaches, “the similitude of things.” To have an idea is, in a certain sense, to take on the form of the thing thought. Ideas are abstractions of things in reality and as such are universals. Universals are, by nature, independent of place and time.
 
No, I’d say that ideas have no existence beyond the minds that have and use them. If you have ever been unconscious (not asleep), you had no ideas of any kind while your mind remained nonfunctional.

Ideas are the currency of the mind; the human head is the piggy bank for them. But kind of like bitcoins, they have no real effect until they are used or “spent.”

ICXC NIKA
 
GEddie said:
No, I’d say that ideas have no existence beyond the minds that have and use them. If you have ever been unconscious (not asleep), you had no ideas of any kind while your mind remained nonfunctional.

Ideas are the currency of the mind; the human head is the piggy bank for them. But kind of like bitcoins, they have no real effect until they are used or “spent.”

ICXC NIKA
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You are of course free to think what you like, just so long as you are aware that your opinion on this matter is totally at odds with Catholic teaching on this point, so perhaps it is not a good idea to offer it as advice on a Catholic chat forum where people are, for the most part, seeking a reliable account of what the faith entails.
 
Acapiteadcalcem said:
You are of course free to think what you like, just so long as you are aware that your opinion on this matter is totally at odds with Catholic teaching on this point, so perhaps it is not a good idea to offer it as advice on a Catholic chat forum where people are, for the most part, seeking a reliable account of what the faith entails.
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If you claim to speak for the Church, please state your sources. I do not claim to speak for it, or to be any more than an average sinner.

AFAIK, the Church does not teach that ideas have an existence apart from minds. The Platonic “forms” are not a matter of church doctrine.

ICXC NIKA
 
GEddie said:
If you claim to speak for the Church, please state your sources. I do not claim to speak for it, or to be any more than an average sinner.

AFAIK, the Church does not teach that ideas have an existence apart from minds. The Platonic “forms” are not a matter of church doctrine.

ICXC NIKA
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Nowhere did I refer to Platonic forms or say they were part of Church doctrine. Nor did I calim to speak for the Church. Neither have I calimed that ideas have an existence apart from minds. Good grief.
 
The mind and its activities are intangible and have no physical location. It doesn’t make sense to say “The truth is in New York” or “Justice is inside your skull”! Ideas and thoughts are associated with neuronal events in the brain but they cannot be reduced to those events. If they could nothing would have meaning or purpose because neither meaning nor purpose can be observed with our eyes, ears, nose, tongue or skin!

Knowledge is not composed of material objects but facts. We know material objects exist only because we **infer **their existence from our perceptions. The only direct knowledge we have is of our thoughts, emotions, desires, intuitions, values and decisions. Without ideas we would know precisely nothing! They are **mental constructs **but they are no less real than the things we can see, hear, smell, taste and touch. It is only because we live in a society dominated by materialism that matter is so often thought to be the only reality but those who stake everything on this world forget that all the most important things in life are intangible…

BTW We don’t invent facts, we discover them - and they too are not only intangible but immutable and eternal!
 
Your emotional and cognitive systems are just as physical as your eyes, nose, or skin. And if either of them went kaput, you’d not desire or know, any more than you can watch TV through a black hood, or smell the roses with a severe head cold.

No, your soul is not in your head per se, but it can be localized to your body, which it keeps alive and which holds and expresses your life. Your soul is the soul “of your body”. It is not a ghost using human limbs for transportation.

God Bless and ICXC NIKA.
 
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