How 'Surreal' Are Ideas?

Jack Cummins

I have been thinking a lot about this, based on previous TPF forum discussion and ongoing philosophy reading. One authoe who which I have been reading is Steven Pinker's, which looks at the role of language and semantics in the development of thought. He also queries the innate wiring of ideas..

In the opposite direction, I have been reading Jonathan Black's 'A Secret History of the World', which looks at the philosophy of idealism, especially in esoteric philosophical systems. One author he points to is Berkley and the query about whether a tree makes a sound if there is no human being to experience it. Of course, it is important to remember that Berkley sees the reality of ideas in opposition to matter in the context of belief in the 'reality' of spirits. Black points to the way in which the philosophy of idealism was connected to beliefs in spirits. Black does not suggest that this perspective is correct necessarily, but presents it as an 'upside down, inside out' view which may be at odds with conventional thinking.

The key idea in Black's outlook is the emphasis upon the 'mind-before-matter' approach. Even though my own thinking is sympathetic towards non-dualism, I am not convinced that the primary nature of 'mind' and 'ideas' can be avoided.

The question of the 'reality' of ideas and the philosophy of idealism is a recurrent theme within Western and Eastern thinking. I am aware that it has been looked at in so many threads and I am not wishing to create repetition, but I am not convinced that the tension has been opened up sufficiently. Despite materialism and postmodern deconstruction, NeoPlatonism is making a resurgence. What is the significance of this?Also, despite the emphasis on physicalism, all interpretations are dependent on ideas and language. What is language and its connections to symbolic forms of interpretation? Are ideas mind-dependent, subjective, objective or intersubjective constructs in human semantics?

The term 'surreal' in my updated title is a way of seeing ideas and symbols as being a potential shift from metaphysics as absolutes, to the scope of a tentative notion of the metaphysical imagination.

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Philosophim

Yes, shameless plug, but a relevant one! https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/14044/knowledge-and-induction-within-your-self-context/p1

If you haven't read my work on knowledge within self-context, you may get your answer. There's a summary in the next post down that breaks it down very well.

Paine

↪Jack Cummins

Not all frames of duality concern a single set of conditions. Neither do all collapses of dualities refer to a single experience or view of the world.

The Parmenides depicted by Plato argues against the separate land of forms but accepts the duality invoked by them as necessary for recognizing the persistence of beings in a world of becoming. In the Sophist, Plato discusses a less absolute way of talking about the eternal being from what comes into being. That change, however, is not a collapse of the separation between the source of order in nature and the willy-nilly of spontaneous events.

The stricter version maintained by Parmenides constrains expectations of what can be explained through Plato's method. The boundary between the mythological and philosophic accounts of experience is maintained, especially as concern 'esoteric' or theological awakening to reality. The divide between the mortal and the divine is wide and deep even if strives for the latter in various ways. That situation is in sharp contrast to the views of Plotinus:

But the souls of men see their images as if in the mirror of Dionysus and come to be on that level with a leap from above: but even these are not cut off from their own principle and from intellect. For they did not come down with Intellect, but went on ahead of it down to earth, but their heads are firmly set above in heaven. But they experienced a deeper descent because their middle part was compelled to care for that to which they had gone on, which needed their care. But Father Zeus, pitying them in their troubles, makes the bonds over which they have trouble dissoluble by death and gives them periods of rest, making them at times free of bodies, so that they too may have the opportunity of being there where the soul of the All always is, since it in no way turns to the things of this world — Plotinus, Ennead, IV. 3.12, translated by Armstrong

Free version

The original duality has been collapsed. The cycle of life and death is explained. Since Plotinus testifies to having made this ascent of soul during his life, it is a personal experience. The role of mythology is to help communicate the experience to those who have yet to make the trip.

Nothing like this story maps onto the dynamic between Daoism and competing views. There is a duality between a 'natural' order and the imposition of 'forms' if you will. What cannot be spoken is placed side by side with what can be. In regard to semantics, Zhuangzi works as a deconstruction of meaning to understand what is worthy and why things happen. What is regarded as 'esoteric' in this regard can be approached but not described as a transition within a comprehensible terrain. The difference between the internal and external, so central to Plotinus, is just a way of talking for Zhuangzi.

wonderer1

...I am not convinced that the primary nature of 'mind' and 'ideas' can be avoided. — Jack Cummins

"Primary" seems at best a vague word to use here. The nature of mind and ideas seems an awfully important thing to think about to me. Do you think it is those engaged with relevant scientific study who are the ones avoiding thinking about the nature of mind and ideas?

Relativist

Are ideas mind-dependent, subjective, objective or intersubjective constructs in human semantics? — Jack Cummins

Ideas are the product of mind, so I see no compelling reason to think they have some sort of independent existence.

Suppose I induce you to accept as true, some idea I've had - through description and argument. Does that mean there is a singe idea and we both share it, or does it mean our minds now independently contain an idea that could be represented with identical semantics? I think the latter, and this can be considered intersubjective. If the idea is novel, and only you and I share it - then when we both die, this idea exists nowhere (at least nowhere in the present).

If the idea has objective existence, where does this idea exist? Platonic heaven? That seems to entail an unparsimonious ontology.

NOS4A2

↪Jack Cummins

Ideas come into being at the moment of expression, and persist as long as the expression does. It’s why we often write them down or record them if we do not wish to forget them. There, and only there, they can be considered, referred to, and analyzed. Until then it is all the body and its activity, none of which are ideas.

tim wood

↪Jack Cummins

I wonder if it has occurred to you that before you can decide what is real and what is not, you shall have to decide what real is and what it is not - and good luck with that!

180 Proof

Despite materialism and postmodern deconstruction, NeoPlatonism is making a resurgence. What is the significance of this? — Jack Cummins

Secular mysticism redux.

What is language and its connections to symbolic forms of interpretation?

The latter are messages – signal-to-noise ratios – and the former is a medium.

Are ideas mind-dependent, subjective, objective or intersubjective
constructs in human semantics?

Yes.

Manuel

A thing is, a thing may be, or a thing is not. We plainly have ideas. Using the word "real" beforehand does not render the topic under discussion more clearly. It probably introduces more obscurity than anything.

If ideas are not mind dependent, then what could possibly be mind-dependent?

This whole physicalism vs. idealism discussion is mostly verbal. Until someone can clearly say when matter stops being matter, or ideas stop being ideas, we are not doing anything.

It's kind of like discussing if cows and animals should be lumped together or kept separate.

Jack Cummins

↪Manuel

I am not sure that using the term 'thing' introduces any further clarity than the word 'reality'. When you say that the topic is verbal, I would argue that a lot of it comes down to language and its limits, as Wittgenstein suggested as constituting the 'limits of one's world'.

One of the main reasons why I gravitate towards the idea of non-dualism is because it makes a case for the two being conjoined. Also, panpsychism suggests different subtle degrees of consciousness than the classical mind-body arguments of dualism.

Also, I am aware that substance dualism is far less dualistic, but even that involves interpretation. That is why I go back to the initial issue, asked by Berkley, as to whether ideas are mind-dependent. I am also aware of the relevance of the perspective of phenomenology. But, even that doesn't explain consciousness itself and whether that is the source of both what is termed as mind and matter in the dualistic split of human thinking.

Jack Cummins

↪tim wood

I am aware that 'real' is a human construct. This is the case whether one adheres to a philosophy of idealism or realism, or materialism. The concept of 'real' is a bit like that of 'truth' and may only be seen as definitive if seen from a standpoint of absolutist philosophies.

Jack Cummins

I do plan to reply to the other responses. However, I am just changing my title question from 'real' to 'surreal' because I am thinking that may be more interesting. That is because it is a possible way of reframing ideas in the metaphysical imagination.. What do you think? Does it make sense, as opposed to seeing language and symbols in a concrete ways, or is just trying to avoid the nature of clear and critical thinking?

Amity

Also, despite the emphasis on physicalism, all interpretations are dependent on ideas and language. What is language and its connections to symbolic forms of interpretation? Are ideas mind-dependent, subjective, objective or intersubjective constructs in human semantics? — Jack Cummins

Of course, any interpretations of anything depend on our minds processing words/images, ideas shared through language. Language is the main way we think and communicate. You have expressed your ideas here. You know how it works via symbols, syntax and semantics.

We send and receive messages. To inform, to persuade, to express concerns/feelings and so on.
It involves imagination and interaction with self and others. Language fascinates the ordinary reader of fiction and the linguistics expert. Not to mention the philosopher. So many ways...

When it comes to Berkeley and his idealist philosophy. You paraphrased it:

One author he points to is Berkley and the query about whether a tree makes a sound if there is no human being to experience it. — Jack Cummins

Are you sure that is what he asked? If you weren't there to hear it?

"If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?" is a philosophical thought experiment that raises questions regarding observation and perception.
While the origin of the phrase is sometimes mistakenly attributed to George Berkeley, there are no extant writings in which he discussed this question. The closest are the following two passages from Berkeley's A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge, published in 1710. [...]

The current phrasing appears to have originated in the 1910 book Physics by Charles Riborg Mann and George Ransom Twiss. The question "When a tree falls in a lonely forest, and no animal is near by to hear it, does it make a sound? Why?" is posed along with many other questions to quiz readers on the contents of the chapter, and as such, is posed from a purely physical point of view — Wiki

This time the question involves 'an animal'. It broadens the perspective. Outwards away from 'man'.

Also, in fiction, the idea is considered by Terry Pratchett in 'Small Gods', p2, when he writes that the recurring philosophical question 'Does a falling tree in the forest make a sound when there is no one to hear?' says something about the nature of philosophers, because there is always someone in a forest. It may only be a badger, wondering what that cracking noise was, or a squirrel a bit puzzled by all the scenery going upwards, but someone. At the very least, if it was deep enough in the forest, millions of small gods would have heard it.'

180 Proof

I am aware that 'real' is a human construct. — Jack Cummins

So 'you are aware' is only "a human construct"? Or 'mortality' is not nonmind-dependent (which I prefer to 'mind-independent'), or real? :chin:

... there is always someone in a forest. — Amity

Yes, the forest itself (e.g. "Fangorn"). :wink:

Jack Cummins

↪180 Proof

To go beyond one's 'awareness' would be like becoming some -kind-of-all-knowing- mind-of-'God' state of consciousness. So much of everyday awareness is based on the consensus views of others as a means of confirmation. Even with a sense of mortality, it is based on the deaths of others and empirical observations, as opposed to the awareness of experiencing ultimate death itself.

Jack Cummins

↪Amity

Your further clarification of Berkley's consideration of the tree in the forest is useful. It would be a human fallacy to think that it is only a person who is able to perceive sounds. This is likely to be an anthropocentric fault in philosophy. Language is the way humans process experiences, with the formation of concepts, but it does not mean that it the only possible way. For example, it is possible to form visual representations of ideas and this itself is likely to have come first in human culture, such as in symbolic representations.

180 Proof

↪Jack Cummins

I don't understand your reply to my previous post.

Amity

Language is the way humans process experiences, with the formation of concepts, but it does not mean that it the only possible way. For example, it is possible to form visual representations of ideas and this itself is likely to have come first in human culture, such as in symbolic representations. — Jack Cummins

Yes, of course, that is why I included 'images':

...any interpretations of anything depend on our minds processing words/images, — Amity

Ancient representational art.

The painting of a wild pig and three human-like figures is at least 51,200 years old, more than 5,000 years older than the previous oldest cave art.
The discovery pushes back the time that modern humans first showed the capacity for creative thought.

Prof Maxime Aubert from Griffith University in Australia told BBC News that the discovery would change ideas about human evolution.

“The painting tells a complex story. It is the oldest evidence we have for storytelling. It shows that humans at the time had the capacity to think in abstract terms,” he said. — BBC News - World's oldest cave art

Real or Surreal Ideas can be found and shared anywhere...in imagination and creativity.
I really don't understand what your problem is? I note your edit:

The term 'surreal' in my updated title is a way of seeing ideas and symbols as being a potential shift from metaphysics as absolutes, to the scope of a tentative notion of the metaphysical imagination. — Jack Cummins

:chin:

'Metaphysical Imagination' - what do you think it is? How have you used it?
In the meantime, I found this: https://philarchive.org/archive/MCSMAE

Jack Cummins

↪180 Proof

↪Amity

It's possible that any confusion in my posts is on account of stress, because it can lead to muddled thinking. However, it would probably be going too far to describe me as 'psychotic' or 'deluded'.

If anything, I see it as arising in connection with muddles in the philosophy of ideas, going back to ancient thought. For example, I have some kind of resonance with Plato's theory of forms; this in itself is incongruent with so much of twentieth-first century thinking. The question for me would be whether both the ancients and philosophy after postmodernism, analytic philosophy and Wittgenstein, have mere partial perspectives? The same applies to the division between science and art, as well as between the secular and spiritual viewpoints...?

180 Proof

mere partial perspectives — Jack Cummins

Maybe you can clarify this phrase ...

Joshs

↪Amity

Metaphysical Imagination' - what do you think it is? How have you used it?
In the meantime, I found this: https://philarchive.org/archive/MCSMAE — Amity

The author of the paper you linked to writes

…justified belief aims at truth, not imaginative capacity, or understanding. If we focus too much on having justified beliefs, it is harder for us to suspend disbelief and try to inhabit views that we don’t believe.

Thinking of metaphysics this way as split off from empirical truth perpetuates a dualism between ideas and reality, the physical and the metaphysical. The philosophers I follow don’t treat the metaphysical as ‘imaginative capacity’, but as the plumbing undergirding the intelligibility of a true belief.

Jack Cummins

↪180 Proof

What I mean by the idea of 'mere partial perspectives' are viewpoints which differ from one another and are relative. It may be that each human being's unique way of thinking reflects such partiality and relativity of knowledge and understanding.

180 Proof

↪Jack Cummins

So if I understand correctly what you mean by "muddles in the philosophy of ideas", the ancient and postmodern or secular and spiritual "viewpoints" are like comparing apples and oranges – incommensurable perspectives on, or interpretations of, the "sur/reality of ideas"? i.e. different kinds of maps for navigating different aspects of the same terrain (or even completely different terrains)?

Jack Cummins

↪NOS4A2

Your argument for the existence of ideas as they are thought and expressed is an interesting one. It reminds me of what a tutor once said in a class 'Ideas don't exist unless they are expressed and are only in one's head'. Some people in the class were rather horrified by what the tutor said, but it may capture something of the intersubjective aspects of thoughts and ideas.

Apart from exchange of ideas in conversation and writing, however, there is the repetition of ideas throughout cultures and history. Even though there are many languages there is an almost universality of concepts, such as good, evil, morality and time. This may be down to innate ideas. Alternatively, it could be down to underlying factors in all human experiences of life.

Jack Cummins

↪180 Proof

Yes, thinking involves maps and models. One way in which I came across this was in the sociology of knowledge. In particular, Berger and Luckmann, in, 'The Social Construction of Knowledge saw the way in which human thought occurs as negotiated socially.

I am not saying this to dismiss epistemology itself, but as about understanding social contexts of knowledge. The whole idea of paradigms involves models. It is possible to see maps and models too literally, as if they are the 'reality' itself. With the idea of the surreal, which I borrowed from the art movement, it would involve the metaphorical. This is going into the nature of the mythical aspects of human understanding.

tim wood

I am aware that 'real' is a human construct. — Jack Cummins

Maybe this. Unicorns are real. Unicorns are not real. Contradiction? One true the other false? Unreal unicorns are real? Real unicorns are unreal? It matters simply and only how you define it - and if your definition is useful.

Jack Cummins

↪Relativist

The view that ideas 'a product of the mind' is open to question, as it is hard to where they come from exactly. That is where, even though Plato's theory of forms and archetypes is still an arguable position because ideas seem to exist almost independently of human conditions. It may be related to biological wiring but it could be more than that.

The problem would be hars to prove, except in conditions in which life was so different from cultural socialisation. The closest proof would come down to individuals raised in the wild, such as by wolves. It is likely that a lot of human understanding involves socialisation and the role of language in narrative construction of experience. Nevertheless, themes exist as universal constructs, possibly as independent ideas in themselves, like the underlying physical laws of nature.

Jack Cummins

↪tim wood

Unicorns exist as a fantastical idea and, who knows, in a previous universe or a future one, they may exist. They may not exist physically at all other than a construct of fantasy. There is a danger of fantasy being mistaken for more than it is and that is probably where 'psychosis' comes in. But fantasy itself, if not taken too literally, can be useful as an alternative to the concrete logic of scientific realism.

Jack Cummins

↪wonderer1

Sorry, I am late getting round to replying to you because I started at the bottom of replies. However, your question is important. It does seem that materialism and realism have become fashionable. This is connected to the rise of science at the centre of philosophy, with philosophy almost being seen as an appendix to science.

The rise of materialism may also be related to popular philosophy, especially thinkers like Daniel Dennett, and his notion of 'consciousness as an illusion'. But, fashions change and who knows what will come next?

jkop

Are ideas mind-dependent, subjective, objective or intersubjective constructs in human semantics? — Jack Cummins

It takes a mind to think about ideas, but the ideas are not necessarily mind-dependent. Some ideas are constructed naturally or socially, others are discovered individually or by different minds independent of each other.

Amity

↪Joshs

Thanks for the quote and informed response. I haven't fully read or understood the paper, as yet. So, not sure of context. Interesting subject. Imaginative plumbing?

It's possible that any confusion in my posts is on account of stress, because it can lead to muddled thinking. However, it would probably be going too far to describe me as 'psychotic' or 'deluded'. — Jack Cummins

I think you're doing just great, given your stress levels. I'm confused by what it is you're trying to unravel. That's another fine knot you've got me in :wink:
You led me here:

Metaphysical Imagination' - what do you think it is? How have you used it?
In the meantime, I found this: https://philarchive.org/archive/MCSMAE — Amity

[ BTW, you introduced the idea of psychosis. Is this a case of "You don't have to be mad to plumb 'metaphysical imagination' but it helps." :chin: ]

Edit to clarify: I am asking you what you think 'metaphysical imagination' is and what it involves/entails? You introduced it here:

... seeing ideas and symbols as being a potential shift from metaphysics as absolutes, to the scope of a tentative notion of the metaphysical imagination. — Jack Cummins

How 'Surreal' Are Ideas?

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