You might want to add the possibility that ideas and fictions are descriptions. Descriptions are actual material objects. Some descriptions denote other material objects, other descriptions denote nothing yet possess recognizable features that exemplify such and such ideas or fictions. How else could we identify different ideas or genres of fiction? There are different kinds of explanations of what a fiction is. Goodman's theory of symbols is where I began. There are others.

If ideas were to all be fiction, wouldn't all true propositions then be fictitious?

As to being just names, names of what - other than the archetypes, thoughts, or else conceptualized states of being which they name?

Besides, not all ideas have ready names. These often enough get expressed via art, to includes poetry, music, and painting.

Asking these two questions as someone who upholds ideas to be real existents.

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I'll argue that the two categories of real existents in the poll present a false dichotomy. I didn't vote for either option since I deem them both mistaken.

Some ideas, such as that of a circle, could be mind-dependent in terms of all coexistent minds able to so experience while simultaneously being independent of any one individual mind able to so experience. One implication will be that if this one individual mind no longer is, the mind-dependent idea - in this example, of a circle - will nevertheless continue existing unaltered.

I read recently (but can’t remember where) that prior to Descartes, ‘ideas’ were not understood as the prerogative of individuals, and that the meaning changed as a consequence of Descartes’ expression of ‘clear and distinct ideas’ as being foundational to reason.


Subsequently ‘idea’ has become such a polysemic term that it defies definition. I can have ideas of all kinds from the trivial to the profound, all conceived simply as an act of thought. The consequence of which is to reduce any sense of ‘idea’ to the psychological. So I think to get some clarity on the issue the OP is tackling I’ll refer to a passage by A-T philosopher Edward Feser, which refers to ‘concepts’ rather than ‘ideas’:

As Aristotelians and Thomists use the term, intellect is that faculty by which we grasp abstract concepts (like the concepts man and mortal), put them together into judgments (like the judgment that all men are mortal), and reason logically from one judgment to another (as when we reason from all men are mortal and Socrates is a man to the conclusion that Socrates is mortal). It is to be distinguished from imagination, the faculty by which we form mental images (such as a visual mental image of what your mother looks like, an auditory mental image of what your favorite song sounds like, a gustatory mental image of what pizza tastes like, and so forth); and from sensation, the faculty by which we perceive the goings on in the external material world and the internal world of the body (such as a visual experience of the computer in front of you, the auditory experience of the cars passing by on the street outside your window, the awareness you have of the position of your legs, etc.)

‘Concept’ in this passage is nearer to the sense of ‘idea’ that was called into question by nominalism in the first place, by way of the reaction against ‘scholastic realism’.

In Aristotelian philosophy, nous is the basic understanding or awareness that allows humans to think rationally. For Aristotle, this was distinct from the processing of sensory perception, including the use of imagination and memory, which other animals can do. For him then, discussion of nous is connected to discussion of how the human mind sets definitions in a consistent and communicable way, and whether people must be born with some innate potential to understand the same universal categories in the same logical ways.

Like Macbeth, Western man made an evil decision, which has become the efficient and final cause of other evil decisions. Have we forgotten our encounter with the witches on the heath? It occurred in the late fourteenth century, and what the witches said to the protagonist of this drama was that man could realize himself more fully if he would only abandon his belief in the existence of transcendentals. The powers of darkness were working subtly, as always, and they couched this proposition in the seemingly innocent form of an attack upon universals. The defeat of logical realism in the great medieval debate was the crucial event in the history of Western culture; from this flowed those acts which issue now in modern decadence. — Richard Weaver, Ideas have Consequences

I voted for names, and rooted for Philosophy of Language. I don't know if you ever take a look at J.L. Austin. There are some threads of the works of this philosopher (or linguist) in this forum as well. The concept of 'idea' reminds me when Austin talked about 'real' as a concept too. I think 'idea' or 'ideas' is a normal word. Thus, it is frequently used by people, and it is highly established in our ordinary language. But on the other hand, it is true that 'idea' is not a normal word at all, and it can be ambiguous. 'Idea' doesn't always have the same meaning. So, it is not merely to discuss if ideas exist, but what they mean at all.

Stuff and structure. Stuff without out structure would be a universe of gunk; structure without stuff would be an empty idea. But structure is not more stuff, thus if I have bean bean bean bean bean, that makes five, but five is not more stuff, it is the structure of the stuff, not the beans and five, but five beans.

Structure, arrangement, process, are not materials they are aspects of material. Ideas are real but not material. a plague therefore on all your possibilities.

Descriptions are actual material objects. — jkop

I get what you're trying to do – reduce the abstract to the concrete. It ain't gonna work. Any reduction that successfully reduces abstracta fails to explain them, and any reduction that sufficiently explains them fails to reduce them.

Case in point: can a description be spoken more than once? If we both use the same description, which set of physical events is the description? You'll find that your response to that question either introduces some new abstraction to get rid of ideas, or fails to explain multiple realizability of abstractions.

I get what you're trying to do – reduce the abstract to the concrete. It ain't gonna work. — Pneumenon

What exists are the actual elements and properties of things, including texts and pictures, of which we can construct abstract things. That's construction, not reduction.

If we both use the same description, which set of physical events is the description? — Pneumenon

Any actual set that exemplifies the description.

I'm currently reading the book below. It advances a fairly plausible, though highly modified variation on Saint Aquinas' "intention in the media," to argue for a sort of pansemiosis. I've found it fairly convincing so far.

Basically, the argument is that signs, which would correspond to ideas/universals we attribute to objects (e.g. triangularity, greenness, etc.), exist everywhere in nature (C.S. Pierce's assertion, but also an idea one can find in medieval thinkers and arguably even in Saint Augustine vis-á-vis his understanding of the "material hypostasis" of reality).

Take for example the experience of walking into a forest clearing and seeing a eucalyptus tree. There, ambient light is reflecting off the tree. The tree reflects some wave lengths more than others, and the result is an implicit sign in the pattern of energy that results. This pattern is readily recognizable by us (through our eyes and nervous system) as the shape of the tree, the greeness of its leaves, etc. Thus, we can say that the intentional sign (what the pattern of matter/energy means to living creatures) is implicit in the "medium," i.e., the relevant volume of space-time/fields.

What the author points out is that the move to limit signs to only involving living things, (something seen in Deacon, etc.) tends to involve on trading off Chinese Room intuitions. But this means that arguments about the special sui generis sign-interpreting powers of life also tend to fall victim to all the arguments against the Chinese Room, primarily that the thought experiment cashes out due to a hidden homunculus/dualism at its core.

Against this, we can set the equally intuitive proposition that words in a book do not cease to be signs when the book is closed and no living creature can see them. The letters "cat" in this post don't cease to mean what they mean when no one is reading this post.

From this intuition, we can develop the idea of virtual signs. These are patterns of matter/energy, or perhaps better yet, "physical information" that contain intentional signs, signs which are implicit in the medium in which they exist.

This is an appealing idea in that it seems to jive better with the idea that consciousness is strongly emergent. If it is strongly emergent, then it should be fundemental in some sense. But at the same time, consciousness should still "follow from" the nature of what it emerges from. It shouldn't be a black box, and indeed the triumphs of modern cognitive and neuroscience would caution against any totally "black box," view of the emergence of conciousness.

The key point is that signs already exist for conciousness to engage with as an essential part of nature.

I think this gets something important right. However, it still seems to be missing things. There is some good work on how relative indiscenibility, "perspective" essentially, plays a role in basic non-living physical phenomena (e.g. Scott Mueller). Rovelli's work on describing entanglement can also be tweaked into a semiotic understanding. It would be nice to see these ideas brought to bear too, because I think a theory of pansemiosis needs to better clarify what is unique in life, and what is not so unique, but rather builds on the nature of non-living systems.

There are also some intriguing references to the idea of semiosis in non-living complex dissipative systems I might follow up on.

Real... neither only in the mind nor mind independent. It's a matter of what ideas consist of.

Any actual set that exemplifies the description. — jkop

Circular definition.

Again, it's not gonna work.

You didn't include universals in your OP.

The list you provide is quite good, but I think an option of "other" without qualifications would've been useful.

Ideas are as "real" as anything is, in fact it is what we are most acquainted with out of everything there is. Now, the problem aren't ideas per se, it's the world: that's what we really struggle with. Our best science cannot account for 95% of the universe.

And the 5% we do know is giving us a lot of problems, conceptually, theoretically and so on. So, yeah, I do think ideas are a problem - despite our intimate acquaintance with these. But the world is stranger, the mind-independent world anyway.

So, the issue as usually discussed is quite the opposite of the mainstream formulation. It's ghosts all the way down, as far as I can see.

If we both use the same description, which set of physical events is the description?
— Pneumenon

Any actual set that exemplifies the description.
— jkop

Circular definition.
Again, it's not gonna work. — Pneumenon

What definition? Above I reply to your question.

Likewise, we recognize these words that we type by some (but not all) features that they possess and that we refer to as we reply. Any physical instance of a word is an example of the word. Is this not supposed to work?

What definition? Above I reply to your question. — jkop

The definition you gave. Go back and re-read. I'm not recapping what we just said. Re-read.

we recognize these words that we type by some (but not all) features that they possess — jkop

And now you're introducing "features", which are another abstraction introduced to explain the first. This is exactly what I said you'd do.

So basically there's an idea that ideas don't exist? I think that answers its own question. :)

Isn't "Real existents, but only in our minds" included in the definition of "idea"? I don't remember ever seeing idea being thought of as something that exists mind-independent or something that does not exist at all. Or are we talking about things such as numbers and greenness?

It's ghosts all the way down, as far as I can see. — Manuel

Yeah, like…..whose bright idea was it to get rid of ideas anyway???

Philosophically, I think Gilbert Ryle may have been one the modern precursors in trying to get rid of ideas. Hence "the ghost in the machine".

But more broadly, Galen Strawson points out that it was likely the psychologist John Watson Psychology as the Behaviorists Views It that established the tradition. What began quite nobely as an attempt to understand some of human psychology, by limiting itself to what could be observed - we cannot see into another person's mind - somehow morphed into the view that there is no mind or mental.

But it goes back, haven't read him closely or enough, yet Hobbes for instance, gives an impression of something like this view.

It's all based on the mistaken idea, that we know something enough to dismiss serious problems as illusions or delusions. But we don't. We don't know what a particle is, much less do we know how the brain works. Skinner's psychology, in light of this, is embarrassing.

…..morphed into the view that there is no mind or mental. — Manuel

On the one hand, it doesn’t seem like there could be, but on the other, it seems impossible there isn’t.

The history of Western philosophy contains many schools of thought that attempt to argue against the existence of ideas. — Pneumenon

And each of them probably starts by defining in some way what they're talking about, and then the substance is in the details. But with each we can ask both why not and why. There is no such thing as anything except as we call it so, usually for reasons good and sufficient for ourselves. Or in short, reason and being are joined at the hip, and fatal to chop them apart.

On the one hand, it doesn’t seem like there could be, but on the other, it seems impossible there isn’t. — Mww

Quite so. Or very close, as I see it.

To (most) of those who don't bother with understanding a bit of modern physics, there is no problem, they are aware and experience the world.

Those who do read or listen or watch material on modern physics, the problem is immense: how could the things of physics lead to mind?

We don't know, likely will never know. But, since we are conscious, then we are forced to conclude that there is nothing in physics which prevents minds from arising, when the stuff of physics is suitably arranged.

We don't know, likely will never know. — Manuel

Probably right. But the scientists’ll keep stabbin’ at it, hoping for a happy accident.

What began quite nobely as an attempt to understand some of human psychology, by limiting itself to what could be observed - we cannot see into another person's mind - somehow morphed into the view that there is no mind or mental. — Manuel

Don’t you think behaviourism was reductionist from the outset? That it was basically a Procrustean bed - because the mind couldn’t be observed, and science built around observation, then it has to be excluded from consideration. (Dennett does say somewhere that his approach is basically behaviourist.)

As to how physics comes into consideration - isn’t it the case that modern mathematical physics is grounded in the quantisation of measurable attributes of bodies? And that this was then taken as paradigmatic for all manner of science, culminating in what René Guenon describes as ‘the reign of quantity’? Then only what is measurable is considered significant. And furthermore the paradigm assumes the separation of observer and observed - something which has been found to be untenable in quantum physics.

whose bright idea was it to get rid of ideas anyway? — Mww

Ideas, in the original sense of forms or principles, were abandoned in the late medieval period with the decline of realism about universals.

It would be nice to see these ideas brought to bear too, because I think a theory of pansemiosis needs to better clarify what is unique in life, and what is not so unique, but rather builds on the nature of non-living systems. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I recommend Charles Pinter’s Mind and the Cosmic Order. It’s mainly about cognitive science but has interesting philosophical implications.

Don’t you think behaviourism was reductionist from the outset? That it was basically a Procrustean bed - because the mind couldn’t be observed, and science built around observation, then it has to be excluded from consideration. (Dennett does say somewhere that his approach is basically behaviourist.) — Wayfarer

I don't know enough about the history to say. I suspect not, I don't think most phycologists as psychologists, believe this. It's not even useful at all for what they do.

In philosophy, with the bit that I've seen (not a lot - I find it stupid and insulting), the feeling I get it that this approach (behaviorism, vulgar empiricism - meaning, modern versions - sophism, etc.) stands in contrast to another tradition, which you can call Platonic, Rationalistic, etc.

The main point of contention is that either the world is, put in corny manner: either there is something special about us, or there is not. Those who think that we are special, tend to be strong believers in the importance and range of mind. Those that do not, take us to be mere machines, doing what is to be expected from the "laws of nature", such that neither mind nor nature is special.

Dennett called himself a "Neo-positivist" in one paper, so, it's not too far off.

But I need to stress, not that you don't already know this: Locke and Hume whom I have read carefully, would be insulted by how empiricism has been so distorted and mangled. These were among the best philosophers in history, virtually nothing to do with this modern mediocrity.

As to how physics comes into consideration - isn’t it the case that modern mathematical physics is grounded in the quantisation of measurable attributes of bodies? And that this was then taken as paradigmatic for all manner of science, culminating in what René Guenon describes as ‘the reign of quantity’? Then only what is measurable is considered significant. And furthermore the paradigm assumes the separation of observer and observed - something which has been found to be untenable in quantum physics. — Wayfarer

Also very much in line with Tallis, whom you and I both admire.

I don't disagree this is what physics does, in essence. Nonetheless, I do believe that the stuff physics describes existed prior to us, and that we are made of the stuff of physics (but there's a lot more to it than physics, by an unimaginable amount), notwithstanding the many difficulties involved.

But I would agree with you, I think, in saying that, for all practical purposes, physics is not relevant to the mental, and it is related to the brain is a very basic and uninformative manner.

I studied Skinner's 'Beyond Freedom and Dignity' as a psychology undergrad. I hated that book and everything it stood for. Undergrad psych at the time (late 70's) wasn't what I expected, but it wasn't all bad - also included Albert Ellis and Carl Rogers. I read many of Sigmund Freud's humanist essays (as distinct from his scientific papers) which I also disagreed with in many ways but learned how deeply influential he has been in 20th c culture. (Oh, and one other benefit of my undergrad years was meeting my future wife, who's in the next room ;-) )

Years later I studied Transpersonal Psychology, which was kind of fringe, but pretty hip. I even edited the ATPA newsletter for a year or so. Abraham Maslow and other new agey kinds of subjects. I've forgotten most of it since, but liked it a lot at the time.

For sure. I don't recall how I felt about Skinner and his skin, I read him in high school. Looking back though, it's just so incredibly poor. But finding a wife is not so bad a price to pay to put it with it, I'd think. :)

Oh yeah, some fringe stuff can be very good, taken with care and salt. For literature it pays off though, and so far as I can see, a good novel is the best psychology a person can get.

…..were abandoned in the late medieval period…. — Wayfarer

Understood, and thanks. You and are much further along the philosophical evolutionary scale than I.

My point was….ideas can’t be extinguished, except by defining them out of existence, or embarrassing their proponents into submission.

I find this rather puzzling. Yes, it's true, having a doctorate may make me seem to be "higher in the ladder", but all that means is that I had the time, interest and opportunity to do something I thought would be worth doing.

What bothers me to no end, is how little I know about the darn history, everything you read or contemplate leads to 20 other topics and 20 other obscure figures and it's impossible to read it all, much less know it in-depth.

On the other hand, your mastery of Kant is awe-inducing. I will read the Critique again, even more carefully, probably a commentary, it will be long and maybe I'll fail to do what I have in mind. But even if I do pull it off, I'd still be behind you.

Heck, I've read Locke, Hume and Leibniz twice, both times with quite a bit of care. And I still fear I misunderstood many, many aspects. Nowhere near what you do with Kant. The only similarity in me would be Chomsky, but he doesn't have a Critique or an Essay Concerning Human Understanding. And his linguistics stuff, once it goes beyond lay-audiences, is beyond me.

So, don't sell yourself short.

+1 :clap:

Anyway - that Edward Feser blog post I referred to above can be read here in its entirety. Regardless of one's attitude towards Feser, this post is worth the read.