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{{Redirect|Ideas|other uses|Ideas (disambiguation)|and|Idea (disambiguation)}}
[[File:Plato-raphael.jpg|right|thumb|250px|[[Plato]], one of the first philosophers to discuss ideas in detail. Aristotle claims that many of Plato's views were [[Pythagoreanism|Pythagorean]] in origin.]]
In [[Usage (language)|common usage]] and in [[philosophy]], '''ideas''' are the results of [[thought]].<ref name="Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy">{{cite book|editor1-last=Audi|editor1-first=Robert|title=Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy|year=1995|publisher=Cambridge University Press|location=Cambridge; New York|isbn=0-521-40224-7|page=[https://archive.org/details/cambridgediction00robe/page/355 355]|url=https://archive.org/details/cambridgediction00robe|url-access=registration}}</ref> Also in philosophy, ideas can also be [[mental representation]]al images of some [[object (philosophy)|object]]. Many [[philosophers]] have considered ideas to be a fundamental [[ontological]] [[category of being]]. The capacity to [[creativity|create]] and [[understanding|understand]] the meaning of ideas is considered to be an essential and defining feature of [[human|human beings]].
An idea arises in a reflexive, spontaneous manner, even without thinking or serious [[introspection|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]]. ==Etymology==
The word ''idea'' comes from [[Ancient Greek|Greek]] [[wikt:ἰδέα|ἰδέα]] ''idea'' "form, pattern
==History==
The argument over the underlying nature of ideas is opened by [[Plato]], whose exposition of his [[theory of forms]]
Plato advances the theory that perceived but immaterial objects of awareness constituted a realm of deathless forms or ideas from which the material world emanated. Aristotle challenges Plato in this area, positing that the [[Phenomenon|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 [[Idealism|idealist]] thinker and Aristotle an [[Empiricism|empiricist]] thinker.
This antagonism between [[empiricism]] and [[idealism]] generally characterizes 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 philosophy|analytic]] and [[Continental philosophy|continental]] schools of philosophy. Persistent contradictions between [[classical physics]] and [[quantum mechanics]] may be pointed to as a rough analogy for the gap between the two schools of thought.
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{{Main|Theory of Forms}}
[[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 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 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."
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===René Descartes===
[[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.<sup>b</sup> In his ''[[Meditations on First Philosophy]]'' he says, "Some of my thoughts are like images of things, and it is to these alone that the name 'idea' properly belongs." He sometimes maintained that ideas were [[innate idea|innate]]<ref>Vol 4: 196–198</ref> 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.<ref>
===John Locke===
[[John Locke]]'s use of idea stands in striking contrast to Plato's.<ref>Vol 4: 487–503</ref> 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 is meant by phantasm, notion, species, or whatever it is which the mind can be employed about in thinking;
As John Locke studied humans in his work
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
''Modes'' combine simpler ideas in order to convey new information. For instance, David Banach <ref>Banach, David. "Locke on Ideas." Locke on Ideas. St. Anselm College, 2006{{page needed|date=April 2021}}</ref> gives 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 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.
===David Hume===
[[David Hume|Hume]] differs from Locke by limiting ''idea'' to
===Immanuel Kant===
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===Charles Sanders Peirce===
[[Charles Sanders Peirce|C. S. Peirce]] published the first full statement of [[pragmatism]] in his important works "[[s:How to Make Our Ideas Clear|How to Make Our Ideas Clear]]" (1878) and "[[s:The Fixation of Belief|The Fixation of Belief]]" (1877).<ref>[[Charles Sanders Peirce#Pragmatism|Peirce's pragmatism]]</ref> 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 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 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 the empirical object is not prior to its perception by a
===G. F. Stout and J. M. Baldwin===
[[George Stout|G. F. Stout]] and [[James Mark Baldwin|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." <ref>
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/>
=== Walter Benjamin ===
"Ideas are to objects [of perception] as constellations are to stars,"<ref name=":0">{{Cite book |last=Benjamin |first=Walter |url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/51839777 |title=The origin of German tragic drama |date=2003 |publisher=Verso |isbn=1-85984-413-8 |location=London |pages=34, 36, 23 |oclc=51839777}}</ref> writes Walter Benjamin in 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 a word in which this word has become, and performs, as a symbol." as George Steiner summarizes.<ref name=":0" /> In this way ''techne--''art and
==In anthropology and the social sciences==
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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 [[evolution]]ary theories to the spread of ideas. He coined the term ''[[meme]]'' to describe an abstract unit of [[Selection (biology)|selection]], equivalent to the [[gene]] in [[evolutionary biology]].
==Ideas
{{Main|Intellectual property|Idea-expression divide}}
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====On susceptibility to exclusive property====
{{
By a universal law, indeed, whatever, whether fixed or movable, belongs to all men equally and in common, is the property for 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.
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That ideas should freely spread from one to another over 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 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 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.<ref>[http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/a1_8_8s12.html Article 1, Section 8, Clause 8Article 1, Section 8] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20091026024035/http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/a1_8_8s12.html |date=2009-10-26 }} (Electronic resources from the University of Chicago Press Books Division)</ref>|[[Thomas Jefferson]], letter to [[Isaac V. McPherson|Isaac McPherson]], 13 August 1813}}
[[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 a direct relationship to ideas.
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A [[copyright]] is meant to regulate some aspects of 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 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.<ref name="Gene Quinn">[http://www.ipwatchdog.com/2014/02/15/protecting-ideas-can-ideas-be-protected-or-patented/id=48009/ Protecting Ideas: Can Ideas Be Protected or Patented?] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190821213007/https://www.ipwatchdog.com/2014/02/15/protecting-ideas-can-ideas-be-protected-or-patented/id=48009/ |date=2019-08-21 }} – article by [http://www.ipwatchdog.com/author/gene-quinn-2/ Gene Quinn] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180426015419/http://www.ipwatchdog.com/author/gene-quinn-2/ |date=2018-04-26 }} at [http://www.ipwatchdog.com/ Ipwatchdog] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190301082732/http://www.ipwatchdog.com/ |date=2019-03-01 }}, February 15, 2014</ref><ref>''Copyright protection extends to a description, explanation, or illustration of an idea or system, assuming that the requirements of copyright law are met. Copyright in such a case protects the particular literary or pictorial expression chosen by the author. But it gives the copyright owner no exclusive rights concerning the idea, method or system involved. ''CIT : [https://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ31.pdf US Copyright Office] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190128103702/https://copyright.gov/circs/circ31.pdf |date=2019-01-28 }}, circular 31 reviewed: 01 ⁄ 2012 P</ref><ref>''In the case of copyright law, it is the work that realizes the idea that is protected (i.e. a document), and it is the act of recording that work that fixes copyright in the item itself.'' – CIT : [https://www.copyrightservice.co.uk/protect/p21_protecting_ideas The UK Copyright Service] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190331204344/https://www.copyrightservice.co.uk/protect/p21_protecting_ideas |date=2019-03-31 }}, Issued: 17th May 2007, Last amended: 17th May 2007</ref><ref>''(…) there is likely to be an infringement of copyright if the way the information is expressed in the copyrighted work used without the permission of the copyright owner and no exception to infringement applies to the use. This can sometimes occur even if the precise expression is not directly reproduced, but important elements of the work, such as the structure and arrangement of the information, are copied.'' – CIT : [https://www.copyright.org.au/acc_prod/ACC/Legal_Advice/Manage/Precedents/019_Protecting_Ideas.aspx?WebsiteKey=8a471e74-3f78-4994-9023-316f0ecef4ef
===Relationship of ideas to confidentiality agreements===
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.{{Citation needed|date=April 2023}}
==See also==
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{{Wiktionary}}
{{Wikiquote|ideas}}
*
* [[Brainstorming]]
* [[Creativity techniques]]
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{{Authority control}}
[[Category:Cognition]]
[[Category:Creativity]]
[[Category:Concepts in
[[Category:Idealism]]
[[Category:Innovation]]
[[Category:Ontology]]
[[Category:Platonism]]
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