Do ideas exist?

[Nakosis]

God, Bullwinkle, Allah, Harry Potter, Cthulhu, Gandalf, Krom,
Thor, Voldemort, & Homer Simpson, all exist as ideas.

Capitalism is an idea or would you argue against that?

 

[Revoltingest]

All things that cannot be measured, no weight, no atoms... It's nothing.

Who is to say that we cannot measure an idea
by chemical & electrical transmission between
neurons? Those are doable things. We need
only understand better which ones to measure,
& to make appropriate tools.

 

[Nakosis]

Unicorns are an idea. So does that mean unicorns "exist"?

...Or maybe idea's actually don't exist.

Capitalism is an idea. It affects the choices people make. How could it affect someone's choice if it didn't exist?

 

[Revoltingest]

Capitalism is an idea or would you argue against that?

It exists as both an idea, & an emergent property of human interaction.
Religion & Boyle's Law operate the same way. We can observe them
both happening. This differs from gods....the ideas are there, but the
entities themselves remain undetected, ie, unmeasurable.

 

[Cooky]

Capitalism is an idea. It affects the choices people make. How could it affect someone's choice if it didn't exist?

It only becomes effective after it is applied physically, through the distribution of money.

 

[beenherebeforeagain]

The idea of Jesus Christ hasn't "ceased" in 2000 years. So maybe breifness isn't a quality.

even 2000 years compared to 13.8 billion years of the universe is still brief

besides, ideas such as this have to be renewed, revitalized with each recall and transmission to another emergent system

 

[The Hammer]

Do ideas exist? What does your perspective imply for what "existence" means?

Ideas exist in the mind of the one who has the idea, but not outside of it, unless acted upon, such as telling it to someone else.

 

[Quintessence]

I believe ideas arises. They don't exist one moment, then the next moment they arises in to the mind.

This would mean ideas are quintessentially ephemeral, then - more so than the flesh, at any rate. Here today, gone tomorrow. Where do ideas go when they are gone?

Great thread topic. Thanks, Quintessence!

I think in order to have a productive discussion on this topic, it's important to acknowledge that "ideas exist" is a useful way to think about the world. For example, it is difficult to describe human events without imagining ideas exist, float around, and influence human behavior.

So, for those who would argue "ideas do not exist", they need to acknowledge that is a counter-intuitive claim and will require a lot of work to convince others.

That's what I felt as a kid, but I happened upon this young enough that it just made adults annoyed at me when I would question their assumptions about reality. Or maybe it was because there was this eight year old kid remarking upon deep questions of life, the universe, and everything (which for some reason, most adults found shocking). I stumbled across how inconsistently adults defined existence and reality... then called them out on it. Somehow, that became my fault... haha.

 

[Father Heathen]

Those things are all corporeal though, aren't they? In that they have material properties.

As does the brain activity that processes thought.

 

[Cooky]

Who is to say that we cannot measure an idea
by chemical & electrical transmission between
neurons? Those are doable things. We need
only understand better which ones to measure,
& to make appropriate tools.

Surely you're familiar with the big failure of
Hubel & Wiesel... Where point for point reductionism of neurons corresponding between the retina and the frontal cortex failed... They abandoned their studies. It just doesn't work.

To this day, nobody has been able to do do this.

Here's why:

 

[Revoltingest]

Where do ideas go when they are gone?

They needn't "go" anywhere.
They happened, & they stopped happening.
Lightning does this too.

 

[Quintessence]

Capitalism is an idea. It affects the choices people make. How could it affect someone's choice if it didn't exist?

This line of thinking is part of why I find unqualified atheism nonsensical. Gods are, if nothing else, an idea. A very powerful one that affects the choices people make. How can it do that without existing? What do we really mean when we say something exists? Are we consistent about that standard? If we aren't, what do those inconsistencies say about us and our beliefs or assumptions about things?

 

[Spirit of Light]

This would mean ideas are quintessentially ephemeral, then - more so than the flesh, at any rate. Here today, gone tomorrow. Where do ideas go when they are gone?

Those ideas we don't act upon become a memory, or we forget them all together, at least that is how I understand it.

 

[Quintessence]

They needn't "go" anywhere.
They happened, & they stopped happening.
Lightning does this too.

This gets me thinking - lightning does go somewhere in the sense that the matter and energy goes somewhere (laws of physics and all that). Could this same concept apply to ideas, or are they not bound to it being neither matter nor energy? Are there laws of ideas to discover?

 

[Revoltingest]

Surely you're familiar with the big failure of
Hubel & Wiesel... Where point for point reductionism of neurons corresponding between the retina and the frontal cortex failed... They abandoned their studies. It just doesn't work.


View attachment 42286

Failure due to primitive technology doesn't make it fundamentally
unmeasurable. That's how some phenomena are. Example:
Only a decade ago we couldn't measure gravity waves.
But they exist as more than an idea.

 

[Revoltingest]

This gets me thinking - lightning does go somewhere in the sense that the matter and energy goes somewhere (laws of physics and all that).

Of course, lightning affected its surroundings with energy & matter transformation.

Could this same concept apply to ideas, or are they not bound to it being neither matter nor energy? Are there laws of ideas to discover?

Ideas exist as chemical & electrical signals in the brain.
These too have residual effects. Some might say that
failed attempts to measure & understand mean that
ideas don't exist. Piffle, I say!

 

[robocop (actually)]

Do ideas exist? What does your perspective imply for what "existence" means?

I have no clue! My seventh book about this has been at a stand still for a month!

 

[Nakosis]

It exists as both an idea, & an emergent property of human interaction.
Religion & Boyle's Law operate the same way. We can observe them
both happening. This differs from gods....the ideas are there, but the
entities themselves remain undetected, ie, unmeasurable.

So I say they are two kinds of existence, physical and abstract. Maybe there are more types but that's as far as I got my thinking done.

Just easier to keep track and realize some exist both as an idea/concept and a physical reality.

 

[Cooky]

Of course, lightning affected its surroundings with energy & matter transformation.

Ideas exist as chemical & electrical signals in the brain.
These too have residual effects. Some might say that
failed attempts to measure & understand mean that
ideas don't exist. Piffle, I say!

But you understand that an idea, in order to not be 'the brain', must be something of it's own. In other words, all the chemical and electrical signals are either the brain...or the idea....

Idea's must be something separate from the brain to be considered real things.

 

[Cooky]

So is an idea something independent from the brain? Or is it part of the brain.