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Ideas
do they exist?

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Ideas

nastyn8
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Posted 06/25/09 - 06:53 PM:	#11
For what reason should we say that ideas do not physically exist? Ideas cause chemical and electrical interactions within the brain. Somewhere, these ideas must be stored for recollection later. Perhaps your ideas are tiny groups of neurons within your brain, stored away in your memory. Maybe you can't ever see them because you can't see inside of your own head with your eyes, with the exception of a brain scan, of course. But you know what I mean.

wuliheron
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Posted 06/25/09 - 09:33 PM:	#12
nousPLOTINU wrote: er, um, probably because the presence of an idea must be inferred. That's my idea! Is it your idea or the discovery of a newer relationship? Many relationships are inferential. For example, no one has ever seen an atom and many chemical reactions occur in atoseconds (a billion billionth of a second) which is much to fast for current methods of observation. However, the amount of evidence to support the existence of atoms and chemical reactions is substantial, as it is for the existence of ideas.

Kako
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Posted 08/26/09 - 06:12 AM:	#13
So does idea exist or not? I like this topic and want to know/hear more from participants.

ManiacJack
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Posted 08/26/09 - 07:00 AM:	#14
What is an idea but the notion of a thing abstracted from the thing? Might it be the case that ever negating the thing with our language by the use of words like 'idea', 'mind', 'thought' was a foolish move? Things exist, surely. Maybe I cannot say how many, but they do exist. That is why I speak of them. And if Zarathustra was not speaking of things, what was he speaking of?
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Desidude666
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Posted 08/26/09 - 05:54 PM:	#15
Adamus wrote: Do ideas exist? If we assume that we exist, then surely these ideas which we create in our mind also exist? However, do they need some physical manifestation to be a property of reality? If we come to the conclusion that ideas do exist then what about ideas that do not correspond with reality? If to exist is to be true, to be real, then how can these false ideas be true? Ideas cannot exist themselves , the energy that is generated by a biological organism does. Can it be shared? Only when it is conveyed, but until it is; it's still energy, just like the energy in the air. As such, the conveying of this thought, that is an energy, to the point where it is communicated and then processed by another is when an idea develops. Do you tell anyone all the time that you have an 'idea'? Can anyone have an idea all the time? Is that then a thought or an idea? You need to convey your thoughts and when received, the other understands them - this is then converting your thought into an idea. This results in so many levels of interaction. Alone, we are merely looking at energy, which is hardly unique - it is impossible to term random thoughts as existing. They don't exist until certain steps are taken and we allow actions to be taken for these electrical signals. Considering the prevalence of energy in our environment, you cannot term idea existing independently.
What you are, you are by accident of birth; what I am, I am by myself. There are and will be a thousand princes; there is only one Beethoven. - Ludwig van Beethoven

OutsideTheBox
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Posted 08/26/09 - 08:02 PM:	#16
Because of the fact that there is more than one definition of the word "exist", there is resultingly more than one way to answer your question correctly. So lets all just move on.

realistcat
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Posted 08/26/09 - 08:54 PM:	#17
There are a number of things that people might refer to as "ideas." Suppose someone has a conception of the traits of biological entities changing through mutation. That's an idea. The more academic term might be hypothesis. Joe's conception of cats might consist of everything he believes about cats, and we could call that his "idea of cats." Thus far it's not clear that "ideas" are other than beliefs. Someone might say, "An idea just occurred to me" and they may refer to a particular thought they had. They may not be sure if they should believe it, so it may not yet congeal as a belief. Human thoughts and beliefs we could think of as internal brain programs or states of some sort that mediate between sensory input and behavior. That's sort of the functionalist view. In that case they are physical entities of some sort. That makes sense also from an evolutionary point of view.

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