Ideas
Idea refers to a plan or a process that occurs in the mind in
relation to the completion of a work or duty. Thought on the other hand is
a mental process that keeps on going in the mind unabated. This is the main
difference between the two words idea and thought. Thought paves the way
for an idea. In their most common sense, the terms thought and thinking
refer to cognitive processes that can happen independently of sensory
stimulation. Their most paradigmatic forms are judging, reasoning, concept
formation, problem solving, and deliberation.
While the concept of "8 types of thoughts" isn't a universally
recognized or categorized list, it can refer to various cognitive processes
and thinking styles. Some common examples include: critical thinking,
creative thinking, analytical thinking, abstract thinking, concrete
thinking, convergent thinking, divergent thinking, and reflective thinking.
Here's a breakdown of some key types of thinking:
1. Critical Thinking: Involves analyzing information objectively to form a
judgment.
2. Creative Thinking: Focuses on generating new ideas, solutions, or
perspectives.
3. Analytical Thinking: Involves breaking down complex information into
smaller parts to understand it better.
4. Abstract Thinking: Deals with concepts and ideas that are not directly
tied to physical objects or experiences.
5. Concrete Thinking: Focuses on tangible, observable things and
experiences.
6. Convergent Thinking: Aims to find a single, correct answer to a problem.
7. Divergent Thinking: Generates multiple ideas or solutions to a problem.
8. Reflective Thinking: Involves examining one's own thoughts, feelings,
and experiences to gain insights.
Other relevant types of thinking include:
Intuitive Thinking: Relying on instincts and gut feelings.
Systematic Thinking: Following a structured and logical approach to
problem-solving.
Emotional Reasoning: Basing decisions or interpretations on emotions rather
than logic.
Mental Blocks: Obstacles that hinder thought processes and creativity.
Catastrophizing: Exaggerating the potential negative consequences of a
situation.
Mind Reading: Assuming you know what others are thinking without evidence.
Personalization: Taking personal responsibility for events that are not
your fault.
Three Kinds of Idea. Here, Descartes considers three kinds of
idea: innate
ideas, adventitious ideas, and what are sometimes called factitious ideas.
The categories are determined by considering the possible origins of the
ideational contents presented or exhibited to the mind.
Three Kinds of Idea
In the Meditations, after Descartes casts ideas as modes that represent or
exhibit objects to the mind, he divides ideas into kinds. He says: Among my
ideas, some appear to be innate, some to be adventitious, and others to
have been invented by me. My understanding of what a thing is, what truth
is, and what thought is, seems to derive simply from my own nature. But my
hearing a noise, as I do now, or seeing the sun, or feeling the fire, comes
from things which are located outside me, or so I have hitherto judged.
Lastly, sirens, hippogriffs and the like are my own invention.
Here, Descartes considers three kinds of idea: innate ideas, adventitious
ideas, and what are sometimes called factitious ideas. The categories are
determined by considering the possible origins of the ideational contents
presented or exhibited to the mind.
The first category includes ideas whose contents have their origin in his
nature (qua thinking thing). An example is his idea of what thought or
thinking is. The third category includes ideas whose contents have their
origin in the contents of other ideas. An example would be the idea of
Pegasus, where its content is drawn perhaps from the contents of the idea
of a horse and the idea of a bird. Adventitious ideas, however, appear at
least at first glance to be importantly different, since Nature has always
taught him, he says, to think that they are “derived from things existing
outside me”. The category arises in part from ordinary (pre-philosophical)
experience: “…I know by experience that these ideas do not depend on my
will, and hence that they do not depend simply on me. Frequently I notice
them even when I do not want to: now, for example, I feel the heat whether
I want to or not, and this is why I think that this sensation or idea of
heat comes to me from something other than myself, namely the heat of the
fire by which I am sitting” . An account of their origin, he suggests, may
require an appeal to things that exist external to, or independently of,
his mind. Adventitious ideas include sensory ideas; ideas that originate in
sensory experience—such as the ideas of the Sun or the Moon, but also the
more simple ideas of colors, sounds, heat, cold, and the like.
In Descartes’ analysis of his idea of God, he discovers that it is
innate, since it is neither adventitious nor factitious. It is not
adventitious (or sensory), since he has had no sensory experiences of God
(i.e., he has never seen, heard, felt, smelt, or tasted God). This would be
in line with the theological demand that God is immaterial. It is not
factitious, for its content is something that his mind cannot fabricate
from other ideas—the idea represents an actual infinity; at best his mind
can only produce the factitious idea of a potential infinity. Even so, it
becomes clear to him that the innate idea of God is like the adventitious
idea of the Sun, but unlike the innate idea of what thought is (which has
its origin in his own nature), since like the adventitious idea of the Sun,
the objective reality possessed by the idea has its origin in the formal
reality belonging to something other than his own mind. His analysis
concludes that the origin of the objective reality must be in an existing
God (an actual infinite substance, something possessing an infinite level
of formal reality). In the Sixth Meditation, he will ultimately conclude
that the objective reality of his idea of body, also innate, must have,
like the innate idea of God, its origin in the formal reality belonging to
something other than his own mind, namely, it will have its origin in an
existing corporeal substance (an extended being that possesses a finite
level of formal reality). Ultimately, the objective reality (i.e.,
contents) of his innate ideas and adventitious ideas must have their origin
in the formal reality of things, some of the latter being things existing
independently of his mind.
This is not the only place in Descartes’ work where innate and
adventitious ideas are cast as sharing the trait of having their respective
origins in things existing independently of his mind. For instance, in
Comments on a Certain Broadsheet, published in 1648, Descartes casts
innateness as a faculty , which aligns with what he had said to Hobbes in
the Third Set of Replies: “…when we say that an idea is innate in us, we do
not mean that it is always there before us. This would mean that no idea
was innate. We simply mean that we have within ourselves the faculty of
summoning up the idea” . Scholars note that this may be different from the
way in which innate ideas were cast in the Third Meditation. But in the
sense of innate–as–faculty, in Comments on a Certain Broadsheet, Descartes
goes on to say that there is a sense in which even sensory ideas (ideas of
qualities such as pains, colors, sounds, and so on), ideas arising via the
senses, which are a species of adventitious idea, are nevertheless innate.
The argument unfolds as follows: Given that the human (or embodied) mind
has the faculty or capacity to have sensory ideas of pains, colors, sounds,
and so on, where these are occasioned on the occurrence or presence of
certain motions in the brain, and nothing of the motions in the brain is
transferred to the mind, and nothing resembling the pains, colors, and
sounds is present in bodies (including the brain), then the ideas of pains,
colors, and sounds (i.e., the ideas of those qualities) “must be all the
more innate.”
Scholars agree that Descartes recognizes at least three innate ideas: the
idea of God, the idea of (finite) mind, and the idea of (indefinite) body.
In the letter to Elisabeth, he includes a fourth: the idea of the union (of
mind and body).
There is an alternate division of ideas worth noting. In the Third
Meditation, after having introduced the tripartite division of innate,
adventitious, and factitious ideas, Descartes continues to entertain the
possible origins of the contents of his ideas. His analysis turns on the
principle that an effect can never be greater than its cause, which is
underwritten by the self-evident principle that something cannot come from
nothing. He says: “And although one idea may perhaps originate from
another, there cannot be an infinite regress here; eventually one must
reach a primary idea, the cause of which will be like an archetype which
contains formally (and in fact) all the reality (or perfection) which is
present only objectively (or representatively) in the idea.” Here,
Descartes introduces the notion of a primary idea. The import of this
notion is that the contents of some of his ideas may have their origin in
things located “outside” his mind—that is, in things that exist
independently of his mind.
Descartes’ analysis suggests that the contents of some of his innate
ideas and all of his adventitious ideas have their origin in things
existing independently of his mind. Such ideas are included in the category
of Primary Idea. The innate idea of God is a primary idea, since the
objective reality it possesses has its origin the formal reality of God.
Likewise, the innate idea of body is a primary idea, since the objective
reality it possesses has its origin in the formal reality of body. And, as
just noted, the adventitious idea of the Sun is a primary idea, since the
objective reality it possesses has its origin the formal reality of the
Sun. Factitious ideas, whose contents have their origin in the contents of
other ideas, no doubt fall into the category of Non-Primary idea. A
non-primary idea is one whose objective reality has its origin in the
objective reality of some other idea. The factitious idea of Pegasus is an
example of a non-primary idea.
The Rules: Simple Natures and the Concepts of Clarity and Distinctness
It is in the Rules that Descartes introduces the simple natures. The simple
natures are not only what our ideas are of—that is, they not only
constitute the contents of our ideas, the “objects” immediately presented
to the mind—but are also the natures possessed by things. Examples of
simple natures are colors, sounds, smells, shapes, sizes, extension, and
the like. He says, for example, in Rule Twelve, “if I judge that a certain
shape is not moving, I shall say that my thought is in some way composed of
shape and rest; and similarly in other cases.” In the First Meditation,
Descartes mentions similar ideational elements “from which all the images
of things” are formed. In the Second Meditation, in his analysis of the
adventitious idea of a piece of wax, Descartes again provides a list of
such ideational elements. In the Third Meditation, he refers to such items
as “elements in my ideas.” And, in the Sixth Meditation, when revisiting
some of what he had established in the Second Meditation, talk of these
qualities that are “the only immediate objects of my sensory awareness” is
again introduced. So, although Descartes does not employ the “simple
natures” terminology in later work, the philosophical notion certainly
looks to be present in his later work.
Simple natures form an ordered, hierarchical system. Upon analysis they
appear to be sorted into two basic groups or classes, which not
surprisingly corresponds to Descartes’ mind-body dualism. Descartes refers
to this partition of simple natures as the enumeration. The basic classes
of this enumeration will also be partitioned. In light of this, this
ultimate enumeration—the partition of the simple natures into the classes
of thinking and extended things—can be referred to as the master
enumeration. As laid out in the Rules, the hierarchy is not understood in
terms of the ontology, but in terms of what must be known in terms of
what. These groups or classes are formed in light of epistemic priority.
One group includes those simple natures that presuppose the simple nature
thought or thinking, while the other group includes those simple natures
that presuppose the simple nature extension. The view is that the simple
nature shape, for instance, presupposes the simple nature extension in that
the former is known (understood) on the basis of the latter. As Descartes
puts it later in the Principles, “shape is unintelligible except in an
extended thing.” No extension, no shape. The same holds for the other
class. The simple nature hot, a sensible quality, presupposes the simple
nature thought or thinking in that the former is known (or understood) on
the basis of the latter. No thought or thinking, no (feeling of) hotness.
Descartes recognizes two forms of conjunction found among the simple
natures: necessary and contingent conjunction. Two simple natures are said
to be necessarily conjoined whenever one presupposes (entails) the other.
(Ibid.) So, for instance, the simple nature shape is necessarily conjoined
with the simple nature extension insofar as the former presupposes (or
entails) the latter. An idea is said to be clear whenever the necessary
conjunction between simple natures in the idea is exhibited or made
explicit. Descartes’ procedure for making an idea “clearer” is to compare
the simple natures in the idea.
Russell Wahl has argued that for Descartes truth was related
directly to natures. (Wahl 1995) What is true, he says, “is the object
before the mind and not the idea—not the operation of the mind, but what is
perceived.” (Wahl 1995, p. 188) In other words, truth is not related to the
idea taken materially, but to the idea taken objectively. This, he says, is
no doubt related to Descartes’ claim that whatever is true is something
(real). The import of this view is that the simple natures, which
constitute the contents of ideas, are also the very same natures possessed
by things—at least when the idea is clear and distinct. Here, the simple
natures look to be serving as an ontological bridge, so to speak, between
the mind and extra-mental reality. Wahl’s reading is controversial, but
worth noting, since the potentiality lurks in its being able to bring
closer together the Representationalism and Direct Realist readings.
“The sun as it exists objectively,” says Hoffman, “is able to
represent the sun as it exists formally in the heavens precisely because it
is the same thing that has these two modes of existence.” (Hoffman 2002, p.
168) That is, the Sun possesses both formal and objective reality, or
rather, the simple natures that constitute the thing referred by the words
“the Sun” possess both formal and objective reality. Hoffman’s suggestion
is that it is the objective reality possessed by the simple natures that
the mind “engages” when perceiving the Sun. It is via the Sun’s objective
being that the mind has “access to” the Sun in the heavens. This suggestion
would seem to straddle both the Representationalism and Direct Realist
interpretations, though, as Hoffman himself characterizes his view, his
suggestion leans in the direction of the Direct Realist interpretation.
[STANFORD]
Don’t say you don’t have enough time. You have exactly the same
number of hours per day that were given to Helen Keller, Pasteur,
Michelangelo, Mother Teresea, Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson, Albert
Einstein, etc…
K RAJARAM IRS 6825
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