Concepts, Ideas, and Reality: What do you think of it?

Discuss any topics related to metaphysics (the philosophical study of the principles of reality) or epistemology (the philosophical study of knowledge) in this forum.
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Wesgtr
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Concepts, Ideas, and Reality: What do you think of it?

Post by Wesgtr »

I think if a concept is real then it is real. It is the concept that is shade of reality. An idea--if it is real and points to the external world, it is real in the external reality somewhere. If it is a valid concept or idea, it is real in internal and external realities. It is either real in internal or external realities or both. You often hear if it is real to you it is real. I think that idea is a projection of reality idea. That would be that what one has a concept of is real to them and then to the world. It is creation by the person of the external reality. I do not completely agree with this. Instead, I suggest that concepts and ideas by the individual are real because of their relation to reality. An idea is real and so it is real. A concept is real and so also it is real. There is no, "that is just real to you." I see the world as full of concepts and ideas that we are merely touching upon. The idea or concept spreads out into external reality. For example, I have an idea of good and evil. As a concept that is real. There is at least a shred of the true good and evil in my idea, because I have the idea and the idea is real. Yet, an idea is not thinking, and I would wager, further, that that is why it is difficult to think of evil. Your Idea of good and evil when at the merely idea stage is not suppressing. Still, how can one think of evil without being wounded or saddened or angered? One's thinking dives deeper into it, resulting in strong convictions, emotions, actions. But, something gets in the way of evil thoughts, because for the most part people are good not evil.

Now, a concept of God is real as it is a lesser form of the real God. Or, a concept of an angel is a lesser form of the real angel, because the real God or real angel are out there as much as the God or angel can be conceptualized within an individual. Providing hard evidence for a God or an angel is really meaningless, since as much as we can prove by the mind is that what exists in it exists internally as well as externally. Differentiating the reality of an external world compared with the internal mind of an individual is the subjective reality of an individual's mind with the reality of the external's existence.

Conceptualization is merely a "getting at" the real thing. It is a shade of the truth. But, it has a shred of truth because it is close. How close is a matter of how good of a concept it is. However, a concept can be a fictitious one. It can be a modification of reality. An example of this might be the animals that speak one to another in George Orwell's book or even CS Lewis's. The fact of the matter remains that one who has a concept or idea of something, someone, etc. has a reality in some form of existence. It may be purely internal, it may be external with internal as a shade of the real existence. It may even be an idea of an idea. Nevertheless, we do know things conceptually by innate knowledge.

An idea is an originality of the real thing, leading to a firm definition, description, and explanation. An original idea of the real that collapses into a concept is what a true idea is.

What do you think of the human mind and reality? What is real? and what makes the mind a part of that reality?

(I just wanted a few opinions. I will be studying in an MA philosophy without a BA degree and thought I'd present a few of my thoughts.)
Maxcady10001
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Re: Concepts, Ideas, and Reality: What do you think of it?

Post by Maxcady10001 »

I do agree, that a concept or an idea is real, so long as it proves true in your relation to reality. Whatever is apparent to a person makes up their reality, and so long as an idea accurately describes an individual's apparent reality it is real to them.
However, I do not agree with the notion that ideas are shades of reality, meaning there is actually some good or some evil. I don't see how an idea could be real outside an individual's apparent reality, what can be called real, is whatever accurately describes our relation to our apparent reality.
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Papus79
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Re: Concepts, Ideas, and Reality: What do you think of it?

Post by Papus79 »

To drill deeper into this - if a thing is truly unreal we'd, by definition, never be able to think of it.

That is taking the definition of 'real' in the most liberal sense but it also reminds me again of listening to Jordan Peterson and Michael Shermer talk about Michael's recent book about the Afterlife. I think, at least among clearer heads, the idea is that everything anyone's ever thought of, no matter how strange it might seem, points at something. The content might be highly abstracted, the idea itself could be a dream collage, a game, or both, but we really are limited to the content of our experiences and those experiences which we're able to obtain second-hand through the art, photography, music, writings, and orations of others. Also while I get the impression this would be preaching to the choir (there seem to be a lot of astute thinkers here) I'd add that human beings do have a lot more depth than is often considered and some of the most passionate and elaborate stories are going on within us as self-regulatory mechanisms, energy and attention management programs, and fantasy's pretty important if you consider just how much control we need over our internal terrain when we have an external terrain that we often times have very limited control over and still have to maintain ourselves as beneficial actors in the game.
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Mosesquine
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Re: Concepts, Ideas, and Reality: What do you think of it?

Post by Mosesquine »

I define the concept of concepts as follows:

Concept = Concept is a constituent of thoughts, and it is used for explanation of which how our thoughts/sentences/propositions (or whatever like them) are composed, and it is often used as predicates in any languages.
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