Object Permanence, but for Ideas?

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Lucius
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Object Permanence, but for Ideas?

Post by Lucius »

Is there a proper philosophical term for, well, something like "idea permanence"?

This popped into my head yesterday. It is easy for most people to debate the ideas at hand, but a difficulty I often run into is that non-philosophical people will argue different ideas at different times and in different contexts.

I'm sure everyone has experienced this...like a real example is a person is angry about a friend is angry and gossiping about a friend who got caught driving drunk...and then this person goes out on a birthday, gets drunk, and drives home...and then vehemently defends their act of drunk driving.

Sadly, I work with people like this...one guy gossips every day about this other guy, and was all in his **** when the guy got a DWI. Then a few months later he gets his own DWI...and a few months after that was forced to go into treatment.

One possibility might be "cognitive dissonance"? But to me that is more about being indoctrinated in an ideology that contradicts parts of reality. What I'm after is the ability to remember ideas and apply them to another context...realizing that ideas are real and don't change from context to context.
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Ambatt
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Re: Object Permanence, but for Ideas?

Post by Ambatt »

I started wondering about this same thing -- and I think you're onto something here, but in a more general sense. Humans think, thus we are, but what we think we seem to believe applies everywhere. As an athlete, I've started questioning my self-perception and the idea permanence I have about the world... Nothing stays the same.
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Re: Object Permanence, but for Ideas?

Post by Prothero »

Well as it turns out, on the quantum scale, even "object permanence" is highly questionable. Matter at least as a "particle" may only exist when interacting or being observed. Flux and change, impermanence is the nature of the world. Nothing is permanent but change.
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Lucius
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Re: Object Permanence, but for Ideas?

Post by Lucius »

Prothero wrote:Well as it turns out, on the quantum scale, even "object permanence" is highly questionable. Matter at least as a "particle" may only exist when interacting or being observed. Flux and change, impermanence is the nature of the world. Nothing is permanent but change.


I think...after all this time, the answer is definitive..."No." There apparently is no such term, else someone would have offered it?

The other leading possibility is that hardly anybody uses this forum, and none of them could be bothered to offer any such knowledge, supposing that it does exist.


I think philosophy is about ideas that help us interact with reality as we experience it, whereas theoretical quantum physics...is a completely different thing altogether. I try not to confuse the two. Such theory about phenomenon, whether true or not, which exist completely outside of direct human observation, that only exists in theory due to how thoroughly it defies our best attempts to observe it, even attempts to observe in the most indirect way, should not be used as proof against object permanence.

Object permanence is simple--it is learning that an object still exists, even when it is out of view. In humans, object permanence is very important and is learned very early in life.

What I meant to say is I think people should learn the same lesson about ideas. And is there a word for this kind of principle? An idea, or principle, if it is proven to be true and believed to be true in one context, should be adhered to in other contexts, even if it doesn't seem immediately relevant.

When a person engages in such behavior, they are able to learn. If a principle is only true in one context, it is in some way imperfect and needs to be revised. Scientists do this, physicists do this... But do philosophers do it?
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Burning ghost
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Re: Object Permanence, but for Ideas?

Post by Burning ghost »

It is called "idealism".

Your OP is not exactly clear so maybe you mean something else like hypocrisy, fixatedness or general heuristic usage?
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Re: Object Permanence, but for Ideas?

Post by -1- »

Original Poster, you mean people decry a certain action, and gossip about actual events done by others involving that action, and then you hear that they themselves are involved in the same action?

This is not object permanence. It is a problem with evaluative irregularity. A person who commits evaluative irregularity uses several different scales for (moral, ethical) evaluation of the same action depending on who is involved on doing this action.

-- Updated 2017 June 19th, 5:04 am to add the following --

Original Poster, you mean people decry a certain action, and gossip about actual events done by others involving that action, and then you hear that they themselves are involved in the same action?

This is not object permanence. It is a problem with evaluative irregularity. A person who commits evaluative irregularity uses several different scales for (moral, ethical) evaluation of the same action depending on who is involved on doing this action.

-- Updated 2017 June 19th, 5:04 am to add the following --

Double-post... I don't know why or how it happened. Sorry.
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Re: Object Permanence, but for Ideas?

Post by Belindi »

I think that Plato described idea permanence when he described the Forms. The allegory of The Cave tells how a man left the others in chains in the cave, watching shadow play while he went out of the cave into the light and viewed permanent ideas, which Plato called the Forms.

-- Updated June 19th, 2017, 4:54 pm to add the following --

Lucius wrote:
but a difficulty I often run into is that non-philosophical people will argue different ideas at different times and in different contexts.
Different ideas at different times and in different contexts are relative ideas, i.e. relative to the times and the contexts, often social contexts.

Me, I don't believe in permanent ideas although I long for them. This is a relative world. If there be a God then He would not only know permanent ideas but would essentially be permanent idea. God- believers call God "Rock of Ages", which must be comforting.

I am not sure about mathematical ideas, which is to say that I don't know what is the knowledge status of mathematical ideas .
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Re: Object Permanence, but for Ideas?

Post by Prothero »

Belindi wrote:I think that Plato described idea permanence when he described the Forms. The allegory of The Cave tells how a man left the others in chains in the cave, watching shadow play while he went out of the cave into the light and viewed permanent ideas, which Plato called the Forms.

-- Updated June 19th, 2017, 4:54 pm to add the following --

Lucius wrote:
but a difficulty I often run into is that non-philosophical people will argue different ideas at different times and in different contexts.
Different ideas at different times and in different contexts are relative ideas, i.e. relative to the times and the contexts, often social contexts.

Me, I don't believe in permanent ideas although I long for them. This is a relative world. If there be a God then He would not only know permanent ideas but would essentially be permanent idea. God- believers call God "Rock of Ages", which must be comforting.

I am not sure about mathematical ideas, which is to say that I don't know what is the knowledge status of mathematical ideas .
I suppose mathematical "objects" are about the closest one can get to "permanence. A triangle, a square, etc, the integers, in philosophy though the "status", existence or reality of mathematical objects is a subject of controversy. I myself am a bit of Platonist, and think the so called "real" word which is flux and impermanence, is based on an underlying "realm" of which mathematical objects are part and which gives form (order, laws) to the "physical" realm.
See Heisenberg on the Debate between Plato and Democritus
patternsinthevoid-famous-physicists-on-mysticism-2-the-debate-between-plato-and-democritus-by-werner-heisenberg
Belindi
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Re: Object Permanence, but for Ideas?

Post by Belindi »

Prothero I searched and could find only the article from which the quote below comes. I don't know the pedigree of the article,but I like the writer's style.

-------the central ideas of Plato's idealist philosophy. The structure underlying the phenomena is not given by material objects like the atoms of Democritus but by the form that determines the material objects. The Ideas are more fundamental then the objects. And since the smallest parts of matter have to be the objects whereby the simplicity of the world becomes visible, whereby we approximate to the “one” and the “unity” of the world, the Ideas can be described mathematically—they are simply mathematical forms. The saying “God is a mathematician,” which in this form assuredly derives from a later period of philosophy, has its origin in this passage from the Platonic philosophy.

The writer says that later on after the advent of uncertainty regarding subatomic particles that Plato, and ideas, is at this juncture the winner.

-- Updated June 20th, 2017, 6:00 am to add the following --

The source from which I quoted:

https://github.com/isislovecruft/patter ... senberg.md
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