Does an 'idea' or 'thought' exist as two different things at once?

[underpressure]

This is blowing my mind. When we have an idea or imagine something, our brain is firing some neurons or doing whatever it does, so on that aspect an idea is a physical thing. But when we're actually experiencing that idea, it is something quite else, non-physical but we know it exists because we experience it. Does it exist as two different things at once, I'm just struggling to rationalise this at the moment.

 

[Bushido216]

You're expressing a dualism that doesn't exist. Your thoughts and imaginations are the way you experience neurons firing in your brain, not a separate thing.

 

[Received]

I think you're trying to distinguish an idea from what it's made up of. An idea might be constituted (in whole or in part, depending on your view of how consciousness works) by physicality, but this doesn't mean that the idea itself is physical, or that anything we experience is. In other words, any ideas we have can't be reduced to the physical processes that make them up. If this were so, I should be able to look at a certain neural process while the brain is functioning and say, "well, there's the color red," or "there's my thought about shaving."

 

[Bushido216]

Okay, so then what constitutes an idea? Where is it? You don't have an answer because there are no answers.

Brain imaging isn't yet so advanced that I can say "there's shaving", but we're working on it. We can already map sensory input, and aspects of memory and emotion are being mapped as we speak.

 

[Received]

My point is that the processes that "create" an idea are not tantamount to the idea. If they were the same, we would be able to look at any process in the brain and "see" the idea; but obviously this isn't the case. It isn't a matter of advances in neuroscience, either. Neuroscience can help us pinpoint the physical processes that contain the idea, if you will.

 

[Chesterton]

What does the word "about" mean? Thoughts are about things. If a thought is a thing, how can one thing be "about" another thing?

 

[Dark_Lite]

An idea is separate from the thoughts that make it up. You can't quantify an idea only physically. Even if eliminative materialism is true, and there is absolutely nothing more than just atoms in the head, I do believe you can still say that an idea is separate from the atoms that make up the way humans process that idea. Something does not have to be physical to exist. Ideas don't need humans to think them up, they just won't be implemented until someone comes along to think them up.

 

[Received]

Take, for example, the color red. You can't replicate that in a laboratory, because red is the phenomenological result of neural processes, and not the processes themselves. If ideas or experiences aren't physical in this sense, does that make them metaphysical? Or simply phenomenological? I think the latter. One of the big unanswerable questions is whether or not any conscious activity springs from only a neural (physical) process, or also a metaphysical (spiritual) one. I see no way to prove this, but some honest neuroscientists (even atheists, like Sam Harris) claim that there's a nonphysical element to neural functioning -- which obviously isn't popular in scientific circles.

 

[LightSeaker]

This is blowing my mind. When we have an idea or imagine something, our brain is firing some neurons or doing whatever it does, so on that aspect an idea is a physical thing. But when we're actually experiencing that idea, it is something quite else, non-physical but we know it exists because we experience it. Does it exist as two different things at once, I'm just struggling to rationalise this at the moment.

Ones thoughts are just that, thoughts.

Experience is something direct and now. They happen only once and if we are not aware of it while it's happening, the experience is gone forever.

Thoughts on the other hand can be relived over and over.

.

 

[Chesterton]

Ones thoughts are just that, thoughts.

Experience is something direct and now. They happen only once and if we are not aware of it while it's happening, the experience is gone forever.

Thoughts on the other hand can be relived over and over.

Makes it sound as if thoughts exist outside of time.

 

[Dark_Lite]

Ones thoughts are just that, thoughts.

Experience is something direct and now. They happen only once and if we are not aware of it while it's happening, the experience is gone forever.

Thoughts on the other hand can be relived over and over.

.

I would have to say thoughts are temporal entities, like experience. Any thought you have will not be exactly like previous, similar thoughts, even if in regular speech it is easier to say "it's the same thought." I think this is true regardless of whether or not thoughts are only physical phenomena, or something on a different metaphysical level.

In a Platonic context, having the exact same thought over and over would mean that your thoughts are operating on the Forms, since those are unchanging. Humans thought doesn't operate directly on the Forms. It operates on imperfect conceptions of the forms, which are changing. Therefore, your individual thoughts are always different.

Or something. *puts on monocle*

 

[Received]

Actually, I think "thought" refers to the temporal context in which ideas take place. When I'm thinking, I'm having the same thought for as long as I'm thinking, even if I'm having different ideas. Quibbles.

I think that ideas are definitely temporal, but consciousness appears to have a metaphysical element to it, and eternity and metaphysics go well together typically, so perhaps consciousness (and therefore thoughts) is a synthesis of temporality and eternity.

 

[Chesterton]

Say as a six-year-old I think that "2+2=4". Then 30 years later I think the same thing. Granted I'd have had two separate mental activities, but I'd have only had one thought, separated from itself by 30 years, right?

 

[Received]

If you had remained in thought for thirty years straight, then yeah. But some of us have other things to do.

 

[diychristian]

How about this...Ideas are objective giving them autonomy, but their existence and their growth are dependent on the mind. (Don't you dare say "meme". memes are given self sustaining abilities. I don't believe ideas have reproductive abilities of their own).

Thoughts are subjective and their existence and growth are dependent on the mind also. The product of thoughts are ideas.

Thoughts may be considered like droplets of water from the mind and ideas are the cumulative puddle that forms. Droplets can fall from any mind.

 

[quatona]

This is blowing my mind. When we have an idea or imagine something, our brain is firing some neurons or doing whatever it does, so on that aspect an idea is a physical thing. But when we're actually experiencing that idea, it is something quite else, non-physical but we know it exists because we experience it. Does it exist as two different things at once, I'm just struggling to rationalise this at the moment.

Maybe defining "existence" would be a good starting point.
Next, I suggest to check out if you use this definition consequently.
Finally, I recommend you to stop conceptualizing processes as "things" or "objects".

 

[Eudaimonist]

This is blowing my mind. When we have an idea or imagine something, our brain is firing some neurons or doing whatever it does, so on that aspect an idea is a physical thing. But when we're actually experiencing that idea, it is something quite else, non-physical but we know it exists because we experience it. Does it exist as two different things at once, I'm just struggling to rationalise this at the moment.

I take a dual-aspect view of this. There aren't two different "things" involved, but one thing as seen from two different perspectives.


eudaimonia,

Mark

 

[underpressure]

If we say existence=matter. Everything in the known universe is made from matter.

Now say I'm lying down, imagining fireworks of all colours going off in my head. This projection in my head of the fireworks can't be seen by you, it's not made of matter so by by definition it doesn't exist, but the neurons firing away are made of matter and can be seen by you, theoretically.

So what is this projection in my head of the fireworks if not a thing?

1. Can we just conveniently pretend it doesn't exist?
2. Or do we say it does exists but as something other than matter (meaning existence doesn't equal matter after all, and it could therefore follow that we are more than just biology or matter)?
3. Or do we say it is just the way we 'experience' the brain neurons firing away, so what is 'experience', is experience something other than matter, so again, are we more than just biology or matter?

How do we know which is the correct answer?

 

[Eudaimonist]

If we say existence=matter. Everything in the known universe is made from matter.

Now say I'm lying down, imagining fireworks of all colours going off in my head. This projection in my head of the fireworks can't be seen by you, it's not made of matter so by by definition it doesn't exist, but the neurons firing away are made of matter and can be seen by you, theoretically.

By definition it does exist. You said that everything that exists is made from matter. You saw the fireworks in your head. The fireworks might not exist as fireworks that can be seen by others, but they exist as imagined fireworks, therefore they are matter.

I'm just going by what you write above. An alternative way of looking at it is that what we call "matter" is only one aspect of entities, the aspect we see when we look at them with our senses, and that "mind" (including imagination) is another aspect of (at least some) entities, the aspect we experience introspectively.

So what is this projection in my head of the fireworks if not a thing?

As I said, a perspective on a thing -- specifically, on the activity of your neurons, as seen from the "inside". The external perspective would show neurons firing in a pattern. Same thing, different perspectives.


eudaimonia,

Mark

 

[quatona]

If we say existence=matter. Everything in the known universe is made from matter.

Now say I'm lying down, imagining fireworks of all colours going off in my head. This projection in my head of the fireworks can't be seen by you, it's not made of matter so by by definition it doesn't exist, but the neurons firing away are made of matter and can be seen by you, theoretically.

So what is this projection in my head of the fireworks if not a thing?

1. Can we just conveniently pretend it doesn't exist?

Going by your definitions ("made from matter") we can´t. I don´t know what would be "convenient" about concluding otherwise, though.

2. Or do we say it does exists but as something other than matter (meaning existence doesn't equal matter after all, and it could therefore follow that we are more than just biology or matter)?

You at least can´t say that because it contradicts your own definition/premise.
However, if we´d let go off your strict definition and bring energy into the equation, things might look a bit different.

3. Or do we say it is just the way we 'experience' the brain neurons firing away, so what is 'experience', is experience something other than matter, so again, are we more than just biology or matter?

I would - a bit sloppily - compare us to lightbulbs ("made of matter") that transform electricity (also "made of matter") into light (-> "made of matter"). I am not sure how this would require me to say that lightbulbs are "more than just matter".

How do we know which is the correct answer?

I don´t think there is a correct answer to such questions. They either are - to me - satisfactory explanations or they aren´t. On top, a lot is forced by the definitions used.

Possibly, replacing "existence equals matter" by "existence requires matter" helps, for starters.