tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1812431336777691886.post3215107418790375584..comments2024-02-29T03:57:00.088-05:00Comments on The Mermaid's Tale: What is an 'idea'? A philosophical puzzle?Anne Buchananhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09212151396672651221noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1812431336777691886.post-64467884168494975572014-03-30T09:36:17.187-04:002014-03-30T09:36:17.187-04:00Thanks. This sounds right, though even the expert...Thanks. This sounds right, though even the experts on the BBC program were rather vague, when it came down to it, about what an idea really was in Berkeley's and others' minds, though we probably didn't characterize his ideas very well or clearly. We were triggered by the BBC program to write not about his work per se, but about the general subject and the points we tried to make about it.<br /><br />I would say that even hard-core physicists indulge in this kind of metaphysics when discussing what 'energy' or a 'particle' are. But I think the agreement would be that they actually 'are'.Ken Weisshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02049713123559138421noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1812431336777691886.post-45260841993154812492014-03-30T02:22:32.817-04:002014-03-30T02:22:32.817-04:00Berkeley meant by "ideas" the sense impr...Berkeley meant by "ideas" the sense impressions of the objects in our experience. He argued that as such "ideas" are our primary data about the world and that "matter" as an underlying substrate of our experience was an unnecessary metaphysical assumption. Not an unreasonable position really, which even Bertrand Russell adopted. Berkeley also then argued that the persistence of ideas when not being experienced by finite observers meant there had to be a Supreme Subject who experiences everything all the time, including finite observers like us. Russell said that he didn't know why ideas persist when unobserved by humans, but accepting that "they just do" was as a rational position as assuming a Supreme Subject.qraalhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13436948899560519608noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1812431336777691886.post-26932638815753771042014-03-26T13:16:40.394-04:002014-03-26T13:16:40.394-04:00I think these are among the oldest, and perhaps de...I think these are among the oldest, and perhaps deepest questions in all of philosophy and, in some ways, religion, too. The questions are so vague or one might say immaterial themselves, that it is probably wrong to think that there are 'answers' to them.Ken Weisshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02049713123559138421noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1812431336777691886.post-30276541219876786922014-03-26T12:16:52.505-04:002014-03-26T12:16:52.505-04:00I like your comment that "We don't really...I like your comment that "We don't really understand much of the physical world." Ideas are part of the physical world in various ways that can be researched - neurologically, acoustically, etc. but to understand the precise physical pathways of their histories, much less write them down or model them, is very complicated. This is a difficulty with taking a materialist stand about introspected and folk concepts. Materialist descriptions require a certain amount of research.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com