Thanks. This in fact does answer my question. I think any confusion may have been caused by my definition of hypostatization not being entirely correct for this particular instance.

The gist of my question was to verify that you were indeed saying you believe you see objects, rather than representations of objects. Here I was equating (perhaps incorrectly) "representations" with "ideas," and the fallacy of mistaking the idea of something for the actual thing itself.

This is what I assumed (again, perhaps incorrectly) you meant when you said you have representations, or a concept of something, that allows you to see a chair as a chair as opposed to seeing something else.

If I am incorrect in equating representations with ideas, please let me know what the correct distinction between the two should be.


Tock

I am not sure what you mean by "ideas".
17th and 18th century philosophers used the term so loosely that is simply meant any mental object. They were also used more narrowly just to mean what philosophers later called "sense-data" which were supposed to form the veil of perception between the perceiver and the world. Does anyone now use the term, "idea" as they did in the 17th and 18th century?

I meant "ideas" as in "I can think about a chair and form a mental picture of a chair in my head, but I will not mistake this mental imagery for an actual chair."

The idea (or representation?) of a chair is just something I have filed in my brain so that when I perceive a chair as a physical object I am able to apply a name and a purpose to it.

At least I think that's what I mean. After reading and rereading what you are saying here, I'm beginning to suspect that I may have been using the term "idea" in way that suggests I should be wearing a powdered wig and holding forth on aethers.

I'm hoping that you can help me clear up some of the confusion in both my thinking and my terminology here. Any guidelines or resources you could offer would be greatly appreciated. I have yet to find time to read the G.E. Moore essays I printed out. Perhaps those will help me along these lines.

But ideas are not mental pictures, are they? What about my idea of knowledge, or my idea of God? And even my idea of the color red, or of a 30-sided polygon. Does my idea of a 30-sided polygon also have 30 sides? Should I count them? How do I count the sides of my idea of a 30-sided polygon? If I count only 28 sides, will that mean that my idea is mistaken, or will that mean that I miscounted? How will I tell? It seems to me that the idea (!) of ideas as mental pictures is a non-starter.

Thank you. This is helpful to me. In thinking about it more carefully, no . . . ideas are not mental pictures.

So, would it be accurate then if I were to say the following:

"I have an idea for a wire sculpture of a bare tree that I would like to make as a Halloween decoration. In order to physically create this sculpture, I need to have a concept in mind, based on memories of actual bare trees I have seen, of how I want my tree sculpture to look-its shape, size, how many branches I intend it to have, etc. When I begin construction of my tree sculpture (assuming I have not first sketched it out on paper) I refer to my concept, or mental picture, of how I want it to look. When I have completed my tree sculpture, I might, if asked how I feel about it, say that I'm satisfied with it as a representation of a certain type of tree."


Thanks for your time,
TTM

But ideas can be of abstractions. For instance, of knowledge, or of justice. What would a representation of knowledge or justice be?

If I may interject, a representation of an abstraction would be a mental picture conjured that is associated with the abstraction.

For instance, a representation of "justice" could be me visualizing some man getting arrested after getting caught running a kiddie porn dungeon. However, it may not be a representation of "justice" for someone else; it depends on the notion of "justice" that that individual believes.

Have I misunderstood you?

I have the idea of justice, but I don't have any picture in my head which represents justice.

I have the idea of implication (in logic) but I have no picture in my head associated with the idea of implication

If we happen to have some mental picture associated with an idea, it seems to me that is accidental.

The mental picture one happens to have certainly has nothing to do with the idea, since people may have different ideas, or no idea at all, and still understand the idea.

But ideas can be of abstractions. For instance, of knowledge, or of justice. What would a representation of knowledge or justice be?

I have an idea of justice in my head, and I'm able to visualize a picture of it. Are you not able to?



Some ideas are harder to visualize than others. Other ideas can more easily be represented through mental imagery (or actual imagery, like a painting).



If the mental picture is associated with the idea, how could it be accidental? If you didn't have the idea to begin with, you wouldn't have conjured the mental image. Sometimes it's deliberate, sometimes it's not (I could just hear someone say the word "justice" and conjure something), but ultimately it depends on my idea of justice. If I have no idea what someone is talking about, I won't understand what they're saying and hence won't be able to visualize anything.



If they understand the idea, they have an idea. People can understand others' ideas of abstractions even if they don't believe them. For instance, I can understand how one might think justice is when person X gets arrested for murdering someone. If, for some reason, I didn't think it was justice, I'm still able to acknowledge the other person's notion of justice, but just not agree with it.

And of course mental pictures have to do with ideas. As TickTockMan noted above, it's required that you create a mental picture in your mind to do many things, especially related to artistry. Those people who have painted paintings of abstractions such as "goodness", "god", and "love" obviously had a mental picture in mind. We're then able to understand that that painting was a representation of the artist's notion of the abstraction. Our semantic capacity allows this.

But the mental picture, if there is one, and there need be none (some people are just more visual than others) has nothing at all with the semantic content of the idea. It is an individual accident (was what I meant) that a particular image is associated with an idea for one person; that a very different image is associated with the same idea in the case of a different person; and that no image at all is associated with the idea in the case of a third person. And, further, it need not be the same image even for a particular individual all the time. So how can the image you happen to have be associated with the semantic content of the idea, which is, we assume, much the same on each occasion you have the concept, or the idea.

On one hand I could answer the question specifically by saying that "knowledge is represented by a diploma of learning, while justice is represented by a judge's gavel."

But the mental picture, if there is one, and there need be none (some people are just more visual than others) has nothing at all with the semantic content of the idea. It is an individual accident (was what I meant) that a particular image is associated with an idea for one person; that a very different image is associated with the same idea in the case of a different person; and that no image at all is associated with the idea in the case of a third person. And, further, it need not be the same image even for a particular individual all the time. So how can the image you happen to have be associated with the semantic content of the idea, which is, we assume, much the same on each occasion you have the concept, or the idea. That you think of ideas in terms of visual images has more to do with the looseness of the idea of idea, than with anything else. Byt the way, what visual image do you associate with the idea of idea? Any? I don't. And what difference would it make if I happened to? None that I can see.

A Platonic view: We should also consider the possibility that rather than a representation or correspondence between an idea in the mind and the external world, there might be a resemblance between the structure of reality and the structure of consciousness. In other words, our 'ideas' of such principles as justice, beauty, and so on, are not just 'representations' or 'subjective opinions' (although they are partially that) but can also be understood as expressions of a principle which is at work in both the world at large and within our own consciousness.

This is most clearly seen in the predictive ability of mathematics and logic, both of which indicate a relationship between the human cognitive faculty and the deeper structure of the world-at-large.

This is one way of interpreting the Schopenhaur quotationgiven above, and a way into understanding the idealist view (which is not that 'the world is an idea in your mind'!!) The advantage over the representationalist view is that the latter always ends up with a recursion (namely a representation of a representation of...and so on.)

In other words, our 'ideas' of such principles as justice, beauty, and so on, are not just 'representations' or 'subjective opinions' (although they are partially that) but can also be understood as expressions of a principle which is at work in both the world at large and within our own consciousness.

For me i left home. It stopped being fun.

This is an appealing idea! But there is also the possibility that it shows a central egotistical aspect of human intellect. Or put another way, a fear of the recognition that the world is so much greater than what we could ever appreciate it to be. ie what we could possibly imagine outside our own sub set resemblance structure.

I think the power of science and rationality in our human lives has a lot to do with this. It wasn't always like that for humanity, and still isnt in some places. We now have the tempting mental position of power over nature, and thus when we find fundamental limitations in our science and logic (by our own rationalist terms) such as the nature of perception itself, then it seems to me the schopenhaur idealist interpretation is an understandable reaction. Because it does seem like we have the intellectual and cultural faculties to understand the nature of all reality ...... just like it seems we have the ability to percieve reality both rationally and directly without contradiction!

But it is within the context of rationalist intellectual supremacy of understanding that we discover these cavernous gaps. Gaps that become more than unknown areas of knowledge .... they can go on to create a crisis in the sense of what we are. Our rational selves and our direct real selves. It can be most unpleasant, especially if we become psychically and culturally attached to that supremacy. A supremacy that must be seen to be beyond myth, to be the truth, and then as such central to a persons very mental stability.

Many of us dont want to leave home, let alone mystify what is 'out there'. I mean why do it while home is fun and secure?

Descartes was indeed playing with a demon. A demon of psychic security, and the form of the game can be seen to reveal his underlying fears. When he called out "i think therefore i am" he felt that it was a trump card for the supremacy of rationalism. For others it reads like an emotional attachment to it. An attachment to both the solution and the method....... and that which partly created the game in the first place. A fundamental gap was noticed. An unpleasant intuition that something doesn't connect up. If that fearful gap cannot be bridged clearly......... then fudge it. Overlook things. Its the sensible thing to do.

Nice fudge, just like our ancestors used to make. How much reality has been put into it ? But then again who cares if it tastes good? ..... though i cant see the rationalist/materialists buying it can you?

For me i left home. It stopped being fun.

What has ego got to do with it? Surely ego only corresponds to the tip of the iceberg, the human's conscious image of him/herself, what s/he thinks he is. The intellect, on the other hand, and using the term in the Greek rather than the modern sense, has co-evolved with the universe for (how long now...?)

Quite - so what it really requires is a sense of humility. Humility actually means 'close to the earth'. We are children of the earth, and forget it at our peril...

Ah but do we? Reality has amazing power to throw curved balls. You wake up in the morning thinking you have got life worked out, and then....

Hence the condition of 'Cartesian anxiety'which is such a pervasive characteristic of the modern outlook. The sense of the ego-in-an-alien-world. This is why the scope of awareness has to exceed that of conscious cognition.