I like your post. I took the liberty of editing the grammar a little so as to enhance readability:


The Nature of an Idea: From Neural Patterns to The Ultimate Dimension

Is an idea a unique configuration of neurons in the brain? Based on our current understanding, a single, unique idea doesn't seem to correspond to a singular, unique neural pattern. This concept is easier to grasp by comparing an idea to a song.

A song, at its most fundamental level, is a specific arrangement of sound waves in the air. When these sound waves reach our ears, they are converted into electrical signals that our brain interprets as the experience of the song. This song can be recorded on a vinyl record, where the physical grooves mimic the original sound waves. When a needle plays the record, it reproduces a version of the original song. But a song can also be captured in other forms, such as a digital binary code, a magnetic tape, or even written musical notes and lyrics.

None of these representations—the vinyl grooves, the binary code, or the written notes—are identical to the original sound waves. They are all just representations that carry enough information to reconstruct the song.

What a listener experiences is not merely the sound waves entering their ear canal. The experience of hearing a song adds a new dimension. A person who is deaf from birth and suddenly gains the ability to hear would learn something new about the song that was never present in its written or coded forms. This extra dimension, which the Zen masters Thich Nhat Hanh and Shunryu Suzuki might call the "ultimate dimension," is the qualitative experience of consciousness itself. It is the subjective sense of what it feels like to hear something, which cannot be reduced to a purely physical explanation of sound waves and neural activity.

Ideas and The Ultimate Dimension

The primary difference between a song and an idea is their origin. While a song can be represented and then experienced, an idea seems to emerge directly from experience and the ultimate dimension. An idea isn't a pre-existing entity that we stumble upon; it arises from a cognitive system, such as a brain, that processes and interconnects data.

The brain, in this sense, acts as the anchor for an idea, and from it arises concepts like "pyramid." This abstract idea of a pyramid can then be translated into other forms—binary code, a blueprint, a drawing, or even a physical stone pyramid.

Unlike a song, which has a specific form in reality (the sound waves), an idea doesn't have a unique or fundamental way of existing that is tied to a specific physical configuration at a single moment in time.

The Ontology of an Idea

This leads us to a fundamental question: What is an idea's nature? We create things that don't yet exist by imagining them. We're a part of reality that can intentionally rearrange reality by conceiving of non-reality. This process seems to give ideas a foundation in reality, but their ontological nature—their very existence—still feels rather mysterious or "spooky."

Plato believed that ideas existed in a separate, abstract realm, and our physical world was merely a shadow of these perfect forms. A more modern perspective, perhaps influenced by thinkers like Nietzsche, might argue that the brain creates these ideas by taking data from our sensory experiences and weaving new patterns and connections.

So, if we reject the notion of a separate realm of ideas (Plato) and also don't believe that an idea is precisely the same as the physical matter from which it emerges, then what is its true nature?’

——

This raises a deep philosophical puzzle that doesn't have a simple answer. It seems you've already identified the core of the problem: ideas are not just physical matter, nor are they supernatural entities - yet they are a powerful, generative force in the world.

I think this is THE key question of all metaphysics.

The deaf person that suddenly hears. Will learn something new about the song when it hears the music. — Jack2848

A person who is deaf from birth and suddenly gains the ability to hear would learn something new about the song that was never present in its written or coded forms. — Wayfarer

True. To add another dimension... Yes, that person would learn something right away. But they would not understand the song until they hear enough music to become familiar with the tonal system, and learn the spoken language. Until learning those things, those aspects of the song would by gibberish.

In any event, I very much like this thread. (And nice work, Wayfarer.)

An idea is an irreducible mental event that is meaningful and is distinguishable from other ideas.

If it's not likely that there's a separate realm of ideas. Or that the idea is exactly the same as the physical matter from which it arises. Then what is it's nature? — Jack2848

Our brains are not binary-coded. This is being debated, but I think we should hold the idea that our brains function like quantum cubits, giving them the experience of consciousness and making it possible for us to hear a song and instantly remember the first time we heard the song and all the memories associated with that moment in time, and even the feelings we had then and now. Our brains are better than computers because they are not binary-coded.

Computers will catch up with our brains, as we continue to evolve the quantum computer.

This is very exciting because our understanding of reality is about to radically change as we come to understand quantum physics. For sure, we are moving into a New Age, that is going to make the present seem primitive.

Thanks. I'm sure you recognized that English is not my native language. I sure hope to increase my clarity. (Did you use chat gpt?)

And what your thoughts on the nature of ideas?

An idea is an irreducible mental event that is meaningful and is distinguishable from other ideas.

So it's a fleeting activity in the mind which can be exported and recalled (if we are lucky).

The content of the idea will be some relationship between objects?

Our brains are not binary-coded. This is being debated, but I think we should hold the idea that our brains function like quantum cubits, giving them the experience of consciousness and making it possible for us to hear a song and instantly remember the first time we heard the song and all the memories associated with that moment in time, and even the feelings we had then and now.

Do you think an idea X is a specific configuration X in the brain?

So it's a fleeting activity in the mind which can be exported and recalled (if we are lucky). — Jack2848

Correct. We can, however, focus on an idea so we can experience it as long as we wish.

The content of the idea will be some relationship between objects? — Jack2848

Yes. The idea also refers to a single object.

Google Gemini. It can be used to improve your expression without letting it take over what you’re saying. Used properly, it’s a powerful technology.

I have been pursuing a similar line of thought ever since joining philosophy forums. You’ve basically discovered one of the key ideas of Platonism. Plato can never be explained simply or reduced to an ‘ism’, but Plato’s ‘ideas’ (eidos) are probably the most important single element in the philosophical tradition. Not for nothing did Alfred North Whitehead say that Western philosophy consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.

I don’t believe it is meaningful to speak of ‘brain chemistry’ or ‘neural events’ or any such terminology. That is a strictly modern trend called ‘neural reductionism’ (Raymond Tallis calls it ‘neuromania’.) It is very popular because it sounds scientific but in the context of philosophy it is pseudoscientific at best. Ideas can’t be explained in terms of something else, they are the fundamental coinage of rational thought.

Ideas can’t be explained in terms of something else, they are the fundamental coinage of rational thought. — Wayfarer

This idea is picked up in Thomas Nagel's The Last Word as well:

Whether one challenges the rational credentials of a particular judgment or of a whole realm of discourse, one has to rely at some level on judgments and methods of argument which one believes are not themselves subject to the same challenge. — The Last Word, 11

Nagel is honest and deep enough to also acknowledge:

Yet it is obscure how that is possible. Both the existence and the non-existence of reason present problems of intelligibility. — The Last Word, 11

So, as you say: THE key question of metaphysics. Nagel has done as good a job as anyone to make the case that reason is indeed "the last word."

I'm sure you recognized that English is not my native language. — Jack2848

Your command of English is leaps and bounds better than my command of any language other than English. Well done.

If it's not likely that there's a separate realm of ideas. Or that the idea is exactly the same as the physical matter from which it arises. Then what is it's nature? — Jack2848

Abstraction.

Nagel has done as good a job as anyone to make the case that reason is indeed "the last word." — J

The only form that genuine reasoning can take consists in seeing the validity of the arguments, in virtue of what they say. As soon as one tries to step outside of such thoughts, one loses contact with their true content. And one cannot be outside and inside them at the same time: If one thinks in logic, one cannot simultaneously regard those thoughts as mere psychological dispositions, however caused or however biologically grounded. If one decides that some of one's psychological dispositions are, as a contingent matter of fact, reliable methods of reaching the truth (as one may with perception, for example), then in doing so one must rely on other thoughts that one actually thinks, without regarding them as mere dispositions. One cannot embed all one's reasoning in a psychological theory, including the reasonings that have led to that psychological theory. The epistemological buck must stop somewhere. By this I mean not that there must be some premises that are forever unrevisable but, rather, that in any process of reasoning or argument there must be some thoughts that one simply thinks from the inside--rather than thinking of them as biologically programmed dispositions. — Evolutionary Naturalism and the Fear of Religion

Yes, that's eloquent. And again, what I respect so much about Nagel is that he isn't willing just to stop there. He still perceives a problem -- namely, how can it be the case that reason is this sort of thing, and that we humans are placed in the kind of relationship to it that produces "thought from the inside"?

The trail it sent me down was the implied ‘divinity of the rational soul’ in medieval philosophy (stemming from Aristotle’s ‘active intellect’.) The equation of reason with the capacity to grasp higher truths. But then as it had all become appropriated by theology, so too was it rejected for that very reason. But behind all of that, there’s something of fundamental importance to philosophy.

An idea is the meaningful core of a series of signifiers. And its nature is transcendence.

Do you mean by that, that an idea is not bound to any specific expression or form, but can maintain an identity even in different expressions?

The trail it sent me down was the implied ‘divinity of the rational soul’ in medieval philosophy (stemming from Aristotle’s ‘active intellect’.) — Wayfarer

Yes, that was certainly an attempt to explain how reason can be, and do, what it is and does. We're still trying to work out whether this is an explanation, or whether it uses language to explain away something we don't yet understand. And it's no help, as you point out, that this question is so often appropriated for a theological response.

Do you think an idea X is a specific configuration X in the brain? — Jack2848

Sorry, but I do not understand your meaning. What does it have to do with our computers and brains being quantum bits, not binary? Our old-fashioned computers are binary and do computing things a quantum computer can not do, so we will continue to work on improving them. But a quantum computer is a whole different thing and can do things that binary computers can not do. Binary computers can not create without a program directing them. Quantum computers can create.

We are competing with China to have the best possible computers, and our national defense depends on us having the best technology.

Do you mean by that, that an idea is not bound to any specific expression or form, but can maintain an identity even in different expressions? — Wayfarer

That depends on whether the thinking is binary or qubits.

Can I paraphrase AI? Ancient Eastern philosophy led to an understanding of the trinity. The first number 1 is also the undivided universe. The number 2 is the emergence of duality and the phenomenal world. The trinity, or number 3, is the threshold of infinity, unlimited possibility. That is what makes the quantum computers so amazing and different from old-fashioned binary computers.

Yes, think about the translation of a philosophical work from one language to another. The signifiers are different, but the idea can be ''transmitted'' from one language to another.

I have been pursuing a similar line of thought ever since joining philosophy forums. You’ve basically discovered one of the key ideas of Platonism. Plato can never be explained simply or reduced to an ‘ism’, but Plato’s ‘ideas’ (eidos) are probably the most important single element in the philosophical tradition. Not for nothing did Alfred North Whitehead say that Western philosophy consists of a series of footnotes to Plato. — Wayfarer

And some people believe Plato is outdated. Shame on them!

Ideas are just intelligible parts/properties of the universe as represented in the mind (as everything is).

What is the nature purpose of having intelligible parts/properties of the universe represented in the mind?

To help you enjoy life in a safe/responsible manner. (Haha! Good luck)

What is the nature of a swiss army knife, a billiards table, or encyclopedia? :monkey: