I have, repeatedly. The absurdity is that your view logically implies that this obvious normal thing, two people independently coming up with the same idea, should not be possible, in the same way that two people can't independently build the same single chair. — Pfhorrest

This conflates the idea with its instantiation: the idea of the chair and the chair. You are again trying to attribute to me the view that the "instantiation is the idea", which I have already rejected. I agree that two people independently coming up with the same idea is an "obvious normal thing", but there is a disconnect - or lack of explanation from you here - in why the idea must pre-exist either of them. You have repeatedly stated that two people cannot come up with (invent) the same idea because it implies that an idea is its instantiation, or that an idea is its thought event. I don't follow why that must be the case, and I have offered arguments for why it is not.

EDIT: I also don't follow why I must commit to the view that an idea is a concrete, non-abstract object, like a chair.

Creativity seems to be popularly held to be some kind of non-deterministic, random process of some kind of magical, metaphysically free will, but I hold that that is not the case at all. I hold that there really isn't a clear distinction between invention and discovery of ideas: there is a figurative space of all possible ideas, what in mathematics is called a configuration space or phase space, and any idea that anyone might "invent", any act of abstract "creation" (prior to the act of realizing the idea in some concrete medium), is really just the identification of some idea in that space of possibilities. — Pfhorrest

Considering four elements A, B, C and D spatially located in a "configuration space" , an algorithm could list every possible instantiation of these four elements within the space.

An observer not knowing the idea of squareness could look at several instantiations and discover that sometimes the four elements ABCD form a plane figure with four equal straight sides and four right angles.

After observing several instantiations, the observer could invent the idea of squareness, but the observer could never discover the idea of squareness within the instantiations themselves - because there is no discoverable information within the instantiations themselves that links in any special way one particular form within one instantiation to another particular form within a different instantiation.

I agree that two people independently coming up with the same idea is an "obvious normal thing", but there is a disconnect - or lack of explanation from you here - in why the idea must pre-exist either of them. You have repeatedly stated that two people cannot come up with (invent) the same idea because it implies that an idea is its instantiation, or that an idea is its thought event. — Luke

You have that implication backwards. If ideas were their instantiations or thought-events, then two people couldn’t independently come up with the same one.

I know you’re not claiming that now, but it doesn’t matter because what it seems you are claiming still has the same implication:

If ideas are created by the act if coming up with them, then two people couldn’t independently come up with the same one.

(Because the same numerically singular thing can’t be independently made by each of two different people. They could make it together, but that’s not what we’re talking about).

Since two people CAN independently come up with the same idea, it follows that coming-up-with is not creating.

And if ideas are not created by coming up with them, then their existence status doesn’t change when people come up with them.

So if they can be said in some sense to exist after coming up with them (and this is the “if” you should really be questioning), then they can be said to exist in that same sense before anyone has come up with them.

Because coming up with them doesn’t change whether they exist or not.

Considering four elements A, B, C and D spatially located in a "configuration space" , — RussellA

I think you don’t understand what a configuration space is. It’s also called a state space or phase space. I think this is the most straight article of those three terms:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase_space

Considering four elements A, B, C and D spatially located in a "configuration space" , an algorithm could list every possible instantiation of these four elements within the space. — RussellA

Suppose your space is the interior of a unit square in the Euclidean plane and A, B, C, and D are points in that space. Please demonstrate such an algorithm.

I take it then that we can thus start with a list of any size, even just one item long, and continually generate new numbers that aren’t on it to add to it. — Pfhorrest

Step by step? An algorithm? If so, then you are generating all the real numbers and counting them as you do so. Perhaps you refer to an uncountable algorithm? Is there such an animal? :chin:

You appear to be a platonist, [...] — Janus

Yes, you bet that I am. The philosophy of platonism (lowercase ‘p’) is the only option which doesn’t contain contradictions or absurdities. It still strikes me that so many people do not see this wonderfully simple and overwhelmingly obvious truth.

Moreover, while I’m not a Platonist (uppercase ‘P’) since I’m not a follower of others, I do hold many basic tenets of Plato’s Theory of Forms and his unwritten Theory of Principles, and I also feel that there must be a totally unsayable experience of the Holy above and beyond philosophy and reason which underlies all of philosophy. This is something that Plato experienced according to Christina Schefer (for more info, see my comment). But I digress.

[...] in that you seem to be asserting the substantive existence of possibilities. — Janus

Yes, and speaking

[..] is a mere tautology [...] — Janus

of tautologies, asserting the existence of possibilities is simply asserting their substantive existence.

and neither of these, as I see it, have any substantive existence. — Janus

That doesn’t make much sense to me. If something exists, then it exists.

It is logically possible, although perhaps not physically possible, that rainbow coloured, translucent leprechauns exist; but that doesn't entail that they really exist in any sense. Also, it may not be physically possible for them to exist. If something is logically possible, yet not physically possible would you still want to say it enjoys substantive existence of any kind? — Janus

Yes, and even the logically impossible exists in a way. To make clear what I mean, we have to distinguish two kinds of existential statements:

• ”Is-there”-statements, such as “The number 9 is there” or “The number 9 exists”. This truly asserts the existence, the being-there of a thing, namely the number 9. In German, these are “ɂist-da”-statements, as in “Die Zahl 9 ɂist da” and “Die Zahl 9 ɂexistiert”.
• “There-is”-statements, such as “There is an odd number”. These are logically equivalent to infinite disjunctions. For example, “There is an odd number” is logically equivalent to the disjunction “1 is odd or 2 is odd or 3 is odd or ...” of all propositions of the shape “n has oddness”. In German, these are “ɂes-gibt”-statements, as in “Ɂes gibt ɂeine ɂungerade Zahl” and “Ɂes ɂexistiert ɂeine ɂungerade Zahl”. The thing which plays the key role in a “there-is”-statement is a property; in our case, the very property of being odd – oddness itself.

So what about logically impossible things like odd even numbers? Well, just as the property of oddness exists and is very real, so the property of being an odd even number also exists and is very real. That must be so, for every property has the property (propertihood) of being a property, and to have properties, you have to be and therefore to exist. Also, being an odd even number has the property that I can think about it. However, it has no instances, and indeed it cannot have any instances, that is, the disjunction of all propositions of the form “n has the property of being an odd even number” is logically false. That is what we mean when we say that odd even numbers logically can’t exist.

So if even logically uninstantiable properties exist, then both logically but not physically instantiable properties, and physically instantiable but uninstantiated ones, exist all the more. In any case, the very property of being a rainbow coloured, translucent leprechaun exists and is real. Indeed, without it, the fact that there are no rainbow coloured, translucent leprechauns in our world (as far as I know :wink:) couldn’t exist.

By the way, just because something isn’t physically possible in our universe or world doesn’t mean that it isn’t physically possible in another universe or world.

You can list all reals, but you need transfinite ordinal numbers for that.

I take it then that we can thus start with a list of any size, even just one item long, and continually generate new numbers that aren’t on it to add to it. — Pfhorrest

More importantly, the length of the list that you start with can be transfinite. By repeating the process an uncountable infinite number of times, you can actually list all real numbers. The final list, which includes all reals, and each one exactly once, will be indexed by the uncountable well-ordered set of all ordinals whose cardinality is less than that of the continuum. If the Continuum Hypothesis is true (which I don't know), then this is the uncountable well-ordered set of all countable ordinals.

I think you’re [Luke] still interpreting me in an unnecessarily Platonic fashion. — Pfhorrest

Actually, I also interpret you in a (lowecase ‘p’) platonic way, and that is the impression that you give of yourself. Also, you seem to argue (very well, I think) for platonism, in which case I would fully support you. I’m a platonist myself, and I certainly am arguing for platonism, whose truth is self-evident imho.

I don’t really see how these true words (in which you only forgot the elves :wink:):

I’m saying that it makes no sense to talk of making or creating ideas (not merely instantiating them), so their existence status doesn’t change when someone thinks of them. They don’t come into existence or go out of existence, we can’t do things to make or destroy or change what kinds or ideas there are to be had. We can just have them, start having them, stop having them, but they themes[elves] don’t change, only what we do changes. — Pfhorrest

are compatible with this claim:

I’m not saying that, unless some idea already exists “out there” somehow — Pfhorrest

But what they are is nothing more than the possibilities of us doing (thinking) things, so it’s also not so clear that we’re “discovered” them like we discover concrete things. We’re just also not “creating” them like we create concrete things either. — Pfhorrest

Actually, ideas are likely not mere possibilities. For example, even if no physical universe and no minds existed, so that it would not be possible to come up with the Van-de-Graaff-generator, the property of being a VdGG would still exist. Actually, without it, the hypothetical very fact that coming up with the VdGG is impossible could not exist.

I think that it’s very clear that we discover ideas rather than invent them, but that in doing so, we invent conrete mental instances of them unless we find the ideas deterministically (e.g. with my algorithm), in which case the instances wouldn’t be created in the strict sense (but still in a broader sense).

But when we're talking about concrete objects, if I make a chair, and you make an identical chair, we've still made two chairs, not one chair. — Pfhorrest

Making two chairs independently of each other is very much like coming up with the same idea independently of each other; in the former, Alice and Bob independently create two different physical instances of one and the same Shape of Chairhood, while in the latter, they independently create two different mental instances of one and the same Shape (Form, Idea), and this Shape is what we call “idea”. By the way, we talked of VdGG-hood and toasterhood as ideas, so the same goes for chairhood, doesn’t it?

If in coming up with an idea, I make that idea, I create it, invent it, bring it into being... and elsewhere independent of me you come up with an identical idea, in the same way that I already did unbeknownst to you... then you and I have made two different, but identical, ideas, like the two different but identical chairs. — Pfhorrest

That’s right, and in the same way, we can see that making a chair does not make the Form of Chairhood itself.

you [Luke] say that coming up with an idea is like building a chair: a clear act of creation. — Pfhorrest

Actually, the two are very alike. The only key differences, I think, are that in the former, the idea is discovered and its created instance is mental, whereas in the latter, the idea is already known and its created instance is physical. In both cases, though, the concrete instances are clearly created, and the ideas themselves are clearly not created. However, the concrete instances are only created in the strict sense if their creation wasn’t forechosen, so in the case of my algorithm or when there is a pre-existing order to build a chair, the concrete instances aren’t created in the strict sense (though they’re still created in the broad sense).

How does your algorithm give us the Mona Lisa? Or a toaster? — Luke

This is another thing that I’ve said before, but I’ll say it again. The algorithm will output an exact linguistic description of the Mona Lisa, for example by specifying the stroke order to draw the painting, giving a raster description of the Mona Lisa in terms of pixels, or even by telling you which atoms lie where on the paiting. In fact, the Mona Lisa that you see on the Internet is just a sequence of 1’s and 0’s, so it has already been converted into a number, and my algorithm will output that number. Likewise, the algorithm will spit out an exact description of the toaster, complete with sequences of 1’s and 0’s that define digital images and even videos of the toaster. The understander only needs to read and understand these symbolic descriptions, and voila – he (used in a gender-neutral way) finds the idea of the toaster. Without any creativity whatsoever. The same goes for the Mona Lisa. Hence, both ideas already exist at least in the algorithm, only waiting to be “unpacked”.

Obviously if you assume that ideas have some type of pre-existence then their discovery must be possible. I challenge the assumption. — Luke

You’ve gotten the implication the wrong way round. In reality, if discovering an idea is possible, then the idea must fore-exist. That’s the direction in which I argue. If it had not always been possible to discover an idea, then at some point in the past, it must have been impossible. But then no one could ever discover it. For example, if it had once not been possible that someone could come up with the Van-de-Graaff-generator, then by definition of possibility and impossibility, Robert Jemison Van de Graaff could never have invented an instace of it, which he clearly has.

even if they are qualitatively identical — Pfhorrest

What is the ground for that qualitative identity? It is that both share in one and the same abstract eternal uncreated universal, and this is what we call “an idea”, from Greek “ἰδέᾱ” = “Shape, abstract “look”, (abstract) Form.

What if they both came up with it at the same time? Anyway, it is your position that neither of them can come up with the idea without it pre-existing, so why is it absurd/impossible for the first person in this scenario to come up with the idea without it pre-existing? — Luke

What if the events of coming-up are separated by a space-like spacetime-interval, so that neither event is first, but the events also don’t happen at the same time?

The key point is that even if Alice was first, there could have been someone before her, so the thing which explains the likeness that her thought bears to Bob’s must have been able to jump in before Alice’s coming-up.

and I have offered arguments for why it is not. — Luke

Could you please say where?

After observing several instantiations, the observer could invent the idea of squareness, but the observer could never discover the idea of squareness within the instantiations themselves - because there is no discoverable information within the instantiations themselves that links in any special way one particular form within one instantiation to another particular form within a different instantiation. — RussellA

Individual squares do indeed not only instantiate squareness, but also rectangle-hood, parallelogram-hood, (four-sider)-hood, (geometrical-shape)-hood, abstractness, thinghood, and many more properties. Therefore, you’re right in saying that they could never by themselves cause someone to find squareness itself. That’s why finding ideas does involve creation, namely the creation of mental instances of them. It’s creation in the strict sense only if the finding of the ideas wasn’t pre-determined, though.

You can see that squareness can’t be invented by realizing that all folks find the same squareness and that you cannot change anything about your supposed invention even one wee bit.

Step by step? An algorithm? If so, then you are generating all the real numbers and counting them as you do so. Perhaps you refer to an uncountable algorithm? Is there such an animal? :chin: — jgill

Like I said, you’re the mathematician here, not me, so you tell me where I’m going wrong. I’m working directly from Cantor’s proof that the reals are uncountable, which hinges entirely on this ability to always generate a new real that’s not on any supposedly complete list of reals. That process of course can’t ever end up generating any complete list of all the reals, else that proof would contradict itself. But surely any given real will eventually be included on the ever-growing list, even though the list will never be complete?

OK. Once one goes into transfinite set theory, Zermelo's Well-Ordering theorem (used in the Hahn-Banach theorem, e.g.) , etc., one can presumably do lots of things. In connection with a listing of "ideas" I suppose there is some relevance. Sorry I brought it up. I live in a simpler, more naive world in which the set (0,1] does not include its greatest lower bound.

That process of course . . . any given real will eventually be included on the ever-growing list, — Pfhorrest

Suppose you start with .1111... and end up in a finite number of steps at sqr(2)-1. How do you do this? Just curious.

Suppose you start with .1111... and end up in a finite number of steps at sqr(2)-1. How do you do this? Just curious. — jgill

I don't know how to figure out the route from a given starting point to a given end point. But if sqrt(2)-1 has a(n infinite) decimal expansion, as I think it does (correct me if I'm wrong), and you start an unending process of adding to a list of infinite decimal expansions new infinite decimal expansions that aren't yet on that list, you would eventually get to the infinite decimal expansion of that. No?

I wouldn’t say that that means ideas are discovered-only though, because the act of finding the content of an idea is also an act of creating an instance of it, which is why I don’t think the two can really be distinguished. — Pfhorrest

In trying to better grasp the notion you're presenting:

Common sense has it that the truths we discern are discovered, but are not in any way givens we create or originate. Likewise, common sense has it that the lies we tell are inventions, i.e. that they are alternate realities we come up with, are ideas that we create or originate, which we furthermore intentionally peddle to others as full scale truths (unlike fables and allegories, which are acknowledged to be of human creation but intend to tell often deeper, but always uncreated, truths via our fabrications as vehicle for the telling of these truths).

While I disagree with the following, I can somewhat understand the metaphysical position that would uphold all lies to be discovered within an ocean of boundless potentiality, or un-bounded possibility. This as though each possibility were itself an actuality awaiting to be discovered?

However, this yet leaves truths unaddressed. If the obtainment or all ideas occurs via a hybridization between discovery and creation, and if truths are ideas that correspond to reality (here taking explicitly held beliefs to be ideas), are truths then also partly of our creation?

But then - if both truths and untruths are ideas which we in part create and in part discover - how would one go about distinguishing the obtainment of truths from the obtainment of untruths?

Especially pertinent when considering that the untruths we would be discovering (rather than strictly creating) would themselves correspond to aspects of a reality consisting of boundless potentiality. Hence, they would themselves then correspond to reality.

Maybe I phrased some or most of this improperly. Still, there to me seems to be an important dichotomy between, for example, the discovery of truths and the invention of truths.

. . . and you start an unending process of adding to a list of infinite decimal expansions new infinite decimal expansions that aren't yet on that list, you would eventually get to the infinite decimal expansion of that. No? — Pfhorrest

When you say "eventually get to" I take that to mean in a finite number of steps. The sequence S(n)=1-1/n does not eventually get to 1, but gets pretty darn close in a large but finite number of steps. In your process you apparently use the Cantor notion of replacing a digit at each step (or a set of digits?) - I'm not clear on this. There are an infinite number of digits in sqr(2)-1.

I suggest you move on to other aspects of creativity, rather than get entangled with this issue. Others are more knowledgeable of transfinite math than me.

Ideas as I speak of them are images of possible, yes; the claim that reality matches one of those images is something beyond a mere idea, it is something one can do with an idea.

So truths and lies are different ways ideas are employed, but not themselves ideas.

That doesn’t make much sense to me. If something exists, then it exists. — Tristan L

Does Harry Potter exist? You would seem to be committed to saying he does. If so, does he exist in the same way you do?

Ideas as I speak of them are images of possible, yes; — Pfhorrest

Can’t say that your notion of idea matches with mine. What makes a mental image an idea but a mental sound (else an imagined smell, taste, or tactile feel) not an idea? There are also mental representations of the actual, rather than the possible, and these seem to me to be ideas as well. Furthermore, many ideas are thoroughly abstract, and as such lack tangible sensory information, including those of mental images. The idea of arbitrariness serves as one example.

the claim that reality matches one of those images is something beyond a mere idea, it is something one can do with an idea. — Pfhorrest

To claim that an idea is accordant to reality is indeed to engage in a doing, yes, but the state of affairs that the idea is accordant to reality is not something which we do, i.e. is not something which we produce or else in any way originate. Moreover, how can one obtain a correspondence to reality in the absence of some idea which so corresponds? (But this question might be colored by our different understanding of "idea".)

Still, this is why I hold that we discover truths sans our creation of them. More tersely expressed, truths are uncreated aspects of the world … that, again, can solely be discovered.

So truths and lies are different ways ideas are employed, but not themselves ideas. — Pfhorrest

You however conclude that truths are not ideas but what we do with ideas. Maybe there’s something lost in my translation of this statement. For instance, the idea that “planet Earth has trees on it” can be either a truth or a falsity given what employment(s) of it?

If ideas are created by the act if coming up with them, then two people couldn’t independently come up with the same one.

(Because the same numerically singular thing can’t be independently made by each of two different people. They could make it together, but that’s not what we’re talking about). — Pfhorrest

This may be true of physical instantiations but why must it also be true of abstract ideas?

Since two people CAN independently come up with the same idea, it follows that coming-up-with is not creating. — Pfhorrest

This does not follow. Your implicit assumption here is that two people cannot create the same idea because an idea cannot physically be in two places at once. Obviously ideas can be in two places (or minds) at once and this has nothing to do with their creation. It is because ideas are abstract concepts, not physical objects.

I'm late to the game on this one, so I'll throw out a few ideas (sorry if they've already been touched on).

Creativity is not random, nor is it deterministic. What makes creativity seem random is it's immediateness. An idea takes shape, and there it is. But this is no random process; the creative process itself is made up of subconscious work which the creative brain is doing all the time. There's nothing random about the subconscious. The subconscious is made up of all sorts of things; the (sort of?) conscious part of the brain makes signs and symbols out of this subconscious stuff. What this stuff is or means is anyone's game; rather, it's the game of art interpretation...or expression? Yeah, who decides, really?

Creativity is not deterministic for the same reasons; By nature (by definition), creativity brings concepts to the fore of the conscious mind that were not at the fore before. Nothing determines what does or does not come up into the conscious mind in this process. It's extremely personal to the person who's consciousness is doing the work. The process is different for every creative person, and so there's nothing that determines just exactly how the process happens/takes shape. There are of course patterns that can be mapped. But for every mapped pattern of creative effort, there are at least as many unmapped anomalies that defy any sort of determinism.

Does Harry Potter exist? — Janus

Yes, he certainly does and always has – the property of being a male human wizard, having parents called “James” and “Lily”, being called “Harry Potter”, being the arch-enemy of a mighty evil sorcerer, asf., exists. After all, we’re thinking and talking about it right now. However, there is no object in our universe (as far as I know) which has that property – (Harry Potter)-hood has no flesh-and-blood-and-mind instance in our universe. The only concrete things in our universe associated with him are things like thoughs and texts about him.

If so, does he exist in the same way you do? — Janus

No, for unlike Harrihood, the property of Tristanhood does have a flesh-and-blood-and-mind instance in our universe. Because of that, its manifestation is this universe is much realer than Harrihood’s.

ideas are abstract concepts, not physical objects. — Luke

Exactly, and by the definition of abstractness, they are neither spatial nor temporal and thus cannot have a beginning in time. In particular, they cannot be invented.

Hence, both ideas already exist at least in the algorithm, only waiting to be “unpacked”. — Tristan L

We have to wait? I thought all ideas already existed?

It seems that your algorithm will also produce (mostly) junk strings of symbols that aren't ideas. Is there some method to distinguish the ideas from the junk?

I also wanted to return to some earlier comment of yours:

What matters is that for every expressible idea EID, without exception, the implementation of my algorithm will find EID and spit it out after a finite number of years. — Tristan L

Why do you expect the number of years to be finite?

I strongly agree with you that being the first one to do something that was always possible doesn't make it possible. — Tristan L

Possibilities are not ideas. Being the first one to think of an idea does make it a new idea. Unless you believe that ideas do not require someone to have/think them? Similarly, it seems to require someone to interpret a string of symbols in order to understand the idea it may contain.

Obviously if you assume that ideas have some type of pre-existence then their discovery must be possible. I challenge the assumption.
— Luke

You’ve gotten the implication the wrong way round. In reality, if discovering an idea is possible, then the idea must fore-exist. — Tristan L

The direction of the implication is irrelevant to my point. It is all based on the same assumption.

If it had not always been possible to discover an idea, then at some point in the past, it must have been impossible. But then no one could ever discover it. For example, if it had once not been possible that someone could come up with the Van-de-Graaff-generator, then by definition of possibility and impossibility, Robert Jemison Van de Graaff could never have invented an instace of it, which he clearly has. — Tristan L

I don't know who that is, but you could say that he invented the idea (not the possibility; the idea).

What if the events of coming-up are separated by a space-like spacetime-interval, so that neither event is first, but the events also don’t happen at the same time? — Tristan L

From which reference frame can the events be judged such that "neither event is first, but the events also don't happen at the same time"?

The key point is that even if Alice was first, there could have been someone before her, so the thing which explains the likeness that her thought bears to Bob’s must have been able to jump in before Alice’s coming-up. — Tristan L

Then the "someone" before Alice would have invented the idea, I suppose, or we might just say that they both came up with the same idea independently. That is, we could go back to your own example of Leibniz and Newton.

and I have offered arguments for why it is not.
— Luke

Could you please say where? — Tristan L

In the preceding discussion on the previous page.

Exactly, and by the definition of abstractness, they are neither spatial nor temporal and thus cannot have a beginning in time. In particular, they cannot be invented. — Tristan L

I had in mind a definition of abstract such as this: "existing in thought or as an idea but not having a physical or concrete existence." As far as I know, only physical, temporal, living beings have thoughts and/or ideas.

The subconscious is made up of all sorts of things; the (sort of?) conscious part of the brain makes signs and symbols out of this subconscious stuff. What this stuff is or means is anyone's game; rather, it's the game of art interpretation...or expression? Yeah, who decides, really? — Noble Dust

When one composes music, one's subconscious gives one possibilities of what note to play next and the like. In the creative process, isn't the conscious self that which decides on which of these alternative possibilities to make actual at expense of all others?

Agreed that creativity is neither random nor deterministic. But doesn't the conscious self serve an active creative role in manifesting the final product, this via the choices taken?

When one composes music, one's subconscious gives one possibilities of what note to play next and the like. In the creative process, isn't the conscious self that which decides on which of these alternative possibilities to make actual at expense of all others? — javra

Eh, I dunno. When I write music, my subconscious seems to determine what I write. I.E., all the time I'm trying to step outside my comfort zone, but I always seems to go back to what I know; My conscious mind is saying "do something knew", but the unconscious is what dictates what I actually do. So maybe that's determinism? Idk.

But doesn't the conscious self serve an active creative role in manifesting the final product, this via the choices taken? — javra

I don't know what you mean.

My conscious mind is saying "do something knew", but the unconscious is what dictates what I actually do. So maybe that's determinism? Idk. — Noble Dust

Odd. My experiences are different. I'm more apt at painting (not claiming to be good at either). I start with a general idea or intent of what I want to convey and how I want it conveyed. Then reality bites in terms of implementation. Here there are creative dry spells and creative eureka moments. And there are alternatives I'm presented with. Based on what is most true to me - true in a more artistic sense of truth being aesthetics and the aesthetic being true - I then make my choices of how to compose my piece. The final product is then always a conflux of me as conscious choice maker and my subconscious as provider of often contradictory ideas between which I choose.

I wouldn't address this as determinism, though. Then again, I'm one to uphold the common sense version of freewill.

But doesn't the conscious self serve an active creative role in manifesting the final product, this via the choices taken? — javra

I don't know what you mean. — Noble Dust

Does the just mentioned better clarify what I was getting at?

What makes a mental image an idea but a mental sound (else an imagined smell, taste, or tactile feel) not an idea? — javra

I don’t mean just visual images, but the all-sensory sense of “image” used in the very way you just said “IMAGined” smell etc.

Moreover, how can one obtain a correspondence to reality in the absence of some idea which so corresponds? — javra

Here you’re using “idea” in the same sense as I am. Figurative, you’ve got a drawing, which could be put to several uses: it could be used as a representation of reality, or a blueprint for something to make real, etc. The drawing is the idea, and one thing you’ll can do with that drawn is say “this represents reality”. The use of it as a representation, and the accuracy of it as a representation, is not a part of the drawing—the idea—itself.

For instance, the idea that “planet Earth has trees on it” can be either a truth or a falsity given what employment(s) of it? — javra

For clarity I would phrase that as “the idea of planet earth HAVING trees on it”, “having” in the gerund mood, with the indicative mood “has” in “planet earth HAS trees on it” instead showing the employment of that idea as a representation, and the usefulness or correctness of that use as representation determining whether that indicative statement is true or false.

Your implicit assumption here is that two people cannot create the same idea because an idea cannot physically be in two places at once. — Luke

It has nothing to do with that. Ideas aren’t concrete, so they don’t have locations. I say they also don’t have temporal location, or any other temporal features; they don’t come into being or go out of being or change over time, which is the main reason why I think it makes no sense to say a human being at some point created an idea. Abstract things aren't in space and time like that.

But the argument I've been making about that toward you, since you think they can come into being over time (by being created, invented) is about the incoherence of two people separately bringing into existence the idea. So you think the idea didn't exist before, from the dawn of time until some day one person brought it into existence, then later another person separately... brought something that already existed into existence, again? That doesn't make sense. The only way it can make sense that two people both did an act of creation, that each separately brought an idea into existence, is if they are two separate ideas that got brought into existence. But that would mean that those two people didn't separately come up with the same idea, they just came up with two different, but identical, ideas.

Except we already agree that that's not correct, so then you have to follow the chain of inferences backwards, contrapositively: since those two people didn't come up with two different ideas, but if they had each brought an idea into being they would have, they must not have each brought an idea into being. You might want to say that the first one brought the idea into being, but not the second; except then you're still denying what we've both already affirmed, that two people can independently come up with the same idea. So it must be that neither of those two people coming up with that idea brought it into being. Which means whatever the state of existence we can ascribe to the idea after they came up with it, we must also ascribe to it before they came up with it.

That could be that it neither existed before nor after. It could be that it existed before and after. It could be that "existence" is a confused thing to ascribe to an abstract object in the first place. I'm not taking a stance here on the ontology of abstract objects, like you and @Tristan L are arguing about. (I have one, and I'm pretty sure it's not the same as either of yours; going to do a thread about that soonish).

But one way or another its state of existence didn't change when someone came up with it, or else two people couldn't have both separately come up with it.