Ideas

Ideas are mental constructs that arise in the human mind as a result of cerebral activity. They are embedded in the cognitive capacity of the human brain to process, categorize, and creatively [Page 333]reorganize information. The mental ability to create complex ideas is a prerequisite for the development of abstract mental images—concepts—that are the foundation of knowledge. Without this mental capacity, it would be impossible to conceptualize an abstract notion such as power.

Modern cognitive science and contemporary philosophy generally define ideas as subjective entities that originate in an individual's brain, but in ancient Greece ideas were considered to be an objective force outside of human minds. For Plato, ideas were objective universal essences that expressed the ideal form of all objects: unlike these general essences that stand for the perfect formation of particular types, human perception is always an imperfect reflection of these ideal forms. For example, an actual bird is an imperfect copy of the idea of a bird. In this perspective, human understanding of the world is seen as innate whereas ideas are the only true reality: the observed physical objects are never more than imperfect images of an ideal form—the idea. In contrast to this view, John Locke defines ideas as both physical sensations and mental perceptions that humans acquire through sensory experience. Instead of being innate, ideas are seen as originating wholly outside of the human mind. Locke believed the mind is a tabula rasa (“clean slate”) shaped entirely by external experience. Immanuel Kant disputed Locke's empiricism by arguing that instead of being a blank sheet, the mind is endowed with the categorical apparatus for organizing sensory impressions. The mind creates ideas, not the environment. Although Kant gave primacy to mind over matter, he differed from Plato by conceptualizing human beings as autonomous rational subjects who create ideas through their own mental capacity.

The philosophical debate on whether ideas or the material realm have the upper hand has its direct offshoot in social science where the focus is on what causes human action: is social reality principally constituted and directed by ideas, meanings, and values (idealist epistemology) or alternatively, is the human world created through the tangible material, mostly economic and political, forces (materialist epistemology). Although idealist perspectives explain social reality through ideas and norm-determined actions, materialist approaches focus on individual or collective material interests and institutional structures to understand human behavior. For example, mass, plebiscitary support for an authoritarian leader would, from an idealist perspective, be explained by looking at the intensity and transformation of beliefs shared by his or her followers, or at the form and content of ideological messages disseminated in the mass media. In contrast to this, materialist accounts would interpret the same behavior by identifying individual self-interest, collective political benefits, elite directed manipulation, or historical and structural contingencies as the root causes of this popular appeal. Another example described by Cheryl Schonhardt-Bailey is formed over whether parliamentarians can be swayed by debate or whether they only represent the material interests of their party or constituents.

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