An idea is the image about something that is formed in our mind and therefore, being closely linked to this, is that reason will occupy a prominent place in the generation of ideas and also in the understanding of those proposed by others.
Many times we have heard the phrase "I have an idea!" or "I had an idea." With these expressions we can account for processes, projects or plans that may have occurred to us, and that can be related to everyday situations up to long-term projects. For example, we can say “I came up with an idea” when we have to figure out how to locate a few tables in a space in our home that, at first glance, would not be easy to find a location for all of them. Or we can also express ourselves with a "I have an idea!" when we have in mind a possible venture that, if feasible and profitable, could be our small business in the not too distant future.
Ideas are what give rise to concepts, base of all knowledge, something that from here, in ABC definition, we put into practice every day to bring them the best possible source of knowledge.
Our mind is all the time turning to the ideas or mental figures that we harbor in it. It is in the interaction with others, where this "search for figures" becomes more frequent. When we talk to someone and they tell us the word "dog", we unconsciously form in our mind a figure of a small animal, with four legs, with two eyes, two ears and a mouth, which corresponds to the idea of "dog" that is socially conventionalized, that is, when someone tells us "dog" we will imagine something more or less similar to what we have just described, but we can never imagine a "fish" or a "house". Each word is itself an idea, since when listening to it, the mental stimulus will be to figure out the element of reality to which it refers. This process is known as "denotation." But there is also a similar process, but much more subjective, called "connotation", and here the feelings and experience of each individual significantly influences the creation of figures or ideas during the interaction: for example, when hearing the word “Dog”, I remember a special puppy that I had when I was a child, whom I loved very much and his memory is always present. This activation of affective memory, charged with subjectivity, will create an idea of "dog" that probably does not agree with the idea of "dog" that my neighbor may have, since he never owned my dog nor did he have the affection that I had (and perhaps to this day have) for her.
But of course, ideas, concepts and knowledge itself is not something that has begun to worry in this modern age. On the contrary, already in antiquity, the subject of ideas has been a great concern and object of study / reflection by the thinkers of the time. One of the most representative and who delved the most into this topic was the Greek philosopher Plato, who undoubtedly gave his contribution through his well-known formulation of The Theory of Ideas, which suggested the existence of two parallel worlds, independent of each other, but related.
On the one hand, there was for Plato the imperfect world, the cradle of material things, and on the other, in the perfect and eternal world, that is where ideas took place, which according to him, were the source of all kinds of knowledge and were characterized by their immateriality, absolutism, perfection, infinity, eternity, immutability, and independence from the physical world.
Returning to what we expressed above, when we tried to give a definition of the concept of idea, we said that reason and intellect occupy a fundamental place in the elaboration of ideas and this is what follows the current known as rationalism. Meanwhile, those supporters of empiricismThey argue instead that the origin of ideas is in the sensitive experience of each individual, since it will be this that will actually provide ideas to the mind. So, for them the idea is the product of the action of the stimuli on the senses of the person.
