15.4. What is An Idea?

An idea is a representation -- a 'map' of a 'territory'. (See Alfred Korzybski, 1933, Science and Sanity, or S.I. Hayakawa, Language in Thought and Action, 1941.) Now this territory could/can be real or it could/can be false. We can differentiate between ideas that are supposed to represent real territories or 'existential phenomena' vs. ideas that are meant to be 'fanciful' for any of a variety of reasons, some more honorable than others. There is a significant difference between fanciful literary entertainment and manipulative, narcissistic deceit. Also, ideas may represent real or false processes, real or false relationships between things, real or false descriptions of things. The issue of 'truth' or 'realness' becomes important only when we wish to 'plan an epistemological trip using good knowledge' and therefore need a map that is a 'good representation of the territory it is supposed to existentially represent. (See Korzybski and/or Hayakawaka again.)

Thus, words are short forms for ideas or concepts which in turn are representations of 'pieces of real existential territory' -- assuming the idea is supposed to be 'real' or 'right' or 'truthful' or 'congruent' or 'structurally similar' with the actual existential territory it is supposed to represent'. Otherwise, the map is a bad idea or a fanciful idea or a manipulative, deceitful idea, or something that has no 'truth bearing with existential reality as it really is'.

Our ideas are maps of things or processes that either exist in the real world or do not exist, or bits of both, or may potentially exist in the future if we make them happen by building actual physical replicas of the type of architecture that we have already built in our minds...These types of ideas are called 'plans'.

Kant (Critique of Pure Reason) said that we cannot 'know' our objective world but he was only partly right. What he should have said is that we can nevrr know our 'objective world' perfectly. however, we can know it with different amounts of truth value and/or distortion depedning on how 'good' or 'bad' our 'cogitive or conceptual maps' are and these maps will always be at least somewhat biaseed in favor of our personal interests, wishes, and/or fears, or worded otherwise, our IPPs (individual philosophies and psychologies). That is why science and our legal court systems and news reporters are always looking for 'second, third, and sometimes more sources of independent empirical verification'. The more independent verifications we get of something being true, the more we are likely to give the assertions behind these verifications 'truth value' and/or 'truth credibiltiy'.

Kant, in saying what he did about our not being able to know our objective world -- not being able to know the 'real' world beyond our senses -- set epistemology on its ear, and epistemology has not quite fully recovered yet. The Knatian 'Copernican' revolution in epistemology was partly good for epistemology in that it made people pay more attention to their individual and cultural biases -- and while Kant went through epistemology like a fairly strong wind storm, Nietzshe later took over for where Kant left off, and went back through epistemology like a level 5 hurricane, demolishing everything in his path. Nietzsche was undoubtedly the finest deconstructionist in the history of Western philosophy -- and much of his deconstructionism was epistemologically important as he 'tore down false idols'. But still, epistemology was a wreck by the time he was through. Between Kant and Nietzsche, together they opened the door back up for 'ethical relativists, 'non-ethical narcissists' and/or modern day Sophists' (conceptual mercenaries who will tell you anything you want to hear and make it sound good and credible even if it is not true -- like our modern day lawyers -- for a fee.)

Epistemology needs to be re-established on a solid foundation again, even if it does need to be much more wary of 'sensory error, inferential error, and narcissistic bias' than it was before Kant and Nietzshe. Partly Bertrand Russell and Wittgenstein I believed tried to do this...but then along comes Derrida and more deconstructionism...tied in hand in hand with Foucault and his study of the narcissisitc relationship between 'knowledge and power'. Again epistemology takes a nose dive. Since Descartes and Kant turned the study of epistemology inwards, epistemology has had a rather rough ride through much of the 19th, all of the 20th, and now the 21st century. Are we left with anything other than 'epistemological nihilism'?

Personally, I say that we need to learn the lessons of Descartes, Kant, Nietzsche, Derrida, and Foucault but put back into perspective and the perspective I tend to emphasize is the one built by Alfred Korzybski and his followers -- General Semantics -- with perhaps some modifications -- for example, 'dialectical modifications' -- that I may make along the way. This is what I will call 'DGB Epistemology' -- which has connections to every other section that I write about in DGB Philosophy -- Psychology, Business and Economics, History, Law, Ethics, Politics, Religion, and so on. Let us call this our starting point then, both for DGB Philosophy and, in particular, for DGB Epistemology.


dgb, September 25th, 2006