An Ontology of Ideas

Abstract

Philosophers often talk about and engage with ideas. Scientists, artists, and historians do, too. But what is an idea? In this paper, we first motivate the desire for an ontology of ideas before discussing what conditions a candidate ontology would have to satisfy to be minimally adequate. We then offer our own account of the ontology of ideas and consider various strategies for specifying the underlying metaphysics of the account. We conclude with a discussion of potential future work to be done on the ontology of ideas.

Creature Features: Character Production and Failed Explanations in Fiction, Folklore, and Theorizing

“…42 Cowling and Cray (2022) develop the proposal in Cray (2019). 43 Ideas here are not conceived of as traditional abstract entities, but instead as real, historical individuals, broadly along the lines of Rohrbaugh (2003), and less broadly along the lines of Cray (2014), Cray and Schroeder (2015), Everett and Schroeder (2015), Matheson (2017), andCray (2019). Cowling and Cray (2022, pp.…”

“…What are these theories? One might think, along the lines of Cray and Schroeder (2015), that theories, too, are ideas-ideas that involve, at the very least, some combination of explanatory elements including objects, features, events, and causes. It is not implausible to think that when a theory is created, its various components that are not already in existence must be created, or at the very least produced.…”

“…44 Again, neither Cowling or Cray, to the best of our knowledge, endorse the following argument. Rather, it was inspired by their views on the metaphysics of stories in their 2022 and related views defended in Cray (2014), Everett and Schroeder (2015), Cray and Schroeder (2015), Cray and Matheson (2017), and Cray (2017Cray ( , 2019. 45 Everett and Schroeder (2015) defend this sort of view.…”

Spatial music

“…17 One may think that conceptual art is a counterexample to this claim, since conceptual art does not have a medium. But, for one thing, conceptual art seems to involve ideas, and ideas are more robust than seemings; they can be shared and created and mistaken (Cray & Schroeder, 2015). Goldie and Schellekens (2010) hold that conceptual art takes ideas as a medium.…”

Can There Be Conceptual Dance?

“…But it is not clear that the objecthood of conceptual artworks dissolves as completely as the idea idea indicates, nor that the ontological position which maintains that artworks are ideas is sustainable. One might, on the one hand, probe the ontology of ideas to question whether artworks can indeed be ideas (Cray ; Cray and Schroeder ). On the other hand, one might question the assumption that the different mode of appreciation required by conceptual art in comparison with traditional art necessarily also implies a distinct ontology (Dodd ).…”