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Word Gems 

exploring self-realization, sacred personhood, and full humanity

Dr. Mortimer J. Adler's 

Six Great Ideas

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When Aristotle's name is turned into an adjective to modify
a noun, it is usually attached to the word "logic.” We say of
an argument we have just listened to, "That's Aristotelian
logic," sometimes intending to praise, sometimes to disparage.

So, when Plato's name is turned into an adjective, it is usu-
ally attached either to "love" or to "idea." We speak of a certain
type of friendship as platonic love; or we say, "That's only a
Platonic idea and it has nothing to do with reality."

What underlies the derogatory thrust of the phrase "Platonic
idea" is, of course, Plato's theory of ideas, which is hardly a
commonsense doctrine that most people readily embrace. On
the contrary, when they understand it, they find it runs counter
to their commonsense view of the way things are. But it is far
from being wholly wrong. Of the two central tenets of Plato's
theory of ideas, one was right and the other wrong.

Editor's note: I rarely disagree with Dr. Adler, but concerning Plato a different view requires presentation. I think he's missed something. See my comments at the bottom of the page.

Let us begin with what was wrong about it. For Plato, there
were two worlds, not one—the sensible world of changing
physical things that we apprehend by means of our senses and
the world of intelligible objects that we apprehend by means of
our intellects or minds. For him, both are real worlds, where
calling them "real" means that they exist independently of our
apprehending them.

Even if neither men nor other animals that have eyes or ears
or other senses existed, the world of sensible things would exist
exactly as it is. So, too, for Plato, even if there were no human
beings with the characteristic human ability to think of such
objects as truth and goodness, or justice and liberty, these ob-
jects would exist—exist independently of all thinking minds.
That is why in Plato's view, the idea of the good or the idea of
justice has a full measure of reality.

Plato went further. More than a full measure of reality, the
world of ideas had for him a superior grade of reality. The
physical things that we perceive through our senses come into
being and pass away and they are continually in flux, changing
in one way or another. They have no permanence. But though
we may change our minds about the ideas we think about, they
themselves are not subject to change. Unlike living organisms,
they are not born and do not die. Unlike stars and atoms, they
do not move about in space. Unlike the familiar physical objects
that surround us, they do not get hot or cold, larger or smaller,
and so on.

The world of changing physical things is thus for Plato a mere
shadow of the much more real world of ideas. When we pass
from the realm of sense experience to the realm of thought, we
ascend to a higher reality, for we have turned from things that
have no enduring existence to enduring and unchanging (Plato
would say "eternal") objects of thought—ideas.

For those of us who cannot shuck off our commitment to
common sense, Plato goes too far in attributing reality to ideas,
and much too far in exalting their reality over the reality of
sensible phenomena—the reality of the ever-changing world
we experience through our senses. We do not hesitate to reject
Plato's theory of ideas, and declare him wrong in attributing
reality to ideas as well as to physical things, and a superior
reality at that. For us commonsense fellows, it is the world of
ideas that is comparatively shadowy as compared with the tan-
gible, visible, audible world of things that press on us from all
sides.

However, we, too, would be going too far if we regarded
ideas as having no existence at all, or regarded them as existing
only in our minds when we are thinking. That would make
them entirely subjective, as subjective as the feeling of pain
you experience when a finger is squeezed too hard, or as sub-
jective as the toothache you have that you can tell me about but
that I cannot experience because at the moment it is yours and
yours alone.

Plato was right, not wrong, in holding that ideas are objects
that the human mind can think about. He was right in insisting
on their objectivity. This, understood in the simplest manner
possible, amounts to saying that you and I can engage in con-
versation about one and the same idea because it is an object
that you and I are thinking about, just as you and I can engage
in conversation about one and the same overcoat when you
help me put it on and ask me whether it is warm enough. When
you and I discuss truth or justice, the idea of truth or justice is
before our minds, or present to our minds, just as much as the
overcoat that you help me on with is handled by both of us at
the same time.

If anyone has difficulty in understanding this, it is because
the word "idea" has two meanings, not one—one in which it
is used to refer to something that is entirely subjective and one
in which it is used to refer to something that is quite objective.

In the first meaning, the word has been used to refer to the
whole range of entities that comprise the ideational content of
our consciousness. In this broad sense of the word, it covers
the sensations and perceptions we have, the images we form,
the memories we summon up, and the conceptions or notions
that we employ in our thinking.

When the word "idea" is used in this way by psychologists,
all the various items referred to are certainly subjective. My
sensations or perceptions are not yours; the images that occur
in my dreams or the memories I dwell upon when I reminisce
are mine alone; so, too, are the concepts or notions I have been
at some pains to form as I study a difficult science.

To call them all "subjective" is simply to say that they are
private, not public. When I speak of them as mine—my percep-
tion, my memory, or my concept—I am saying that the percep-
tion, memory, or concept in question belongs to me and me
alone. You can have no access to it, just as you cannot have
access to the toothache I am suffering.

In its other meaning, the word "idea" refers to an object that
two or more persons can have access to, can focus on, can think
about, can discuss. While this meaning may not be as familiar,
neither is it entirely strange or puzzling.

If we disagree about a decision just handed down by the
Supreme Court, we may find ourselves challenging each other's
views about justice. If I ask you for your view of justice, I am
asking you to tell me what you think about it, and I am also
prepared to tell you what I think about it. The "it" here is
justice as an object of thought, both your thought and mine,
not justice as a concept in your mind, but not mine.

This is not to deny that you and I have concepts in our minds
—concepts we think with when we think about justice. Fur-
thermore, your concepts and mine are distinct. But that does
not prevent both of us from thinking about one and the same
object—an object of thought we call "justice," and sometimes
refer to as "the idea of justice."

This runs parallel to saying that the quite distinct percepts
you and I have are what enable us to perceive when we do
perceive one and the same perceptible object. Even though I
use my percept and you use yours, as means or instrumentali-
ties for perceiving a sensible object, the sensible object that we
both perceive (such as the overcoat you help me put on) re-
mains one and the same. So, too, you have your memory and I
have mine of a football game we both attended, but we can
both remember one and the same forward pass that won a
victory in the last minute of play...

What all this comes to can be summed up by advising readers
that this book about six great ideas is not concerned with psy-
chology. It is not concerned with what goes on in people's
minds when they think, or what concepts or notions they have
in their minds and employ to think with. It is concerned solely
with what they have before their minds when they engage in
thinking—with objects they are together considering and about
which they and other human beings over the centuries have
raised questions and, in answering them, have either agreed or
disagreed.

For anyone who is incurably addicted to the subjective sense
in which the word "idea" is used by most people, I would be
willing to drop the word entirely and substitute "object of
thought" for it. But I would much prefer retaining the word
and have my readers remember that, as I am using it in a book
about six great ideas, I am always writing about six great ob-
jects of thought that all of us can focus our minds on, not about
the particular concepts or notions that each of us may employ
in order to do that.

So far, then, Plato was right. Ideas, as objects of thought, do
exist. The idea of truth or of justice does not cease to exist when
I cease to think about it, for others can be thinking about it
when I am not. However, unlike the chair I am sitting on or the
book you are holding in your hand, which does not cease to
exist as a perceptible object when no one is perceiving it, ob-
jects of thought do cease to exist as intelligible objects when no
one at all is thinking about them.

There would be stars and atoms in the physical cosmos with
no human beings or other living organisms to perceive them.
But there would be no ideas as objects of thought without
minds to think about them. Ideas exist objectively, but not with
the reality that belongs to physical things. On that point, Plato
was wrong.

Editor’s note: Or not.

There is far too much to comment on here, and yet, uncharacteristically, Dr. Adler strays far from the mark in many of his assertions. He too easily judges Plato’s views uncharitably.

To understand what this means will require some homework. The “quantum mechanics” page contains over 100 short articles which impinge upon the above discussion. Adler speaks of the “commonsense” world. But this world doesn’t exist, as such. It does on a surface-level of reality but as we drill down we discover it all disappears into a nothingness.

Are the stars and atoms, as Adler asserts, utterly real in an objective sense, existing even if never seen by human eyes? Not so comes the findings of the “double-slit, eraser, delayed-choice” experiment. Adler charges that Plato’s views violate our commonsense assessments – but this is the very indictment against quantum mechanics! - and yet a surfeit of evidence supports QM. Adler essentially leads us to a Newtonian picture of the universe – but this has been thoroughly discredited by the quantum fathers in the last hundred years. You’ll need to do some reading on this to perceive the actual underpinnings of reality.

And what about the great ideas as “objects of thought”? – such as truth, goodness, and beauty. Do these exist even if no human mind apprehends them? No, says Adler. But this is incorrect as it espouses a purely materialistic notion. All of the great ideas as virtues – truth, goodness, beauty, and others – exist in the archetypal mind of God; or, as the quantum fathers might say, Universal Consciousness. These virtues know a sturdy reality antedating and continuing beyond our small temporary existence in this 3-D cosmos.

Given Dr. Adler’s great learning, it is somewhat surprising that he seems unknowledgeable of the quantum revolution, preceding the writing of his book by nearly a hundred years, all of which eviscerate his "commonsense" propositions. Also, he appears to know nothing about the “scientific evidence for the afterlife,” promoted by a dozen or more Nobel laureates in science, going back scores of years from his time.

there is no 'out there' out there

Dr. John Wheeler invented the terms and phrases "black hole", "wormhole", "there is no out there out there", but also "it from bit"; that is, the universe ("it") derives from an underlying computer-like information source ("bit"). 

"The universe does not exist “out there,” independent of us. We are inescapably involved in bringing about that which appears to be happening. We are not only observers. We are participators. In some strange sense, this is a participatory universe. Physics is no longer satisfied with insights only into particles, fields of force, into geometry, or even into time and space. Today we demand of physics some understanding of existence itself."