Where do ideas come from?

The question was asked first on LinkedIn where other answers can be found. My answer was:

“Dear Jesse,

Each of the examples you give points to the arrival of ideas during a process. Various LinkedIn participants have been discussing the process of making decisions for some time.

We have been talking about what you refer to as "ideas" as "insights" or "oversights". (Please take a look at the book Socrates Meets Descartes: The Father of Philosophy Analyzes the Father of Modern Philosophy's Discourse on Method by Peter Kreeft, to find an example of the Socratic method of exploring philosophical ideas as applied to the more modern method of the generation of concepts using Descartes self-centered approach. My reading of your question suggests that you are not addressing such different notions as philosophical ideas or self-generated concepts, though I could be wrong.)

Rather than ideas being like copies of a single form already existing completely independent of us (Plato) or completely dependent on us (Descartes), insights and oversights are the sudden appearances of an answer to an issue that a decision-maker then assents to or rejects.

As you would see from the variety of answers given during our previous discussions, such insights arrive during many different kinds of activities.

From my perspective, insights are God's answers to my prayers via what is called actual grace. When I am most aware of such answering is in my dreams, when I am not in control.

In effect, God creates the ideas and we are blessed with momentary visions of them in the stories presented in our dreams. Day-dreaming may be similarly effective, but in my experience brain-storming includes too much exertion of conscious control.

Once this process opens you up to such experiences, ideas flow quite readily. To learn more about this approach, please see Dreams: God's Forgotten Language by noted author John A. Sanford and a very practical book on the subject called Inner Work: Using Dreams and Active Imagination for Personal Growth by Robert A. Johnson.”

What do you think?

Please include your comment here or contact me to discuss.

Thanks.

John Darrouzet