IDEATA

Ideata is the plural of ideatum, a technical term in philosophy of mind and logic. An ideatum is the object or content of a mental act—what a person thinks about, imagines, judges, or perceives. The term helps distinguish between the act of thinking and the thing thought about.

An ideatum may be a real object, a fictional entity, a property, a relation, or an abstract concept. It need not exist in reality; for example, the unicorn imagined in a story has the unicorn as its ideatum, even if no unicorn exists. Similarly, the color blue as it appears in perception can be an ideatum for that perceptual act.

The concept is used in discussions of intentionality and representation to analyze content of consciousness, separating cognitive act from its content. Ideata contrast with the physical stimulus or the subject of perception, and with linguistic signs that encode rather than directly constitute thought. The term is most common in philosophical literature and is relatively rare in other disciplines.

Etymology: ideatum is Latin in origin; ideata is its plural in English. See also intentional object, object of thought, intentionality, and representation.