An Idea Venn Diagram?

I saw a recent blog comment from Austin where he mentioned that he tends to view the concept of ideas as a venn diagram rather than as a linear progression. I had not thought of that previously but I think he may be on to something. 

As was explicitly mentioned in the readings, and discussed in class, rarely if ever will you be able to determine an actors motivation on an issue. The system and situations are too complex for us to narrow down to one particular idea. Rather, it is a combination of different ideas that prompt an actor's action. A more dynamic model, that isn't tied to a particular progression of "ideas", would be better suited to help explain an actor's behavior. 

A more flexible model would also address the issue I had with Goldstein and Keohane's framework which saw causal beliefs as the most important of the 3.  As I mentioned in my previous blog post, I don't believe that these are the most important of the 3 "idea" categories and I think there is argument that each category plays a leading role in certain scenarios. A less linear framework would allow for ideas to have varying levels of importance and make the overall theory less easy to discredit. 

(Side, but related note: it was suggested in class that one reason Goldstein and Keohane list causal beliefs as the most important because it is easier to measure. I think that is a pretty terrible and lazy rational on their part.) 

An additional critique of their framework would be that their linear model does not necessarily allow for regression of motivation. After all, what if my motivating "idea" changes back to my principled beliefs even though I have casual evidence that would support an opposite action if I followed my causal belief? A venn diagram model of ideas would allow for motivating ideas to float in and out and vary in their importance/level of impact. 

The core problem, which I keep coming back to, is that there is not an official, agreed up on definition of what an "idea" is and what would constitute an "idea". Without that, no theory will be able to stand up on it's own. Austin and I could look at the same scenario and our venn diagrams would look completely different because we would not be pulling from the same "bag" of ideas. Before we can even start evaluating the role of "ideas" in the international system and how states determine what their "ideas" are, we need a concrete defintion of what an "idea" is.