The Model of Hierarchical Complexity is introduced in terms of its main concepts, background, and applications. As a general, quantitative behavioral developmental theory, the Model enables examination of universal patterns of evolution and development. Behavioral tasks are definable and their organization of information in increasingly greater hierarchical, or vertical, complexity is measurable. Fifteen orders of hierarchical complexity account for task performances across domains, ranging from those of machines to creative geniuses. The four most complex orders are demonstrated by postformal (...) stages of thought, which measure beyond formal operations, the highest stage found by Piaget for adults. (shrink)

Hoy en día, el fuerte consagramiento y la expansión de la propiedad privada ha llevado al olvido a muchos métodos de gobernar recursos que no están basados en la exclusividad. Frecuentemente se escucha hablar de la propiedad como un derecho de dominio absoluto, algo inviolable que no conlleva obligaciones. Sin embargo, desde los inicios de la historia jurídica podemos observar que los derechos de propiedad han estado habitualmente acompañados de obligaciones y limitaciones, además de un mandato moral solicitando que el (...) manejo de la propiedad sea en vista al bien común. (shrink)

Item: New York City, 28 June 2009. The streets are blaring “Thriller” and are full of people “being” Michael Jackson. What's the ownership stake of Michael impersonators in his image? Do Jackson im...

Challenging a long-standing assumption of the separation of ethical from poetic activity, this essay develops the basis for a theory of moral life as inherently and radically creative. A range of contemporary post-Kantian ethicists--including Ricoeur, Nussbaum, Kearney, and Gutiérrez--are employed to make the argument that moral practice requires a fundamental capability for creative transformation, imagination, and social renewal. In addition, this poetic moral capability can finally be understood only from the primordial religious point of view of the mystery (...) of Creation as such. Humanity as an image of its Creator is called to the endless impossible possibility of the re-creation of its own complex, plural, and fallen social world. Such a perspective is opposed to views of moral life as the application of law-like principles or the recovery of past moral histories. Without a better understanding of moral life's radically creative imperative, we miss a vital element of social relations' distinctive humanity. (shrink)

The aim of this dissertation is to create a naturalistic philosophical picture of creative capacities that are specific to our species, focusing on artistic ability, religious reflection, and scientific study. By integrating data from diverse domains within a philosophical anthropological framework, I have presented a cognitive and evolutionary approach to the question of why humans, but not other animals engage in such activities. Through an application of cognitive and evolutionary perspectives to the study of these behaviors, I have sought (...) to provide a more solid footing for philosophical anthropological discussions of uniquely human behavior. In particular, I have argued that art, religion and science, which are usually seen as achievements that are quite remote from ordinary modes of reasoning, are subserved by evolved cognitive processes that serve functions in everyday cognitive tasks, that arise early and spontaneously in cognitive development, that are shared cross-culturally, and that have evolved in response to selective pressures in our ancestral past. These mundane cognitive processes provide a measuring rod with which we can assess a diversity of cultural phenomena; they form a unified explanatory framework to approach human culture. I have argued that we can explain uncommon thoughts in terms of interactions between common minds. This dissertation is subdivided into four parts. Part I outlines the problem of human uniqueness, examining theories on how humans conceptualize the world, and what their mental tool box looks like. Part II discusses the evolutionary and cognitive origins of human artistic behavior. Part III focuses on the cognitive science of religion, especially on how it can be applied to the reasoning of theologians and philosophers of religion. Part IV considers the cognitive basis of scientific practice. (shrink)

Paul Weiss is one of the two or three most original and creative philosophers and metaphysicians in America today. Creativity and Common Sense reveals why. It contains fourteen recent articles on the thought of Paul Weiss by authors who are most familiar with his writings, including an essay by Charles Hartshorne that provides a unique perspective on Weiss by one who has known him for his entire career. Weiss is shown to be one of the very few contemporary philosophers (...) who examines every area of concern to philosophy and does so on the basis of ontological insights regarding the ultimate elements of reality. He begins his philosophical consideration with the evidences offered by the world of common sense and seeks to provide an adequate and comprehensive account of what he finds there. The contributors to this collection present and examine many of Weiss’ strategic insights. They help clarify key elements in his thought and thereby contribute to an appreciation and understanding of his work. They also make evident the importance of Weiss’ insights for resolving vexing questions in such diverse areas as the philosophy of science, philosophical methodology, ethics, aesthetics, the philosophy of the human person, and the philosophy of language. This collection makes a significant contribution to the development of Weissian scholarship and to the growing appreciation of the significance of his thought for the discussions of contemporary philosophy. (shrink)

Students display resistance in the classroom in numerous ways, often in the form of academic misconduct. Some argue that resistance can reflect cleverness and creativity, rather than apathy. This investigation aimed to develop a psychometric tool to examine classroom resistance as well as identify individual and situational determinants of the same. Data from 853 participants was collected on measures of resistance behaviors in educational contexts and their environmental contributors, creativity, personality, and deception. Further, participants indicated their frequency of resistance across (...) two time periods: kindergarten through middle school, and high school through college. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses identified a robust three-factor structure for the Classroom Resistance Scale, comprising Test-Oriented Cheating, Blatant Academic Dishonesty, and Unethical Shortcuts. The person-situation analysis indicated that students who engaged in resistance shared some consistent characteristics: they were more likely to be closed to new experiences, unimaginative, more extraverted, and highly influenced by their peers. Moreover, the frequency of classroom resistance increased in higher grades as compared to lower ones. Implications of spillover effects of academic dishonesty into the workplace are discussed, in addition to suggestions for future research. (shrink)

This volume explores the ways in which civil society and governments employ transformative tactics of direct engagement in coordinating efforts toward the common good. Increasingly, these collaborative endeavors seek to share power and break down role boundaries in the pursuit of abundant human flourishing, as opposed to cost-saving austerity"--Provided by publisher.

This collection, essentially a Festschrift presented to Paul Weiss on his eighty-fifth birthday, consists of fourteen contributions, primarily by his former students and colleagues past and present, together with an introduction by the editor that provides a helpful historical survey of Weiss's philosophical development. About half of the material seems to have been written specifically for this volume, the rest having either appeared elsewhere or having been presented at a symposium on the philosophy of Paul Weiss held in 1981. The (...) contributions are organized into five sections: Weissian method, the relation between Weiss's work and the sciences, issues concerning the relation between metaphysics and ethics, four essays exploring Weiss's contributions to such areas as sports and architecture, and three final pieces intended perhaps to convey something of a sense of "Weiss in process." The editor also provides a chronological bibliography of Weiss's publications. (shrink)

Creative Intelligence: Essays in the Pragmatic Attitude represents an attempt at intellectual cooperation. No effort has been made, however, to attain unanimity of belief nor to proffer a platform of "planks" on which there is agreement. The consensus represented lies primarily in outlook, in conviction of what is most likely to be fruitful in method of approach. As the title page suggests, the volume presents a unity in attitude rather than a uniformity in results. Consequently each writer is definitively (...) responsible only for his own essay. The reader will note that the Essays endeavor to embody the common attitude in application to specific fields of inquiry which have been historically associated with philosophy rather than as a thing by itself. Beginning with philosophy itself, subsequent contributions discuss its application to logic, to mathematics, to physical science, to psychology, to ethics, to economics, and then again to philosophy itself in conjunction with esthetics and religion. The reader will probably find that the significant points of agreement have to do with the ideas of the genuineness of the future, of intelligence as the organ for determining the quality of that future so far as it can come within human control, and of a courageously inventive individual as the bearer of a creatively employed mind. (shrink)

Schurz (Synthese 164:201–234, 2008) proposed a justification of creative abduction on the basis of the Reichenbachian principle of the common cause. In this paper we take up the idea of combining creative abduction with causal principles and model instances of successful creative abduction within a Bayes net framework. We identify necessary conditions for such inferences and investigate their unificatory power. We also sketch several interesting applications of modeling creative abduction Bayesian style. In particular, we discuss use-novel (...) predictions, confirmation, and the problem of underdetermination in the context of abductive inferences. (shrink)

Creativity — A New Vocabulary proposes a novel approach to the way in which we talk and think about creativity. It covers a variety of topics not commonly associated with creativity that offer us valuable insights and open up new and exciting possibilities for creative action. This collection of essays challenges the 'traditional' vocabulary of creativity and its preference for individuals, brains, cognition, personality, divergent thinking, insight, and problem solving. Instead, the book proposes a more dynamic and relational perspective (...) that considers creativity as an embodied, social, material, and cultural process. This book will be useful for a wide range of specialists within the humanities and social sciences, as well as practitioners from applied fields who are looking for novel ways of thinking about and doing creative work. (shrink)

Creativity is commonly thought of as a positive advance for society that transcends the status quo knowledge. Humans display an inordinate capacity for it in a broad range of activities, with art being only one. Most work on creativity’s neural substrates measures general creativity, and that is done with laboratory tasks, whereas specific creativity in art is gleaned from acquired brain damage, largely in observing established visual artists, and some in visual de novo artists (became artists after the damage). The (...) verb “to create” has been erroneously equated with creativity; creativity, in the classic sense, does not appear to be enhanced following brain damage, regardless of etiology. The turning to communication through art in lieu of language deficits reflects a biological survival strategy. Creativity in art, and in other domains, is most likely dependent on intact and healthy knowledge and semantic conceptual systems, which are represented in several pathways in the cortex. It is adversely affected when these systems are dysfunctional, for congenital reasons (savant autism) or because of acquired brain damage (stroke, dementia, Parkinson’s), whereas inherent artistic talent and skill appear less affected. Clues to the neural substrates of general creativity and specific art creativity can be gleaned from considering that art is produced spontaneously mainly by humans, that there are unique neuroanatomical and neurofunctional organizations in the human brain, and that there are biological antecedents of innovation in animals. (shrink)

Depression experienced by older adults is proving an increasing global health burden, with rates generally 7% and as high as 27% in the USA. This is likely to significantly increase in coming years as the number and proportion of older adults in the population rises all around the world. Therefore, it is imperative that the effectiveness of approaches to the prevention and treatment of depression are understood. Creative arts interventions, including art, dance movement, drama and music modalities, are utilised (...) internationally to target depression and depressive symptoms in older adults. This includes interventions led by trained arts therapists as well as other health and arts professionals. However, to date there has not been a systematic review that reports effects and examines the processes (why) and mechanisms (how) of creative arts interventions are used to address depression in this older age group. This systematic review of studies on creative arts interventions for older adults experiencing depression examined: outcomes of four creative arts modalities (art, dance movement, drama, and music); with particular attention paid to processes documented as contributing to change in each modality; and mechanisms considered to result from these processes. Our analysis of 75 articles (17 art, 13 dance, 4 drama and 41 music) indicates mostly significant quantitative or positive qualitative findings, particularly for interventions led by creative arts therapists. Mechanisms of change gleaned from the studies that were common across modalities include physical (e.g. increased muscle strength; neurochemical effects, such as endorphin release), intra-personal (e.g. enhanced self-concept, strengthened agency and mastery; processing and communication of emotions), cultural (e.g. creative expression, aesthetic pleasure), cognitive (e.g. stimulation of memory) and social (e.g. increased social skills and connection), that were all considered to contribute to reduced depression and symptoms. Recommendations for future research include a stronger focus on testing of processes and mechanisms. (shrink)

The paper explores the creative thinking process and throws light on creativity enhancement. From the perspective of possible creativity enhancement both the characteristics of creativity and the creative thinking process are discussed, together with an analysis of the process and its common factors. Constraints on innovation (as a special type of creativity), innovation management and the acceptance of change are discussed; creativity between cooperating individuals is also examined. Some possible computer-based tools to enhance creativity, including innovation, are discussed. (...) A framework of facilities to help promote and support the use of creativity enhancement techniques and tools (SOLI) is proposed. The paper is the result of a study undertaken by the author into creativity, innovation and cooperation. (shrink)

Everything you have been told about creativity is wrong. From line managers, corporate CEOs, urban designers, teachers, politicians, mayors, advertisers and even our friends and family, the message is 'be creative'. Creativity is heralded as the driving force of our contemporary society; celebrated as agile, progressive and liberating. It is the spring of the knowledge economy and shapes the cities we inhabit. It even defines our politics. What could possibly be wrong with this? In this brilliant, counter intuitive blast (...) Oli Mould demands that we rethink the story we are being sold. Behind the novelty, he shows that creativity is a barely hidden form of neoliberal appropriation. It is a regime that prioritizes individual success over collective flourishing. It refuses to recognise anything - job, place, person - that is not profitable. And it impacts on everything around us: the places where we work, the way we are managed, how we spend our leisure time. Is there an alternative? Mould offers a radical redefinition of creativity, one embedded in the idea of collective flourishing, outside the tyranny of profit. Bold, passionate and refreshing, Against Creativity, is a timely correction to the doctrine of our times. (shrink)

We propose expanding the authors’ shared novelty-seeking basis for creativity and curiosity by emphasizing an underlying computational principle: Minimizing prediction errors (mismatch between predictions and incoming data). Curiosity is tied to the anticipation of minimizing prediction errors through future, novel information, whereas creative AHA moments are connected to the actual minimization of prediction errors through current, novel information.

Pay for performance is a common practice used by organizations to increase employees’ motivation and performance, and creativity-contingent rewards have been shown to support creativity, but are all creativity-contingent rewards equal? Procedural justice can potentially affect the way that creativity-contingent rewards impact employees’ intrinsic motivation and creativity. To shed light on this practice-relevant issue, this study investigates how aspects of procedural justice – reward allocation clarity and reward evaluation fairness – impact changes in intrinsic motivation and creativity in the presence (...) of creativity-contingent rewards. Using an incomplete factorial pretest-posttest between subjects design with four reward conditions and one control (no reward) condition, I analyzed changes in intrinsic motivation and creativity. Relative to the control condition, significant increases in both intrinsic motivation and creativity were found in the reward conditions with high evaluation fairness. However, reward allocation clarity did not yield any significant effects on changes in intrinsic motivation and creativity. The results highlight the importance of fair evaluation procedures for determining rewards if creativity-contingent rewards are to increase intrinsic motivation and creativity. (shrink)

Common sense has it that some of the greatest achievements that are to our credit are creative, whether artistic or otherwise. But standard theories of achievement and merit struggle to explain them, since the praiseworthiness of creative achievements isn’t grounded in effort, quality of will, disclosing the agent’s values, or even reasons-responsiveness. I argue that it’s distinctive of artistic or quasi-artistic creative activity that it is guided by what I call aspirational aims, which are formulated in terms (...) of evaluative predicates (like painting something “moving” or engineering something “nifty”) whose descriptive realizers are not known in advance. Aesthetic creativity itself fundamentally consists in perceiving or conceiving of some modification of raw material or a medium as promoting or constituting a novel way of realizing the aspirational aim. Creative achievements like poems and paintings are then to our credit in virtue of being exercises of spontaneity that disclose a deep layer of our selves that is manifest in active perception of affordances, showing that there is something beautiful about the way we experience the world, as a Sally Rooney character puts it. As with other creditworthy achievements, what makes them difficult is that simply trying won’t suffice to make success likely – but unlike in many other cases, neither will trying hard, since we have no direct volitional or rational control over perceptual spontaneity. (shrink)

Memoires by eminently creative people often describe architectural spaces and qualities they believe instrumental for their creativity. However, places designed to encourage creativity have had mixed results, with some found to decrease creative productivity for users. This may be due, in part, to lack of suitable empirical theory or model to guide design strategies. Relationships between creative cognition and features of the physical environment remain largely uninvestigated in the scientific literature, despite general agreement among researchers that human (...) cognition is physically and socially situated. This paper investigates what role architectural settings may play in creative processes by examining documented first person and biographical accounts of creativity with respect to three central theories of situated cognition. First, the embodied thesis argues that cognition encompasses both the mind and the body. Second, the embedded thesis maintains that people exploit features of the physical and social environment to increase their cognitive capabilities. Third, the enaction thesis describes cognition as dependent upon a person’s interactions with the world. Common themes inform three propositions, illustrated in a new theoretical framework describing relationships between people and their architectural settings with respect to different cognitive processes of creativity. The framework is intended as a starting point toward an ecological model of creativity, which may be used to guide future creative process research and architectural design strategies to support user creative productivity. (shrink)

The ultimate focus of the current essay is on methods of “creative abduction” that have some guarantees as reliable guides to the truth, and those that do not. Emphasizing work by Richard Englehart using data from the World Values Survey, Gerhard Schurz has analyzed literature surrounding Samuel Huntington’s well-known claims that civilization is divided into eight contending traditions, some of which resist “modernization” – democracy, civil rights, equality of rights of women and minorities, secularism. Schurz suggests an evolutionary model (...) of modernization and identifies opposing social forces. In a later essay, citing Englehart’s work as an example, Schurz identifies factor analysis as an example of “creative abduction”. The theories of Englehart and his collaborators are reviewed again in the current essay. Published simulations and standard statistical desiderata for causal inference show the methods Englehart used, factor analysis in particular, are not guides to truth for the kind of data Schurz recognizes as common in political science. Recent work in statistics, philosophy and computer science that makes advances towards such methods is briefly reviewed. (shrink)

Common philosophical accounts of creativity align creative products and processes with a particular kind of agency: namely, that deserving of praise or blame. Considering evolutionary examples, we explore two ways of denying that creativity requires forms of agency. First, we argue that decoupling creativity from praiseworthiness comes at little cost: accepting that evolutionary processes are non-agential, they nonetheless exhibit many of the same characteristics and value associated with creativity. Second, we develop a ‘product-first’ account of creativity by which a (...) process is creative just in case it gives rise to products deserving of certain forms of aesthetic engagement. (shrink)

As virtues of intellectual character are commonly discussed, they aim at _propositional _intellectual goods. But some creative works—especially those in music and the visual arts—are not primarily intended to gain, keep, or share propositional goods such as truth, knowledge, and understanding. They aim at something else. Thus, to conceive of intellectual creativity in a way that accords with standard discussions of intellectual virtue is to exclude paradigmatic works of the creative intellect. There is a kind of puzzle here: (...) it appears that we cannot maintain both the commonly-discussed notion of intellectual virtue and the claim that, say, Beethoven’s Ninth, or Monet’s Water Lilies, are central cases of intellectually virtuous creativity. We provide a two-part solution to the puzzle. First, we suggest that some works of music and visual art can convey propositional goods. Second, we appeal to the notion of _acquaintance _as an epistemic good that is conveyed through creative artistic and musical to an extent not conveyed in standard prose works. In this respect, intellectual creativity is the virtue that breaks the propositional mold of much contemporary virtue epistemology. (shrink)

According to Mednick’s (1962) theory of individual differences in creativity, creative individuals appear to have a richer and more flexible associative network than less creative individuals. Thus, creative individuals are characterized by “flat” (broader associations) instead of “steep” (few, common associations) associational hierarchies. To study these differences, we implement a novel computational approach to the study of semantic networks, through the analysis of free associations. The core notion of our method is that concepts in the network are (...) related to each other by their association correlations - overlap of similar associative responses (“association clouds”). We began by collecting a large sample of participants who underwent several creativity measurements and used a decision tree approach to divide the sample into low and high creative groups. Next, each group underwent a free association generation paradigm which allowed us to construct and analyze the semantic networks of both groups. Comparison of the semantic memory networks of persons with low creative ability and persons with high creative ability revealed differences between the two networks. The semantic memory network of persons with low creative ability seems to be more rigid, compared to the network of persons with high creative ability, in the sense that it is more spread out and breaks apart into more sub-parts. We discuss how our findings are in accord and extend Mednick’s (1962) theory and the feasibility of using network science paradigms to investigate high level cognition. (shrink)

In this essay we collect and put together a number of ideas relevant to the under- standing of the phenomenon of creativity, confining our considerations mostly to the domain of cognitive psychology while we will, on a few occasions, hint at neuropsy- chological underpinnings as well. In this, we will mostly focus on creativity in science, since creativity in other domains of human endeavor have common links with scientific creativity while differing in numerous other specific respects. We begin by briefly (...) introducing a few basic notions relating to cognition, among which the notion of ‘concepts’ is of basic relevance. The myriads of concepts lodged in our mind constitute a ‘conceptual space’ of an enormously complex structure, where con- cepts are correlated by beliefs that are themselves made up of concepts and are as- sociated with emotions. The conceptual space, moreover, is perpetually in a state of dynamic evolution that is once again of a complex nature. A major component of the dynamic evolution is made up of incessant acts of inference, where an inference occurs essentially by means of a succession of correlations among concepts set up with beliefs and heuristics, the latter being beliefs of a special kind, namely, ones relatively free of emotional associations and possessed of a relatively greater degree of justification. Beliefs, along with heuristics, have been described as the ‘mind’s software’, and con- stitute important cognitive components of the self-linked psychological resources of an individual. The self is the psychological engine driving all our mental and physical activity, and is in a state of ceaseless dynamics resulting from one’s most intimate ex- periences of the world accumulating in the course of one’s journey through life. Many of our psychological resources are of a dual character, having both a self-linked and a shared character, the latter being held in common with larger groups of people and imbibed from cultural inputs. We focus on the privately held self-linked beliefs of an individual, since these are presumably of central relevance in making possible inductive inferences – ones in which there arises a fundamental need of adopting a choice or making a decision. Beliefs, decisions, and inferences, all have the common link to the self of an individual and, in this, are fundamentally analogous to free will, where all of these have an aspect of non-determinism inherent in them. Creativity involves a major restructuring of the conceptual space where a sustained inferential process eventually links remote conceptual domains, thereby opening up the possibility of a large number of new correlations between remote concepts by a cascading process. Since the process of inductive inference depends crucially on de- cisions at critical junctures of the inferential chain, it becomes necessary to examine the basic mechanism underlying the making of decisions. In the framework that we attempt to build up for the understanding of scientific creativity, this role of decision making in the inferential process assumes central relevance. With this background in place, we briefly sketch the affect theory of decisions. Affect is an innate system of response to perceptual inputs received either from the exter- nal world or from the internal physiological and psychological environment whereby a positive or negative valence gets associated with a perceptual input. Almost every sit- uation faced by an individual, even one experienced tacitly, i.e., without overt aware-ness, elicits an affective response from him, carrying a positive or negative valence that underlies all sorts of decision making, including ones carried out unconsciously in inferential processes. Referring to the process of inferential exploration of the conceptual space that gener- ates the possibility of correlations being established between remote conceptual do- mains, such exploration is guided and steered at every stage by the affect system, analogous to the way a complex computer program proceeds through junctures where the program ascertains whether specified conditions are met with by way of generating appropriate numerical values – for instance, the program takes different routes, depending on whether some particular numerical value turns out to be positive or negative. The valence generated by the affect system in the process of adoption of a choice plays a similar role which therefore is of crucial relevance in inferential processes, especially in the exploration of the conceptual space where remote domains need to be linked up – the affect system produces a response along a single value dimension, resembling a number with a sign and a magnitude. While the affect system plays a guiding role in the exploration of the conceptual space, the process of exploration itself consists of the establishment of correlations between concepts by means of beliefs and heuristics, the self-linked ones among the latter having a special role in making possible the inferential journey along alternative routes whenever the shared rules of inference become inadequate. A successful access to a remote conceptual domain, necessary for the creative solution of a standing problem or anomaly – one that could not be solved within the limited domain hitherto accessed – requires a phase of relatively slow cumulative search and then, at some stage, a rapid cascading process when a solution is in sight. Representing the conceptual space in the form of a complex network, the overall process can be likened to one of self-organized criticality commonly observed in the dynamical evolution of complex systems. In order that inferential access to remote domains may actually be possible, it is necessary that restrictions on the exploration process – necessary for setting the context in ordinary instances of inductive inference – be relaxed and a relatively free exploration in a larger conceptual terrain be made possible. This is achieved by the mind going into the default mode, where external constraints – ones imposed by shared beliefs and modes of exploration – are made inoperative. While explaining all these various aspects of the creative process, we underline the supremely important role that analogy plays in it. Broadly speaking, analogy is in the nature of a heuristic, establishing correlations between concepts. However, analo- gies are very special in that these are particularly effective in establishing correlations among remote concepts, since analogy works without regard to the contiguity of the concepts in the conceptual space. In establishing links between concepts, analogies have the power to light up entire terrains in the conceptual space when a rapid cas- cading of fresh correlations becomes possible. The creative process occurs within the mind of a single individual or of a few closely collaborating individuals, but is then continued by an entire epistemic community, eventually resulting in a conceptual revolution. Such conceptual revolutions make pos- sible the radical revision of scientific theories whereby the scope of an extant theory is broadened and a new theoretical framework makes its appearance. The emerging theory is characterized by a certain degree of incommensurability when compared with the earlier one – a feature that may appear strange at first sight. But incommen- surability does not mean incompatibility and the apparently contrary features of the relation between the successive theories may be traced to the multi-layered structureof the conceptual space where concepts are correlated not by means of single links but by multiple ones, thereby generating multiple layers of correlation, among which some are retained and some created afresh in a conceptual restructuring. We conclude with the observation that creativity occurs on all scales. Analogous to correlations being set up across domains in the conceptual space and new domains being generated, processes with similar features can occur within the confines of a domain where a new layer of inferential links may be generated, connecting up sub- domains. In this context, insight can be looked upon as an instance of creativity within the confines of a domain of a relatively limited extent. (shrink)

This chapter examines the imagination, its relationship to “common sense,” and its recent development in the notion of the social imaginary in Western philosophy and the contributions Miki Kiyoshi and Nakamura Yūjirō can make in this regard. I trace the historical evolution of the notion of the productive imagination from its seeds in Aristotle through Kant and into the social imagination or imaginary as bearing on our collective being-in-the-world, with semantic and ontological significance, in Paul Ricoeur, Cornelius Castoriadis, and Charles (...) Taylor. The two Japanese philosophers, when brought into dialogue with the above contemporary Western thinkers, can contribute to this recent development of the imagination’s creativity into the collective sphere. Miki shows a connection between the imagination and a certain form-formlessness dynamic he inherits from Nishida. Nakamura in turn points to a connection between imagination and place via his development of the Aristotelian notion of common sense. Both have implications on how we understand the social imaginary. (shrink)

Computational Creativity, Concept Invention, and General Intelligence in their own right all are flourishing research disciplines producing surprising and captivating results that continuously influence and change our view on where the limits of intelligent machines lie, each day pushing the boundaries a bit further. By 2014, all three fields also have left their marks on everyday life – machine-composed music has been performed in concert halls, automated theorem provers are accepted tools in enterprises’ R&D departments, and cognitive architectures are being (...) integrated in pilot assistance systems for next generation airplanes. Still, although the corresponding aims and goals are clearly similar (as are the common methods and approaches), the developments in each of these areas have happened mostly individually within the respective community and without closer relationships to the goings-on in the other two disciplines. In order to overcome this gap and to provide a common platform for interaction and exchange between the different directions, the International Workshops on “Computational Creativity, Concept Invention, and General Intelligence” (C3GI) have been started. At ECAI-2012 and IJCAI-2013, the first and second edition of C3GI each gathered researchers from all three fields, presenting recent developments and results from their research and in dialogue and joint debates bridging the disciplinary boundaries. The chapters contained in this book are based on expanded versions of accepted contributions to the workshops and additional selected contributions by renowned researchers in the relevant fields. Individually, they give an account of the state-of-the-art in their respective area, discussing both, theoretical approaches as well as implemented systems. When taken together and looked at from an integrative perspective, the book in its totality offers a starting point for a (re)integration of Computational Creativity, Concept Invention, and General Intelligence, making visible common lines of work and theoretical underpinnings, and pointing at chances and opportunities arising from the interplay of the three fields. (shrink)

Despite the recent upsurge of interest in the investigation of creativity, the question of how to measure creativity is arguably underdiscussed. The aim of this paper is to address this gap, proposing a multidimensional account of creativity which identifies problem-solving, evaluation, and naivety as measurable features that are common among creative processes. The benefits that result from the adoption of this model are twofold: integrating discussions on creativity in various domains and offering the tools to assess creativity across systems (...) of different kinds. By situating creativity within this framework, I aim to contribute to a non-anthropocentric, more comprehensive understanding of the notion, and to debates on natural and artificial creativity. (shrink)

We praise and admire creative people in virtually every domain from the worlds of art, fashion and design to the fields of engineering and scientific endeavour. Picasso was one of the most influential artists of the twentieth century, Einstein was a creative scientist and Jonathan Ive is admired the world over as a great designer. We also sometimes blame, condemn or withhold praise from those who fail creatively; hence we might say that someone's work or ideas tend to (...) be rather derivative and uninspired. Institutions and governmental advisory bodies sometimes aspire, claim or exhort us to enable individual creativity, whether this is held to be good for the individual as such or in virtue of promoting wider socio-economic goods. It is at least a common thought that people are more self-fulfilled if they are creative and society more generally is held to be all the better for enabling individual creativity. (shrink)

[A revised and updated version of an earlier article 'Understanding Creativity: Affect Decision and Inference' (unpublished), posted at PhilArchive in 2021.] -/- This book looks at the creative process in the human mind. -/- Creativity involves a major restructuring of the conceptual space where a sustained inferential process eventually links remote conceptual domains, thereby opening up the possibility of a large number of new correlations between remote concepts by a cascading process. Since the process of inductive inference depends crucially (...) on decisions at critical junctures of the inferential chain, it becomes necessary to examine the basic mechanism underlying the making of decisions. In the framework that we attempt to build up for the understanding of scientific creativity, this role of decision making in the inferential process assumes central relevance. -/- Referring to the process of inferential exploration of the conceptual space that generates the possibility of correlations being established between remote conceptual domains, such exploration is guided and steered at every stage by the affect system, -/- While the affect system plays a guiding role in the exploration of the conceptual space, the process of exploration itself consists of the establishment of correlations between concepts by means of beliefs and heuristics, the self-linked ones among the latter having a special role in making possible the inferential journey along alternative routes whenever the shared rules of inference become inadequate. -/- Representing the conceptual space in the form of a complex network, the overall process can be likened to one of self-organised criticality commonly observed in the dynamical evolution of complex systems. An instance of self-organised criticality is found in the avalanche set up in a slowly growing sand-pile. (shrink)

According to one of the rivals, “poets do not create from knowledge but on the basis of certain natural talents and guided by divine inspiration, just like seers and the singers of oracles.”1 There is “a form of possession and madness, caused by the muses, that seizes a tender and untouched soul and inspires and stimulates it so that it educates by praising the deeds of ancestors in songs and in every other mode of poetry. Whoever knocks on the door (...) of poetry without the madness of the muses trusting that technique alone will make him a whole poet does not reach his aim; he and his poetry of reason disappear before the poetry of the madman.”2 Even knowledge cannot arise in a purely rational way. In his seventh letter Plato explains how “from a long and dedicated pursuit of the subject and from close companionship, [understanding] suddenly, like fire being kindled by a leaping spark, is born in the soul and straightaway finds nourishment in itself.”3 Thus understanding or building a work of art contains an element that goes beyond skill, technical knowledge, and talent. A new force takes hold of the soul and directs it, toward theoretical insight in one case, toward artistic achievement in the other.The view adumbrated in these quotations is very popular today. Interestingly enough it seems to receive support form the most rigorous and most advanced parts of the sciences. This rigor, it is pointed out, is but a transitory stage in a process which has much in common with what Plato envisaged. Of course, it is necessary to make some changes: Plato’s knowledge was stable while scientific knowledge progresses. Plato assumed that outside forces—madness, divine inspiration—impinge on the soul while the moderns let the appropriate ideas, images, emotions arise from the individual soul itself. But there seem to exist many reasons to recommend a Platonism that has been modified in this way.In the following essay I shall try to show that the reasons that have been given are invalid and that the view itself—the view that culture needs individual creativity—is not only absurd but also dangerous. To make my criticism as concrete as possible I shall concentrate on e specific group of arguments in its favor. And to make it as clear as possible I shall use arguments trying to show the role of individual creativity in the sciences. If these clear and detailed arguments fail, then the rhetoric emerging from more foggy areas will altogether lose its force. 1. Plato, Apology of Socrates 22c. Translations, unless otherwise noted, are my own2. Plato, Phaedrus 245a.3. Plato, Epistles 341c, d. Paul Feyerabend studied singing and opera production in Vienna, history of theater and theatrical production at the Institute for the Methodological Reform of the German Theater in Weimar, and physics, astronomy, and philosophy in Vienna. He has lectured on aesthetics, the history of science, and philosophy in Austria, Germany, England, New Zealand, and the United States. At the moment he holds a joint appointment at the University of California, Berkeley, and the Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich. His books include Against Method , Erkenntnis für freie Menschen , and Philosophical Papers . Forthcoming works are Farewell to Reason and Stereotypes of Reality. (shrink)

This article reviews claims for creativity in the economy and in education distinguishing two accounts: 'personal anarcho-aesthetics' and 'the design principle'. The first emerges in the psychological literature from sources in the Romantic Movement emphasizing the creative genius and the way in which creativity emerges from deep subconscious processes, involves the imagination, is anchored in the passions, cannot be directed and is beyond the rational control of the individual. This account has a close fit to business as a form (...) of 'brainstorming', 'mind-mapping' or 'strategic planning', and is closely associated with the figure of the risk-taking entrepreneur. By contrast, 'the design principle' is both relational and social and surfaces in related ideas of 'social capital', 'situated learning', and 'P2P' (peer-to-peer) accounts of commons-based peer production. It is seen to be a product of social and networked environments — rich semiotic and intelligent environments in which everything speaks. The article traces the genealogies of these two contrasting accounts of creativity and their significance for educational practice before showing how both notions are strongly connected in accounts of new forms of capitalism that require a rethinking of the notion of creativity and its place in schools and institutions of higher education. The article begins by providing a context in terms of a history of the knowledge economy and the historical tendency toward aesthetic or designer capitalism. (shrink)

The purpose of this scoping review is to investigate the value of creative arts therapies in healthy older adults. This article aims to shed light on current knowledge concerning the effectiveness of art therapies for the prevention of common age-related conditions using the definition of art therapy provided by the American Art Therapy Association, as well as Cohen’s conceptual framework for the psychological conceptualization of the relationship between the arts and health in later life. The objective is to carefully (...) capture subthreshold situations of distress, which are often not taken into account and primarily involve psychological aspects that are crucial in the multidimensional perspective of healthy aging. Twelve articles were selected and examined following an initial electronic search on 3 databases. A thematic analysis of the results identified four major themes: improving cognitive performance and proprioception; enhancing self-identity and meaningful life; reducing feelings of loneliness and depressive symptoms; and the importance of socialization. All these aspects constitute the basis for preventing psychological distress and enhancing mental well-being for healthy aging. (shrink)

Creative Management and Innovation Nowadays, entrepreneurship is determined how fast innovations or creativity can be incorporated into company activities. Creativity is mean constantly aspiring process of innovation and progress. Creativity and innovation management these days are important keys to any effort how to be success in business world. Forces of creativity in company or in entrepreneurship should be able to provide innovation and contribute to solve problems. The new idea are often accepted as the main activity of creative (...) management and the vision, strategy, goals or ideas are understands like equipment of creativity. Implementation of new ideas - innovation is the main activity of creative management. Visions, strategies, objectives and ideas are seen as tools of creativity.Because of differences in innovation process between EU and USA, innovation processes in EU are directly supported via framework programs. Currently FP7 is active, but new process for innovation called Horizon 2020 is under preparation. Last FP7 program is oriented for cooperation between science oriented organizations and SME, while future Horizon 2020 will be oriented for excellence science, competitive industries and better human society.In paper are presented real examples of companies/projects within the EU, including Slovakia. Three types of projects are compared. While project SAFER is supported by EU FP7, project Volvo Vision 2020 and Logomotion project are not supported and are commercial projects. Slovak project is supported by private investor. All projects are different, but have common line - to manage innovation process and implement it in real life. To manage innovation teams located around the world required creative concept in management. (shrink)

During the two last decades, speeded up by the development of the Internet, several types of commons have been opened up for intellectual resources. In this article their variety is being explored as to the kind of resources and the type of regulation involved. The open source software movement initiated the phenomenon, by creating a copyright-based commons of source code that can be labelled `dynamic': allowing both use and modification of resources. Additionally, such a commons may be (...) either protected from appropriation (by `copyleft' licensing), or unprotected. Around the year 2000, this approach was generalized by the Creative Commons initiative. In the process they added a `static' commons, in which only use of resources is allowed. This mould was applied to the sciences and the humanities in particular, and various Open Access initiatives unfolded. A final aspect of copyright-based commons is the distinction between active and passive commons: while the latter is only a site for obtaining resources, the former is also a site for production of new resources by communities of volunteers (`peer production'). Finally, several patent commons are discussed, which mainly aim at preventing patents blocking the further development of science. Throughout, attention is drawn to interrelationships between the various commons. (shrink)

In a certain sense, trust really cannot be created at all, because trust lies outside that which we can decide. But trust itself contains some creative element in the sense that trust allows our feeling for the new to gain a place in our experience of the world, including our experience of our own future and the future of others as promising. In that sense, there is an intrinsic element of generation or creation in trust. This circularity between trust (...) and creation points to a virtuous circle of dependency or interdependency between people that communicate. In order to describe this connection between maintaining an open mind towards the new and trust, trust is seen as threefold. It is an attitude of trust in oneself or self-confidence; it is trust in the people one knows and shares experiences with; and it is a more generalized trust understood as an affinity for new things – that is, confidence in meeting whatever the unknown brings on. Looking at both Hannah Arendt's and K.E. Løgstrup’s phenomenological analyses of trust, we see trust as the experience that one is not a sovereign being, but a being that is given over – or as Løgstrup puts it: surrendered - a self-surrender that entails a risk of becoming self-exposure if one’s trust is not accepted. The core of trust is that a person leaves something up to the other, and if that something falls on barren soil, then it withers and dies. But when we are seen and heard, not only as individuals, but as persons with opinions and actions, we achieve visibility, not only to others, we also become visible to ourselves, and experience the world as real in a manner we cannot access by any other means. Løgstrup even speaks of “a trust in life itself, in the ongoing renewal of life” when we are met by others in dialogue. The strength in Løgstrup’s and Arendt’s phenomenological analyses of trust lies in their ability to point out the mutual interdependency between self-surrender and trust, and between appearance and community. Appearance is the ability to be counted on as a person who can stand behind one's actions, and a person who can give promises to others. Community, in this context, both connects and divides us as people with different opinions and perspectives of the same thing. This makes the promise the ultimate deed a person can perform with words, namely, creating relationships with other people in mutuality and respect. One’s ability and, especially, one’s will to be bound to something and to allow oneself to be bound by the promise – these constitute the creativity of trust. Making a promise both creates and confirms the common space within which people count on each other and trust each other. (shrink)

This work seeks to take seriously the common philosophical claim that individual subjects are constituted by their social world. A detailed understanding this claim requires an analysis of what is involved in being a subject, of the nature of 'the social', and of the possible constitutive relationships between these. I begin with a critical history of the idea that subjects are norm-followers, and that social groups constitute individuals by demanding their conformity to norms. I trace this 'conformity theory' through the (...) thought of Rousseau, Hegel, Mead, and Althusser, to its manifestation in contemporary continental and Anglo-American philosophy. I criticize this theory for being unable to sufficiently accommodate creativity and social resistance. I go on to develop an account of subjects as not only norm-followers but also sense-makers, who have identities in virtue of their engagement in narrative dramas. Such subjects are socially constituted in at least two ways: through their 'dialogical' interactions with particular others , and through their position in a public culture which determines what counts as a meaningful possibility for action. This understanding of subjectivity allows me to develop a new account of the nature of social groups--such as groups based on gender, class and nationality--which provides an alternative to the conformity theory. Social groups contribute to individual identities not only by imposing norms, but also by providing sense-making resources, in the form of literary and artistic traditions as well as the actual lives and dramas of members. My account allows us to understand creativity and social resistance as enabled by subjects' membership in social groups, and it reveals how the internal diversity of a group can strengthen rather than compromise its role in individual identities. I end with a discussion of the political implications of my work. (shrink)

Scientific explanation is both instrumental and consummatory. When we experience scientific explanation in its consummation, we experience what I have deemed a creative moment of scientific apprehension, which is an important aspect of creativity that comes at the end of inquiry and contributes to the development of future inquiry. Because scientific explanation is commonly cleaved from aesthetic experience, this moment of creativity has been neglected in both analyses of scientific practice and analyses of aesthetic experience. By synthesizing John Dewey’s (...) conceptions of scientific explanation and aesthetic experience with Charles S. Peirce’s categories, this moment of scientific inquiry is revealed and understood as a fundamental part of our creative reasoning process. In order to argue that scientific explanation is both instrumental and consummatory, Dewey’s instrumental conception of scientific explanation is provided, which includes why science is so often considered as separated from aesthetic experience. A general overview of Dewey’s conception of aesthetic experience and the common division conceived between scientific experience and that of aesthetics is also provided. Reasons are then supplied to reconsider scientific experience as having an aesthetic dimension, especially with regard to scientific explanations and the creative moment of scientific apprehension, which is followed by a brief discussion concerning how recognition of this moment reveals an important aspect of creative reasoning that is to be understood as a part of our experience through what Peirce referred to as firstness and secondness. Analyzing the aesthetic experience of scientific explanations against the backdrop of Dewey’s conceptions of aesthetics and science, combined with Peirce’s categories, accounts for that creative moment of scientific apprehension in which a scientific explanation takes on the quality of kalos, or sense of general harmony, that inspires reverie and future inquiry. (shrink)

Are emotions, feelings, sentiments not the stuff of literature? There it is where they project their inner logic of aesthetic transmutation; there, beyond the instrument of language that they command. This collection explores how the lyrical virtualities of life-experience and the elegiac style in literature share a common core, lifting the human significance of life from abysmal vitality to esoteric heights, from abysmal grief to a serene reconciliation with destiny. The elegiac sequence in the play of emotions, feelings and sentiments (...) brings together life and literary creativity in its transformatory power. (shrink)

Creativity plus ethics anticipated a greater common good -- Gadget controllers -- Body shapers -- Emotion tuners -- Self definers -- Social connectors.

Les avancées rapides dans les technologies numériques ont considérablement changé et amélioré la façon dont les données, informations et outils peuvent être diffusés, gérés, utilisés et réutilisés dans la recherche, et ont créé de nouvelles opportunités pour accélérer le progrès dans la science et l’innovation. Ces développements sont principalement dus au large mouvement formel ou informel de la peer production et à la diffusion globale de l’information mobilisant la coopération de communautés distribuées œuvrant dans des environnements en réseaux. Les initiatives (...) comme celle de Science Commons s’appuient sur un modèle économique de la science évoluant dans un environnement numérique et plus précisément sur un socle de partage et d’échange entre communautés de pairs comme modalité de production. Beaucoup d’autres initiatives de ce type sont en cours . Nous avons choisi Science Commons, dont l’objectif, au-delà de la communication scientifique, vise à accélérer la traduction des données en découverte – en débloquant tous les verrous y compris juridiques qui empêchent que la société bénéficie plus rapidement des résultats scientifiques. La philosophie et les outils pratiques de Science Commons seront décrits comme constitutifs d’une approche résolument ouverte de la connaissance scientifique, dans la lignée de la déclaration de Berlin .Rapid advances in the digital technologies have profoundly changed and improved the way in which data, information and tools can be disseminated, managed, used and re-used in research, and have created new opportunities to speed up progress in science and innovation. These developments are mainly due to an emerging broader movement in support of formal and informal « peer production » and global dissemination of information drawing on the cooperation of distributed science and knowledge communities working in open networked environments. Initiatives like the Science Commons rely on an economic model where science evolves in a digital environment, and more specifically on sharing and exchanges between peer communities as a basis for production. Many other initiatives of this kind are under way . We have chosen the Science Commons, whose objective, over and above scientific communication, is to speed up the translation of data into discovery by removing all barriers, including legal obstacles, that prevent society from enjoying the benefits of scientific results as quickly as possible. The philosophy and practical tools of the Science Commons are described as making up a resolutely open approach to scientific knowledge, as recommended by the Berlin Declaration. (shrink)

In _A Common Faith,_ eminent American philosopher John Dewey calls for the “emancipation of the true religious quality” from the heritage of dogmatism and supernaturalism that he believes characterizes historical religions. He describes how the depth of religious experience and the creative role of faith in the resources of experience to generate meaning and value can be cultivated without making cognitive claims that compete with or contend with scientific ones. In a new introduction, Dewey scholar Thomas M. Alexander contextualizes (...) the text for students and scholars by providing an overview of Dewey and his philosophy, key concepts in _A Common Faith,_ and reactions to the text. (shrink)