Baumeister, Blackburn, Boden, Carroll, Carruthers, Currie, DeWall, Flanagan, Gaut, Hájek, Kieran, Nanay, Peacocke, Picciuto, Simonton, Schmeichel and Stokes.

What do they have in common?

They have all contributed to the anthology The Philosophy of Creativity edited by Elliot Samuel Paul and Scott Barry Kaufman. And all are worth mentioning. The contributions in this anthology are not all original. Yet all succeed in explaining or discussing interest aspects of creativity, e.g. in relation to imagination, virtue, AI, education, motivation, etc.

           Creativity is hard work. One should, therefore, be very skeptical about the romantic idea about the mad artist genius that sits in his or her cold attic flat slurping cheap red wine while pouring out original visions the rest of us can hardly grasp.

An idea is original if it is not derived from someone else’s idea, Nanay writes. Creativity, therefore, is neither necessary nor sufficient for originality. For a similar reason, Stokes calls for more research regarding the role of imagination in creativity to identify possible cognitive differences between Picasso and the everyman and woman.

Thus, what is creativity? In the introduction the editors sets the scene. They — with good intentions — guide the reader through the various papers, perhaps a little too much. At least, I would prefer to test their reading with mine after I have read the papers. An afterword would have been more suitable. The subject, I believe, requires fresh eyes. Also, an afterword could address some of questions that this anthology raise, but doesn’t answer, e.g. in relation to cognitive science.

Creativity refers to three kinds of things: a person, a process and a product. However, in order to be classified as creative (regardless which of the three kinds of creativity we are dealing with) it must be new and of value, i.e. be functional or useful. Thus, it becomes obvious that the person may be a creator, i.e. an artist; the process may be creative, e.g. Warhol’s the Factory or a modern art studio, just as the product may express creativity. All of the contributions deal with this triad. Either alone or, rather, showing how they are interrelated.

Ronald Barthes once claimed that the author is death because the interpretation, the sense making, is all up to the reader. The late David Foster Wallace responded saying: Someone did it, i.e. someone did write the novel. However, the point that Carroll emphasizes is not either-or. Instead, Carroll stresses how the reader or the audience construct “story-worlds”, different point of views, etc. that contributes to the work by making it more artistic.

Unfortunately, this process is often hindered when the artist or the writer are too keen on interpreting his or her work. This may tell us that creativity is not a thing in itself, but something that happens. No one can own creativity: a person, a process or a product can be creative depending on the context. This might explain, as Nanay does, why the experience of creativity can emerge from interacting with something or someone creative, e.g. if someone comes up with a creative solution to a problem that I have struggled with, then I am not creative, but I have experienced it.

          Currie points out that “creative people are unusual simply be being highly creative, but they are often unusual in other ways.” He advises people to be cautious about being to idealistic about how a creative mind work. “Not all authors, even great ones, are mad … and some are no more socially incompetent that the rest of us.” Instead, he puts more emphasis on the literary institutions that — according to both Gaut and Hájek — are not that different that other institutions when it come their respective ideas about creativity, e.g. creative writing course and mathematic methodology correspond.

The person, process and product affect one another. A tentative conclusion, based on the papers, is that the process or the activity is of most importance. Unfortunately, there is still a lot of hype regarding the great person theory when it comes to artist. Here the romantic idea about the artist can cause the exact opposite of being creative, i.e. being predictable.

Kieran illustrates how creativity involves intrinsic motivation. So, people who wish to appear original or creative seldom are, because they are extrinsic motivated. In addition, Flanagan describes various forms of performing oneself, e.g. being ironic or a strong poetic person, which strengthens the before mentioned arguments. For example, “the strong poetic person” seems to live by the imperative: “do it a new way, mix it up, improvise,” which itself becomes conventional. It becomes a norm that leads to predictable behavior. The result is boring and absurd. If there is no other reason for one’s performance than trying to be different, then it sounds more like a marketing plan than Mozart. I guess this is what happened with Apple’s products. First they were seen as creative, i.e. used by creative people working in a creative environment (i.e. process), now Apple is just another fad. Most people need more than a MacBook to become creative. At least it is no guarantee.

Kieran writes, that a creative person is “someone who has acquired a certain degree of mastery and knows what she is doing.” Motivated by the values internal to the practice, i.e. being true to one’s “ingrained disposition of character.”

Boden challenges this idea of seeing creativity as virtue when she questions whether a computer could ever “really be creative.” It depends, she says, on how we understand autonomy, intentionality and consciousness. She leaves the questions open. It may be possible. After all, there might be hope for Apple.

Of course, the question whether a computer has a conscious is debatable, however, if we follow Baumeister, Schmeichel and Dewall then just by setting the goal of being creative will most likely lead to more creativity. Their experiments showed how “creativity suffered when the conscious mind was preoccupied.”

Then, another possible conclusion is that what matters, perhaps, is not creativity but originality or one’s imagination. Otherwise we end up being creative in the same normative way that Flanagan questioned.

The quest for creativity is not over.

The editors have done a very good job. It is a good place to start. The anthology is a useful resource to get both familiar with creativity, e.g. for students and researcher, but also to be inspired to raise new questions about this multifaceted concept. Many authors thank the editors, so do I.

The anthology succeeds in puncturing the myth about creativity as some sort of divine intervention. Instead, creativity is hard conscious work. This may be the reason why the products of most writers, scientists and artists are much more interesting that their biographies. What have the writer Philip Roth been doing for the last 50 years? The most novel — although, perhaps invaluable — thing about Roth’s life is that he has decided not to write more books. That’s original: A writer who refuses to write.

The anthology ends with Hájek’s energized request: “Go forth and be creative!” A request that makes sense, now, since the reader will have a fairly strong idea about what creativity is.

 

 

Finn Janning, Ph.D. in philosophy, is a writer