Elliot Samuel Paul

Anil Gomes argues in The Practical Self that we must have faith that we are doxastic agents, sustained by commitment to an objective social world. I argue Gomes needs evidence he denies himself. Descartes, whom Gomes rejects, provides what’s missing: we gain defeasible evidence both for objectivity and agency by perceiving them clearly. I reconstruct overlooked Cartesian insights, including his Commonsense Realism. Finally, while Gomes invokes Lichtenberg’s “lightning” to question doxastic agency, I show that Lichtenberg equally addressed passivity in creative insight. The lesson: we need evidence for passivity no less than agency and objectivity—and Cartesian clarity provides it.

This chapter offers a brief characterization of creativity, followed by a review of some of the reasons people have been skeptical about the possibility of explaining creativity. It surveys some of the recent work on creativity that is naturalistic in the sense that it presumes creativity is natural, as opposed to magical, occult, or supernatural, and is therefore amenable to scientific inquiry. The chapter divides into two categories. The broader category is empirical philosophy, which draws on empirical research while addressing questions that have traditionally been regarded as philosophical. The second category is experimental philosophy, a special branch of empirical philosophy in which experiments are designed by philosophers with the explicit purpose of addressing philosophical questions. This categorization is admittedly somewhat artificial, but it is a familiar one in the prevailing division of intellectual labor, and it will be a useful organizational tool for the chapter.

This essay focuses on theories of creativity from six historical figures, while noting comparisons to several others. In Ancient Greece: (i) Plato advances the thesis that the poet is a passive vessel inspired by a muse. (ii) Aristotle replies with the antithesis that the poet creates through skilled activity. (iii) Longinus provides the synthesis. Plato is right that poets are passively inspired with original ideas – though the source is natural genius instead of some muse. But Aristotle is also right that the poet must actively employ skill. In early modern Europe: (iv) Margaret Cavendish argues that through creativity women can enjoy some freedom and happiness despite oppression. (v) Alexander Gerard and Immanuel Kant both inherit the Longinian synthesis. Gerard says we form original ideas through remote associations. (vi) Kant notices that although the genius must be passive in the origination of ideas, she must also be active in the very same process, because she merits acclaim for her originality. Kant designs his theory of genius to resolve this Paradox of Creative Agency.

Descartes holds that when you perceive something with perfect clarity, you are compelled to assent and cannot doubt. (This is a psychological claim.) Many commentators read him as endorsing Psychologism, according to which this compulsion is a matter of brute psychological force. I show that, in Descartes’s view, perfect clarity provides a reason for assent—indeed a perfect reason, which precludes any reason for doubt. (This is a normative claim.) Furthermore, advancing a view I call Rational Force, he holds that the normative claim explains the psychological one: since your will is naturally responsive to reasons, you are compelled to assent because you have a perfect reason to assent. This coheres with his view that will is essentially active, self-determined, and free. The force that clarity exerts on the will is not the brute push of an efficient cause, but the rational pull of a final cause.

Clear and distinct perception is the centrepiece of Descartes’s philosophy — it is the source of all certainty — but what does he mean by ‘clear’ and ‘distinct’? According to the prevailing approach, what it means for a perception to be clear is that its content has a certain objective property, like truth. I argue instead that clarity is at least partly a subjective, phenomenal quality whereby a content is presented as true to the perceiving subject. Clarity comes in degrees. Any weak degree of clarity, available to the senses, can be merely subjective, since what it presents as true may not actually be true. But complete clarity, available to intellectual perception, has an objective dimension, since what it presents as true is always some truth, some bit of reality. Further, I argue that the other perceptual qualities that Descartes identifies — obscurity, confusion, and distinctness — are all defined in terms of clarity. Of particular note is the fact that distinctness is not a positive feature to be added to clarity: a distinct perception is just a completely clear perception.

“There is only one difference between a madman and me. I am not mad.” —Salvador DaliThe romantic notion that mental illness and creativity are linked is so prominent in the public consciousness that it is rarely challenged. So before we continue, let’s nip this in the bud: Mental illness is neither necessary nor sufficient for creativity. The oft-cited studies by Kay Redfield Jamison (1989), Nancy Andreasen (1987), and Arnold Ludwig (1995) showing a link between mental illness and creativity have been criticized on the grounds that they involve small, highly specialized samples with weak and inconsistent methodologies and a strong dependence on subjective and anecdotal accounts (Schlesinger, 2009).To be sure, research does show that many eminent creators – particularly in the arts– had harsh early life experiences (such as social rejection, parental loss, or physical disability) and mental and emotional instability (Ludwig, 1995; Ludwig, 1998; Simonton, 1994). However, this does not mean that mental illness was a contributing factor to their eminence. There are many eminent people without mental illness or harsh early life experiences, and there is very little evidence suggesting that clinical, debilitating mental illness is conducive to productivity and innovation.What’s more, only a few of us ever reach eminence. Beghetto and Kaufman (2007) argue that we can display creativity in many different ways, from the creativity inherent in the learning process (“mini-c”), to everyday forms of creativity (“little-c”) to professional- level expertise in any creative endeavor (“Pro-c”), to eminent creativity (“Big-C”).Engagement in everyday forms of creativity (Richards, 2007) – expressions of originality and meaningfulness in daily life – certainly do not require suffering. Quite the contrary, people who engaged in everyday forms of creativity– such as making a collage, taking photographs, or publishing in a literary magazine– tend to be more open-minded, curious, persistent, positive, energetic, and intrinsically motivated by their activity (Ivcevic, 2007; Ivcevic & Mayer, 2009). Those scoring high in everyday creativity also tend to report feeling a greater sense of well-being and personal growth compared to their classmates who engage less in everyday creative behaviors. Creating can also be therapeutic for those who are already suffering. For instance, research shows that expressive writing increases immune system functioning (Kaufman & Sexton, 2006, Kaufman & Kaufman, 2009), and the emerging field of posttraumatic growth is showing how people can turn adversity into creative growth (Forgeard, 2013; Tedeschi & Calhoun, 2004).So is there any germ of truth to the link between creativity and mental illness? Thelatest research suggests there is something to the link, but the truth is much more nuanced—and we think interesting—than the more romanticized notions of the link.To see the matter clearly, we need to take a step back and consider what we mean by “creativity” and “mental illness” in the first place. While there are many forms of mental illness, this paper focuses on schizophrenia, a family of mental disorders characterized by a severe disconnect from reality, including a tendency to experience thoughts that are divergent, disorganized, and delusional. One aspect of creativity is obviously novelty or originality. Meanwhile, schizophrenic thoughts are more likely to be unique or new. So, by its very nature, schizophrenia disposes one toward satisfying one requirement for creative thought: namely originality.Originality is not sufficient for creativity, however, for as Immanuel Kant (2000) observed long ago, “there can be original nonsense,” as in the word salad of a schizophrenic patient. For a product to be creative it must not only be new but also useful, effective, or valuable in some way (Gaut, 2010; Sternberg & Lubart, 1999; Klausen, 2010). A highly original product might be deemed a symptom of mental illness or an expression of creativity depending on whether or not it is useful. Creativity is maximized when both novelty and utility are simultaneously maximized.These two features – novelty and utility – respectively depend on two cognitive functions: the generation of ideas popping up in conscious thought, and the selection of ideas to be explored, developed, and ultimately expressed or realized in the form of an observable product (cf. Finke et al., 1992). These two cognitive functions map on nicely to the Blind Variation and Selective Retention (BVSR) model of creativity (Campbell, 1960, Jung, 2014, Jung et al., 2013; Simonton, 2011).The more productively one generates ideas (regardless of the extent to which the utilities are initially known), the more likely some of them will be new. The more effectively one selects and develops particular ideas, the more likely some of them will result in something useful. Being creative is similar to mental illness in that it involves a heightened capacity and inclination to produce a large quantity of ideas and associations. What distinguishes the creative person is that she is better able to manage the flood of ideas, selecting the useful ones and developing them effectively while discarding the ones that just too disconnected to reality. This chimes with the oft-quoted remark of scientist, peace activist, and two-time Nobel laureate Linus Pauling: “The way to get good ideas is to get lots of ideas and throw the bad ones away.”Indeed, recent research suggests a link between milder forms of schizophrenia and creativity. In a recent report based on a 40-year study of roughly 1.2 million Swedish people, Simon Kyaga et al. (2013) found that those in scientific and artistic occupations were not more likely to suffer from psychiatric disorders, with the exception of bipolar disorders. So full-blown mental illness did not increase the probability of entering a creative profession (even the exception, bipolar disorder, showed only a small effect of 8%).What was striking, however, was that the siblings of patients with autism and the first-degree relatives of patients with schizophrenia were significantly overrepresented in creative professions. Could it be that the relatives inherited a watered-down version of the mental illness conducive to creativity while avoiding the aspects that are debilitating?Research supports the notion that psychologically healthy biological relatives of people with schizophrenia have unusually creative jobs and hobbies and tend to show higher levels of schizotypal personality traits compared to the general population (Kinney et al. 2001). Schizotypy consists of a constellation of personality traits that are evident to some degree in everyone.Schizotypal traits can be broken down into two types. “Positive” schizotypy includes unusual perceptual experiences, thin mental boundaries between self and other, impulsive nonconformity, and magical beliefs. “Negative” schizotypal traits include cognitive disorganization and physical and social anhedonia (difficulty experiencing pleasure from social interactions and activities that are enjoyable for most people). Daniel Nettle (2006) found that people with schizotypy typically resemble schizophrenia patients much more along the positive schizotypal dimensions (such as unusual experiences) compared to the negative schizotypal dimensions (such as lack of affect and volition).This has important implications for creativity. Mark Batey and Adrian Furnham (2008) found that the unusual experiences and impulsive nonconformity dimensions of schizotypy, but not the cognitive disorganization dimension, were significantly related to self-ratings of creativity, a creative personality (measured by a checklist of adjectives such as “confident,” “individualistic,” “insightful,” “wide interests,” “original,” “reflective,” “resourceful,” “unconventional,” and “sexy”), and everyday creative achievement among thirty-four activities (“written a short story,” “produced your own website,” “composed a piece of music,” and so forth).Recent neuroscience findings further support the link between schizotypy and creative cognition. Hikaru Takeuchi and colleagues (2004) investigated the functional brain characteristics of participants while they engaged in a difficult working memory task. Importantly, none of their subjects had a history of neurological or psychiatric illness, and all had intact working memory abilities. Participants were asked to display their creativity in a number of ways: generating unique ways of using typical objects, imagining desirable functions in ordinary objects and imagining the consequences of “unimaginable things” happening.The researchers found that the more creative the participant, the more they had difficulty suppressing the precuneus while engaging in an effortful working memory task. The precuneus is the area of the Default Network (Buckner et al., 2008; Andrews-Hanna, Smallwood, & Spreng, 2014) that typically displays the highest levels of activation during rest (when a person is not focusing on an external task). The precuneus has been linked to self-consciousness, self-related mental representations, and the retrieval of personal memories (Cavanna & Trimble, 2006). How is this conducive to creativity? According to the researchers, “Such an inability to suppress seemingly unnecessary cognitive activity may actually help creative subjects in associating two ideas represented in different networks.” Whitfield-Gabrieli et al., 2009 found that a similar inability to deactivate the precuneus among schizophrenic individuals and their relatives. Which raises the intriguing question: what happens if we directly compare the brains of creative people against the brains of people with schizotypy? A recent study by Fink et al., 2014 sheds some light on this question. Consistent with earlier research, they found an association between the ability to come up with original ideas and the inability to suppress activation of the precuneus during creative thinking. As the researchers note, these findings are consistent with the idea that more creative people include more events/stimuli in their mental processes than less creative people. But crucially, they found that those scoring high in schizotypy showed a similar pattern of brain activations during creative thinking as the highly creative participants. This supports the idea that overlapping mental processes are implicated in both creativity and psychosis proneness.Therefore, it seems that the key to creative cognition is opening up the flood gates and letting in as much information as possible. Because you never know: sometimes the most bizarre associations can turn into the most productively creative ideas. This idea is consistent with recent research on latent inhibition (Kaufman, 2009). Latent inhibition is a filtering mechanism that we share with other animals and it is tied to the neurotransmitter dopamine (Lubow & Weiner, 2010). A reduced latent inhibition allows us to treat something as novel, no matter how many times we’ve seen it before and tagged it as irrelevant. Prior research shows a link between reduced latent inhibition and schizophrenia. But more recent research also shows a link to creativity. Carson, Peterson, & Higgins (2003) found that the most eminent creative achievers among a sample of Harvard undergrads were seven times more likely to have reduced latent inhibition. As Carson (2011) points out in her “Shared Vulnerability Model,” mental processes such as reduced latent inhibition, preference for novelty, and hyperconnectivity can “enlarge the range and depth of stimuli available in conscious awareness to be manipulated and combined to form novel and original ideas.” Extreme levels of these factors make one vulnerable to severely disordered thinking. But they can be mitigated and challenged in productively if one has protective factors, such as enhanced fluid reasoning, working memory, cognitive inhibition, and cognitive flexibility (Carson, 2011; Kuszewski, 2009).Another protective factor may lie within the openness to experience domain, a broad personality domain reflecting the tendency toward cognitive exploration (DeYoung, in press). Peterson & Carson (2000) and Peterson, Smith, & Carson (2002) found that students with reduced latent inhibition scored higher in openness to experience. But while openness to experience is consistently associated with creativity (see Kaufman, 2013), this personality domain can also be meaningfully separated into distinct (but correlated) subtraits of Openness to Experience and Intellect (DeYoung, in press; DeYoung, Quilty, & Peterson, 2007). Openness to Experience reflects cognitive engagement with sensory and perceptual information, whereas Intellect reflects cognitive engagement with abstract and semantic information, primarily through reasoning. While Intellect is associated with IQ, executive functioning, and intellectual engagement, Openness is associated with fantasy-proneness, schizotypy, absorption, delusional ideation, and the tendency to make connections and see patterns that don’t actually exist (DeYoung, Grazioplene, & Peterson, 2012; Kaufman, 2013; Menon et al., 2013; Chmielewski et al., 2014). Indeed, Intellect is negatively associated with positive schizotypy and delusional ideation (Menon, Quilty, et al., 2012).Therefore, the combination of Openness and Intellect may be crucial to maintaining high levels of creative production (DeYoung, Grazioplene, & Peterson, 2012). The proper balance most likely differs by domain. There is emerging evidence across diverse samples, ages, and occupations that Openness is associated with creative achievement in the arts, whereas Intellect is associated with creative achievement in the sciences (Kaufman, 2013; Kaufman et al., under revision). This is consistent with research suggesting that schizotypy is associated with verbal and artistic creativity (Beaussart, Kaufman, & Kaufman, 2012; Del Guidice et al., 2010) whereas the autism spectrum is associated with technical-scientific interests and careers (Baron-Cohen, Wheelwright, Skinner, Martin, & Clubley, 2001; Crespi & Badcock, 2008). Nevertheless, recent research suggests that creative cognition draws on both the executive functioning that is tied to Intellect and the associative divergence that is associated with Openness (Beaty et al., 2014; Benedek et al., 2014; Jung, 2014; Nusbaum, & Silvia, 2011). Which brings us to the real link between creativity and mental illness. The latest research suggests that mental illness (particularly schizophrenia spectrum disorders) is most conductive to creativity indirectly, by opening the mind and increasing the probability that ideas will be original. Whether the idea is creative, however, also depends on the protective intellectual factors (and autistic-like traits) necessary to steer the chaotic storm.

This chapter offers a brief characterization of creativity, followed by a review of some of the reasons people have been skeptical about the possibility of explaining creativity. It surveys some of the recent work on creativity that is naturalistic in the sense that it presumes creativity is natural, as opposed to magical, occult, or supernatural, and is therefore amenable to scientific inquiry. The chapter divides into two categories. The broader category is empirical philosophy, which draws on empirical research while addressing questions that have traditionally been regarded as philosophical. The second category is experimental philosophy, a special branch of empirical philosophy in which experiments are designed by philosophers with the explicit purpose of addressing philosophical questions. This categorization is admittedly somewhat artificial, but it is a familiar one in the prevailing division of intellectual labor, and it will be a useful organizational tool for the chapter.

This paper explicates Descartes’ theory of intuition (intuitus). Departing from certain commentators, I argue that intuition, for Descartes, is a form of clear and distinct intellectual perception. Because it is clear and distinct, it is indubitable, infallible, and provides a grade of certain knowledge he calls ‘cognitio’. I pay special attention to why he treats intuition as a form of perception, and what he means when he says it is ‘clear and distinct’. Finally, I situate his view in relation to those of his Scholastic predecessors on one hand and current theories on the other. His view anticipates the contemporary ‘perceptual model of intuition’, though it is much bolder with its promise of certainty.

This is the opening chapter to The Philosophy of Creativity: New Essays. It argues that since creativity is such a significant aspect of the human experience, and since it raises a wealth of philosophical questions, it deserves much more attention than it currently receives in philosophy. It also argues for the fruitfulness of interdisciplinary exchange, integrating philosophical insights with research in experimental psychology. Providing an overview of the field and of the subsequent essays in the volume, this chapter surveys issues such as the definition of creativity, the role of consciousness in the creative process, the role of the audience in the creation of art, the emergence of creativity through childhood pretense, whether great works of literature give us insight into human nature, whether a computer program can really be creative, whether creativity is a virtue, the difference between creativity in science and art, and whether creativity can be taught—both in general and within philosophy itself.

Creativity pervades human life. It is the mark of individuality, the vehicle of self-expression, and the engine of progress in every human endeavor. It also raises a wealth of neglected and yet evocative philosophical questions: What is the role of consciousness in the creative process? How does the audience for a work for art influence its creation? How can creativity emerge through childhood pretending? Do great works of literature give us insight into human nature? Can a computer program really be creative? How do we define creativity in the first place? Is it a virtue? What is the difference between creativity in science and art? Can creativity be taught? The new essays that comprise The Philosophy of Creativity take up these and other key questions and, in doing so, illustrate the value of interdisciplinary exchange. Written by leading philosophers and psychologists involved in studying creativity, the essays integrate philosophical insights with empirical research. CONTENTS I. Introduction Introducing The Philosophy of Creativity Elliot Samuel Paul and Scott Barry Kaufman II. The Concept of Creativity 1. An Experiential Account of Creativity Bence Nanay III. Aesthetics & Philosophy of Art 2. Creativity and Insight Gregory Currie 3. The Creative Audience: Some Ways in which Readers, Viewers and/or Listeners Use their Imaginations to Engage Fictional Artworks Noël Carroll 4. The Products of Musical Creativity Christopher Peacocke IV. Ethics & Value Theory 5. Performing Oneself Owen Flanagan 6. Creativity as a Virtue of Character Matthew Kieran V. Philosophy of Mind & Cognitive Science 7. Creativity and Not So Dumb Luck Simon Blackburn 8. The Role of Imagination in Creativity Dustin Stokes 9. Creativity, Consciousness, and Free Will: Evidence from Psychology Experiments Roy F. Baumeister, Brandon J. Schmeichel, and C. Nathan DeWall 10. The Origins of Creativity Elizabeth Picciuto and Peter Carruthers 11. Creativity and Artificial Intelligence: a Contradiction in Terms? Margaret Boden VI. Philosophy of Science 12. Hierarchies of Creative Domains: Disciplinary Constraints on Blind-Variation and Selective-Retention Dean Keith Simonton VII. Philosophy of Education (& Education of Philosophy) 13. Educating for Creativity Berys Gaut 14. Philosophical Heuristics Alan Hájek

Three kinds of things may be creative: persons, processes, and products. The standard definition of creativity, used nearly by consensus in psychological research, focuses specifically on products and says that a product is creative if and only if it is new and valuable. We argue that at least one further condition is necessary for a product to be creative: it must have been produced by the right kind of process. We argue furthermore that this point has an interesting epistemological implication: when you judge a product to be creative--attributing creativity--you are not just judging it to be new and valuable. Even if you did not witness how it was produced, you are also making a judgement about how it was produced.

We offer a brief characterization of creativity, followed by a review of some of the reasons people have been skeptical about the possibility of explaining creativity. We then survey some of the recent work on creativity that is naturalistic in the sense that it presumes creativity is natural (as opposed to magical, occult, or supernatural) and is therefore amenable to scientific inquiry. This work is divided into two categories. The broader category is empirical philosophy, which draws on empirical research while addressing questions that have traditionally been regarded as philosophical. The second category is experimental philosophy, a special branch of empirical philosophy in which experiments are designed (by philosophers) with the explicit purpose of addressing philosophical questions. All of this highlights the relative theoretical neglect of creativity, while at the same time suggesting ample opportunity for experimentally minded philosophers to break new ground.

Descartes is widely portrayed as the arch proponent of “the epistemological transparency of thought” (or simply, “Transparency”). The most promising version of this view—Transparency-through-Introspection—says that introspecting (i.e., inwardly attending to) a thought guarantees certain knowledge of that thought. But Descartes rejects this view and provides numerous counterexamples to it. I argue that, instead, Descartes’s theory of self-knowledge is just an application of his general theory of knowledge. According to his general theory, certain knowledge is acquired only through clear and distinct intellection. Thus, in his view, certain knowledge of one’s thoughts is acquired only through clear and distinct intellection of one’s thoughts. Introspection is a form of intellection and it can be clear and distinct. Ordinarily, however, introspection isn’t clear and distinct but is instead confused with dubitable perceptions of bodies. To make introspection clear and distinct, we need to “sharply separate” it from all perceptions of bodies by doubting all perceptions of bodies. Without such radical doubt, introspection remains confused and we lack certain knowledge not just of the specific features of our thoughts, but even of the minimal claim that a thought exists. Far from being the high priest of Transparency, Descartes is radically opposed to it.