Dear Philosophers,
I hope you can join us this Sunday at The Plough Pub, Lordship Lane, from 7.30pm, to discuss Creativity.
The dictionary definition of Creativity is ‘the use of the imagination or original ideas’. Our question will be, where does this originality come from? The Ancient Greeks, and the Romantic poets such as Coleridge, were believers that original thought was a form of divine madness or lunacy. The Romantics were also heavily preoccupied with the difference between Imagination, which seems to have an internal logic, and Fancy, or random trains of thought.
Part of the reason for this intepretation comes from theories of mind which understand the mind as a processor of information received from the outside world. Imagination or Creativity are not processes like this, so the argument goes. Rather they come from somewhere else. But where? God? The Soul? The Will?
Another reason for this interpretation is linked to what it feels like to have an original thought. We are all familiar with the Eureka moment that seems to come from nowhere. This aspect of original thought has lent itself to divine or ‘outside the laws of physics’ interpretations of the phenomenon.
In more recent times, psychologists have studied creativity as a form of unconscious computation. In this model, our unconscious mind is furiousy reasoning through something, only to appear in the conscious mind once the solution has been found. The role of sleep here is especially interesting.
Meanwhile, there have also been some fascinating uses of evolutionary theory to explain how original thought is possible. Ideas, like genes, mutate from time to time. Therefore, instead of a linear progression of ideas, that would not allow for original solutions, random thoughts come to us that can trigger originality.
Remember we meet every 3rd Sunday of the month at the same place and the same time. We’d love to see you there. If you’d like to join the mailing list, please email pipseastdulwich@gmail.com
