Page 78 - Deep Learning

The Production of Novelty 61

Merely labeling the hypothesized processes analytical and creative is not
in and of itself explanatory. to say that what is creative about creative thinking
is that it employs creative processes is to prattle in a circle. The mechanisms
must be described in some detail and their properties related to their out-
comes in such a way that we understand why the processes we choose to call
analytical generate one type of outcome and the processes we choose to call
creative generate outcomes of another sort. Only then have we earned the right
to so label them.
empirical investigations support the notion that some problems engage
different cognitive processes from problems that are generally regarded as
requiring nothing but analytical thinking. One striking set of studies was con-
20
ducted by Janet Metcalfe and co-workers. They asked subjects to estimate
how close they were to the solution for diverse problems. They found that
people can accurately estimate how close they are to the solution to analyti-
cal problems but not to solutions of problems that require an act of creation.
a second source of empirical evidence is provided by neuroscience studies
by Mark Jung-Beeman and others that demonstrate that different parts of the
brain are engaged when a person is solving analytical problems as compared
to problems that require a creative response. 21
if we locate creativity in a set of to-be-specified cognitive processes, then
the attribute creative refers to a category, not to a quantitative dimension. The
category is genealogical. Just as a fruit is a lemon if and only if it grew on a
lemon tree, an idea is creative if and only if it was generated by, or with the
help of, the specified processes. a product is creative if its production engaged
those processes, otherwise not, irrespective of its distance or similarity to
prior products and irrespective of how much cognitive strain its production
required. individuals are creative when they execute the relevant processes,
noncreative otherwise. The factors that determine the probability that the rel-
evant processes will occur and hence the frequency of acts of creation vary
in strength from situation to situation, life story to life story, but there are no
degrees of creativity; a person either drew on the creative processes in the
course of performing a task or did not.
This view recognizes that creative acts abound in everyday life. after buy-
ing a mountain bike, i discovered that my jeans leg threatened to catch in the
complicated gear mechanism. Using an office binder clip to keep the fabric
on the outside side of the leg is a modest example of the many minor cre-
ative acts that people perform as they muddle through their day. in this case
i used a familiar object in a novel way, a key type of creative act. The work-
ing assumption that the same mental processes are operating in creative acts