# What Is Creativity?  ## Metadata - Author: [[Lucy Brainard]] - Full Title: What Is Creativity? - Category: #articles - Summary: insert summary - My notes: - Document Tags: [[ai aesthetics paper]] [[generating philosophy paper]] - Summary: Creativity is a valuable process that involves successful exploration and subjective novelty. It is essential for both artists and scientists, and can be understood as a way of discovering new ideas. The paper argues that creativity has a characteristic epistemic value, meaning it contributes to our knowledge and understanding. - URL: https://academic.oup.com/pq/advance-article/doi/10.1093/pq/pqae075/7709005?login=true ## LLM Chats ## NotebookLM ## LLM Audio ## Highlights > What is creativity? > [Lindsay Brainard](javascript:;) ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jxf3pd142dd9d2n9q2q59wsh)) > As examples of worthless products of creativity, Hills and Bird identify scientific theorizing that misses the mark drastically. These are theories that are not even approximately true. Hills and Bird identify numerous examples of such theories and argue that because they are so far from the truth, they yield no knowledge or understanding, and therefore lack value, despite being creative (2019: 702). Indeed, they argue, this may be true of much (perhaps most) creative theorizing. > One of Hills and Bird's examples of a putatively worthless scientific idea is a proposed invention by Nikola Tesla called the thought camera (2018: 98; 2019: 703). Here's what Tesla said in a 1933 interview about this idea: > > I became convinced that a definite image formed in thought must, by reflex action, produce a corresponding image on the retina, which might possibly be read by suitable apparatus. > > Now if it be true that a thought reflects an image on the retina, it is a mere question of illuminating the same properly and taking photographs and then using the ordinary methods which are available to project the image on a screen. > > If this can be done successfully, then the objects imagined by a person would be clearly reflected on the screen as they are formed, and in this way every thought of the individual could be read. Our minds would then, indeed, be like open books. (quoted in Bird 1933: 40) > It's easy to see why Hills and Bird have deemed this idea for a thought camera worthless. At first blush, it appears to have no value whatsoever. The idea is based on myriad false assumptions. This proposal didn't lead to any important new technology. Surely, Tesla's idea is creative, but it has no obvious value. > On the contrary, I think that Tesla's idea of a thought camera has *non-obvious* value, because Tesla has created a how-possibly explanation of mind reading for himself. As I argue elsewhere, when one is the recipient of a how-possibly explanation, one comes to understand how something is possible given one's background beliefs (Brainard 2020). Thus, how-possibly explanations yield understanding on the part of the recipient. Tesla's creative idea here involves his understanding that if his background beliefs were true, it would be possible to photograph thought. In the quoted passage above, we see Tesla recounting a number of conditional claims: If a thought reflects an image on the retina, then we should be able to record it by illuminating the eye carefully; if we can photograph it successfully, then we can project it and therefore read minds. What he's doing here is exploring a scenario that hasn't yet been ruled out by his background beliefs. We now know that the antecedents of these conditionals are false, but of course that doesn't mean the conditionals themselves are false. Tesla's creative theorizing reflects an understanding of what would be possible if the antecedents of these conditionals were true. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jxf5n4xzcn9ht7a38dwkh18b)) - Tags: [[philosophy]] [[generating philosophy paper]] - Note: creativity and understanding –also, see the reference to the author's other work. > Tesla's idea for a thought camera may not have been practically valuable, scientifically valuable, or morally valuable. However, because it led him to understanding, it had some (perhaps modest) epistemic value. It's plausible that the same is true of the other false creative theories that Hills and Bird identify as well. Perhaps, then, there is a kind of value that creativity always has: epistemic value.21 > Epistemic value is the kind of value that is distinctively possessed by achievements like knowledge and understanding. There is widespread agreement among epistemologists that this sort of value is conceptually distinct from the moral or practical value of these achievements. While there is disagreement about the details, such achievements are standardly taken to possess epistemic value even when they are morally bad or practically useless.22 ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jxf5ve499ver6cn7cxvwc7tg)) - Note: epistemic value > Consider a similar case. On the internet, one can find creative guides to making pipe bombs. Let's assume that the creativity that went into developing and circulating such guides is wholly morally bad. These guides, however, clearly have epistemic value. The authors came to understand something as they developed the techniques they share in the guides. Likewise, the creative serial killer, depraved though he may be, comes to understand something through the use of his creativity. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jxf60kg3cw23dtpfftd99dtj)) > Hills and Bird's arguments clearly show that if value is a necessary condition for creativity, the relevant kind of value cannot be moral value or all-things-considered value. So far, I've suggested that a promising candidate for the value that's essential to creativity is epistemic value. Before developing this view further, I'll examine an existing proposal for how value might be a necessary condition for creativity. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jxf62zvn0dmmfeptt0abvgn1)) - Note: I just thought, in a sense, exploration is fundamentally uncreative in a way. > Gaut (2018) argues that creativity is a disposition to produce novel things that are valuable *of their kind* rather than valuable simpliciter. Here, Gaut is drawing on Geach's (1956) famous distinction between attributive value and predicative value. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jxf64hmd64pgp5yras3a4kr7)) > Let's return to the proposal that creativity necessarily has epistemic value. Interestingly, Gaut himself endorses a principle that supports this proposal, though he doesn't connect the principle to epistemic value. He argues that the following is an *a priori* principle about creativity: > > The ignorance principle: If someone is creative in producing some item, she cannot know in advance of being creative precisely both the end at which she is aiming and the means to achieve it. (2018: 134) > I agree with Gaut's principle. One thing all instances of creativity have in common is that the agent learns something in the process. This is demonstrated in all the examples of creativity I've considered. If all instances of creativity involve learning, and learning is the attainment of something epistemically valuable (such as knowledge or understanding), then all instances of creativity involve the attainment of something epistemically valuable. This is the sense in which, I contend, creativity is necessarily valuable. Epistemic value is certainly not the only kind of value creativity can have, and it may not even be the most important one. However, it is the kind of value creativity necessarily has. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jxf6ex7f8acwp7jcftzhfbv4)) > Let's return to the proposal that creativity necessarily has epistemic value. Interestingly, Gaut himself endorses a principle that supports this proposal, though he doesn't connect the principle to epistemic value. He argues that the following is an *a priori* principle about creativity: > > The ignorance principle: If someone is creative in producing some item, she cannot know in advance of being creative precisely both the end at which she is aiming and the means to achieve it. (2018: 134) > I agree with Gaut's principle. One thing all instances of creativity have in common is that the agent learns something in the process. This is demonstrated in all the examples of creativity I've considered. If all instances of creativity involve learning, and learning is the attainment of something epistemically valuable (such as knowledge or understanding), then all instances of creativity involve the attainment of something epistemically valuable. This is the sense in which, I contend, creativity is necessarily valuable. Epistemic value is certainly not the only kind of value creativity can have, and it may not even be the most important one. However, it is the kind of value creativity necessarily has. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jxf6ezka2vy6p90vrev4212z)) > Let's return to the proposal that creativity necessarily has epistemic value. Interestingly, Gaut himself endorses a principle that supports this proposal, though he doesn't connect the principle to epistemic value. He argues that the following is an *a priori* principle about creativity: > > The ignorance principle: If someone is creative in producing some item, she cannot know in advance of being creative precisely both the end at which she is aiming and the means to achieve it. (2018: 134) > I agree with Gaut's principle. One thing all instances of creativity have in common is that the agent learns something in the process. This is demonstrated in all the examples of creativity I've considered. If all instances of creativity involve learning, and learning is the attainment of something epistemically valuable (such as knowledge or understanding), then all instances of creativity involve the attainment of something epistemically valuable. This is the sense in which, I contend, creativity is necessarily valuable. Epistemic value is certainly not the only kind of value creativity can have, and it may not even be the most important one. However, it is the kind of value creativity necessarily has. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jxf6f9r5xg0p0jz0br70nc9z)) > Let's return to the proposal that creativity necessarily has epistemic value. Interestingly, Gaut himself endorses a principle that supports this proposal, though he doesn't connect the principle to epistemic value. He argues that the following is an *a priori* principle about creativity: > > The ignorance principle: If someone is creative in producing some item, she cannot know in advance of being creative precisely both the end at which she is aiming and the means to achieve it. (2018: 134) > I agree with Gaut's principle. One thing all instances of creativity have in common is that the agent learns something in the process. This is demonstrated in all the examples of creativity I've considered. If all instances of creativity involve learning, and learning is the attainment of something epistemically valuable (such as knowledge or understanding), then all instances of creativity involve the attainment of something epistemically valuable. This is the sense in which, I contend, creativity is necessarily valuable. Epistemic value is certainly not the only kind of value creativity can have, and it may not even be the most important one. However, it is the kind of value creativity necessarily has. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jxf6fd57v46bgez4cx74eje4)) > Let's take stock of what we've said so far about creativity. (1) Creativity is, in the first instance, a property of processes. (2) Creativity must be deliberate, not accidental. (3) Creativity comes in degrees. (4) Creativity requires subjective novelty. Finally, I've suggested that (5) a necessary condition for creativity is epistemic value. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jxf6j8fwjs0pb51g1e8rhwp3)) - Note: five features of creativity > What is exploration? In its broadest sense, the term can refer to any attempt at charting new territory, literally or figuratively. However, the remarks quoted above seem to have a narrower sense of exploration in mind. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jxf76ak4h8kdmwp2hpwxq2jz))