Andrea Rivadulla-Duró
Affiliation: Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
Category: Philosophy
Keywords: creativity, inferential transitions, non-inferential transitions, associations
Date: Wednesday 3rd of September
Time: 16:00
Location: Room 232 (232)
View the full session: Creativity
Creative Transitions
Most of the time, thought follows well-worn routes: logical inferences unfold, memories are triggered, and perceptual simulations take shape. But occasionally an unusual leap occurs—less constrained by rules and past experience, more like opening a new space. Intuitively, these leaps form a core part of creative thought. But what distinguishes a creative transition from other kinds of transitions in thought? More specifically, this paper addresses the following question: given a specific input or initial state, what features of the transition leading to an output render it creative?
Process-based accounts of creativity agree that creative thought is inherently non-formulaic—it is not governed by rigid, rule-bound procedures (Gaut, 2003; Brainard, 2024). Consequently, a logical inference, which strictly follows from its premises to its conclusion, cannot be creative because it leaves no room for spontaneity. Yet in explaining other aspects of creative transitions—such as the cognitive sources of novelty—process-based accounts emphasize more controversial features such as stochasticity (Carruthers, 2020) or associative processes (Stokes, 2007)—thereby downplaying the roles of rationality and agency in creative transitions. In response, drawing on accounts of inferential and associative transitions (Quilty-Dunn & Mandelbaum, 2018; Quilty-Dunn & Mandelbaum, 2019; Shea, 2024), I propose a novel framework that integrates rationality and agency into our understanding of creative transitions.
My aim in this paper is twofold. First, I critically assess two perspectives that minimize the roles of rationality and agency in creative transitions: (1) those that attribute creativity primarily to associative processes (Mednick, 1962; Stokes, 2007; Beaty & Kennett, 2023) and (2) those that emphasize stochastic mechanisms (Simonton, 2003, 2004; Carruthers, 2020). Second, I develop an empirically informed account of the cognitive operations underlying creative transitions and delimit the conditions under which these transitions can rightfully be considered creative.
Regarding the first aim, recent work in the context of creative thought has introduced the notion of “goal-directed” association, “a thought process in which a person associates ideas, words, or memories with a specific purpose or goal in mind” (Beaty & Kennett, 2023, p. 672). This framework suggests that associative processes within a semantic network enable concepts to be strategically combined in creative tasks. However, it remains unclear how associations become responsive to task demands. If associations are inherently automatic and insensitive to reasons, as traditionally understood, then their potential to adapt to task constraints requires further explanation. A purely associative account, I argue, fails to explain how creative outputs are both original and pertinent.
A second group of contemporary theories of creativity emphasizes stochastic processes as the primary source of cognitive novelty, attributing creative outputs to random fluctuations in neural activity (Simonton, 2004; Carruthers, 2020). According to these views, in creative output generation, “there is no sequence of thought (whether conscious or unconscious) that explains the outcome in ways that are either inductively or deductively valid, nor involves sound inferences to the best explanation” (Carruthers, 2020, p. 4457). I argue against this view on several grounds. First, it collapses creativity into mere luck, stripping it of its status as an achievement. Second, if creativity were primarily stochastic, it would be difficult to explain why some people are reliably more creative than others.
My second and main aim is to argue that rationality and agency play a more substantial role in creative transitions than current accounts acknowledge. By examining verbal creativity in artistic domains, I argue that cognitive strategies—such as those involved in metaphor generation (Li et al., 2021)—require a level of sophistication and responsiveness to task-specific demands that call for reasoning. Moreover, verbal creativity often involves engaging with an audience’s expectations, indicating that theory of mind contributes to some creative transitions—an aspect that purely associative and stochastic accounts struggle to explain.
Finally, I propose three ways in which agency can figure in creative transitions. First, diachronic agency involves preparatory actions, such as deliberate exposure to relevant artworks, that will condition the availability of specific pieces of information during output generation. Second, agency as strategic search involves the selection of search strategies that lead to outputs that fall within task constraints. Third, receptive agency is the disposition to engage in evaluations of options within the context of an ongoing task. Together, these forms of agency show how verbal creativity is not, on most occasions, merely associative or stochastic, but a structured, goal-sensitive process requiring strategic search, evaluation, and reasoning.
References
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Brainard, L. (2024). What is creativity? The Philosophical Quarterly. https://doi.org/10.1093/pq/pqae075
Carruthers, P. (2020). Mechanisms for constrained stochasticity. Synthese, 197(10), 4455-4473. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-018-01929-1
Gaut, B. (2003). Creativity and imagination. In B. Gaut & P. Livingston (Eds.), The creation of art: New essays in philosophical aesthetics (pp. 148–173). Cambridge University Press.
Li, Y., Kenett, Y. N., Hu, W., & Beaty, R. E. (2021). Flexible semantic network structure supports the production of creative metaphor. Creativity Research Journal, 33(3), 209-223. https://doi.org/10.1080/10400419.2021.1930910
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Quilty-Dunn, J., & Mandelbaum, E. (2018). Inferential transitions. Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 96(3), 532-547. https://doi.org/10.1080/00048402.2017.1400801
Quilty-Dunn, J., & Mandelbaum, E. (2019). Non-inferential transitions: Imagery and association. In U. Kriegel (Ed.), Inference and consciousness (pp. 151-171). Routledge.
Shea, N. (2024). Concepts at the Interface. Oxford University Press.
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Simonton, D. K. (2004). Creativity as a constrained stochastic process. In R. J. Sternberg, E. L. Grigorenko, & J. L. Singer (Eds.), Creativity: From potential to realization (pp. 83–101). American Psychological Association. https://doi.org/10.1037/10692-006
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