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  #411  
Unread 08-27-2014, 01:20 PM
Matt Q Matt Q is offline
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Hi Michael,

Sorry to put you off your dinner, I just couldn’t bear to see you leave the discussion

It's true that you said freedom was unpredictable, and that you didn’t claim that the unpredictable is always freedom. You said:

It strikes me that creativity, as we understand the term in human affairs, involves and implies what we call freedom

I guess it just doesn't strike me that way. My point was along the lines that the newness of creativity may look as if it requires freedom (a non-deterministic system) to produce it, but actually I don’t think it does. Given two possible explanations, one metaphysical, one physical, it would seem to me that the non-metaphysical one is the most parsimonious.

Freedom, as a metaphysic concept, as complete unpredictability, seems to imply complete independence from the universe, which is an interesting idea. This in turn seems connected to your idea of “the new”. A completely new idea would be one that was not associated with – was independent of -- any existing ideas and events. I can see that if this is how you conceive of new ideas, you might see the need for a metaphysical concept of freedom to account for new ideas. But to be honest, I have difficulty getting my head around what such a new idea would look like. You gave three examples, I don’t feel very qualified to comment on any of them, but Cubism is the one I’m most familiar with. Here’s an extract from the Wikipedia entry on Cubism:

"During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Europeans were discovering African, Micronesian and Native American art. Artists such as Paul Gauguin, Henri Matisse, and Pablo Picasso were intrigued and inspired by the stark power and simplicity of styles of those foreign cultures. Around 1906, Picasso met Matisse through Gertrude Stein, at a time when both artists had recently acquired an interest in primitivism, Iberian sculpture, African art and African tribal masks."

Now it seems to me that Cubism fits perfectly with associative scenario I was suggesting; in fact it’s pretty close to a perfect illustration. Someone brings two existing sets of ideas into contact: European art and “primitive” arts of other cultures. They make a new connection. In fact, in its historical context, one might even argue that this connection wasn’t completely unpredictable. Now I’m certainly not claiming that there’s nothing new under the sun, but new things don't seem to appear out of the ether either.

So back to question of whether I need a metaphysical explanation to account for the generation of novelty. I genuinely don’t understand why one is necessary. It may be easier if we move out of the human sphere: evolution (natural selection) is a blind process of reproduction with error and selection. It has undeniably been very creative, coming up with new solutions to the problems posed by a wider variety of ecological niches. Now this may be a bad example, because some people don’t believe in evolution. So when I say: there’s clearly no need for a metaphysical explanation here, there may be disagreement. But if you’re generally happy with evolution as an explanation, do you need a metaphysical explanation to account for its undeniable creativity?

And for those not happy with Darwinian explanations of the natural world, I can argue it this way and from personal experience: a computer program can be creative in any standard definition of the word: a demonstrably deterministic process can generate new, innovative, surprising and previously unconsidered solutions to complex problems. No one would look for a metaphysical explanation there, I think. In a previous incarnation I did a doctorate in computer science and artificial intelligence. Like many other people in the lab I was at, I used algorithms derived from Darwinian evolution as a tool for complex design problems (I was using them to design neural network controllers for autonomous multi-robot systems; more info here, if you can't sleep some night). Just like natural evolution, artificial evolution is a process that proceeds blindly through random variation and selection, and just like natural evolution it can and does come up with novel, unexpected and sometimes quite bizarre solutions to highly complex problems. Note that when I say “random” variation, this randomness was generated by algorithms and was ultimately deterministic (but as good as random for the purpose at hand). It would be difficult to argue that a metaphysical explanation is necessary here.

I think human creativity can usefully be seen in terms of process that generates possible new solutions/ideas and evaluates those solutions. I think in most practical treatments of creativity, it is conceived of that way: insofar as one can be taught to be more creative, one is taught to methods to get the evaluating part (the “critic”) out the way for a bit (or at least to relax it) so as to generate more possible solutions/ideas, make new and unexpected associations. The majority of these will be of little value of course, and that’s where the evaluating part comes into its own. The manner in which new solutions are generated may (or may not) entail something like randomness, by virtue of being unpredictable to an observer, but, as I think we've agreed, unpredictability doesn’t require any metaphysical explanation.

I guess creativity just doesn’t strike me as something mysterious. Perhaps that’s because I have no difficulty conceiving of it algorithmically. It may be useful to distinguish between process and outcome here: the outcome may well be novel and unforeseen, but the process generating it can be a wholly mundane one and even a very simple one. Since I’m satisfied by a mundane explanation, I have no need to reach for a metaphysical one.

In retrospect, I see I was originally making two points.So the main one here is that is that a mundane process can give rise to unpredictable novelty, which seems to obviate the need for any metaphysical claim. At the same time I’m also stating my belief that, in humans, this mundane process generally involves associative thought (that's my understanding, I could be wrong). If I'm wrong about the latter claim, I don’t see that affecting the former argument.

And now I've just seen Alder's comment that you were responding to.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Alder Ellis View Post
If “creativity” has any meaning at all, it is in contradistinction to “mechanism.” If science can explain creativity on science’s terms, i.e., in terms of mechanism, there is no such thing as creativity.
As you might imagine, I'd have to say I disagree for the reasons I've already given.

If I had more time, I go back rewrite this more briefly and more coherently, but I hope that makes my position clearer nonetheless; I hope also that I’ve not completely misunderstood yours, nor given you indigestion.

All the best,

Matt

Last edited by Matt Q; 08-27-2014 at 02:09 PM.
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  #412  
Unread 08-27-2014, 01:20 PM
Janice D. Soderling's Avatar
Janice D. Soderling Janice D. Soderling is offline
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Michael, I have no quarrel with that article. It encapsulates pretty much the direction of my thinking. As I recall, 1994 and the years just before and after were when the academic world began to move away from compartmentalized research and enter cross-disciplinary fields to create new disciplines.

Everyone was excited about it back then, and I remember that I tried to write a play--I wrote it, but it wasn't all that brilliant--based on the uncertainty principle.

My thinking is not stuck in the age of Enlightenment--though there is much to be said for that period and its cleaning up of a lot of dogmatic assumptions and its demand for rational thinking.

But it is easy to swing back into an astrological thought pattern and let the supernatural rule. We seem to be in such a thought warp at present.

Another work I failed to complete was based on the interesting thought that while Kepler was working on his third law (Harmonices mundi, harmony of the spheres, about as scientific as one can get) his mother was languishing in prison charged with witchcraft (about as silly a charge as anyone can make) and he himself did the family horoscopes.

http://galileo.phys.virginia.edu/cla...es/kepler.html
Kepler's grandfather was Mayor of Weil, Kepler describes his grandmother as "restless, clever and lying, but devoted to religion; slim and of a fiery nature; vivacious, an inveterate troublemaker; jealous, extreme in her hatreds, violent, a bearer of grudges...and all her children have something of this". His father he describes as "...a man vicious, inflexible, quarrelsome and doomed to a bad end. Venus and Mars increase his malice. Saturn in VII made him study gunnery..." Kepler's mother he describes in the family horoscope as "small, thin, swarthy, gossiping and quarrelsome, of a bad disposition". His mother collected herbs and made potions which she believed had magical powers. She was raised by an aunt who was burned at the stake as a witch, and Kepler's mother narrowly escaped a similar fate herself (see ref 2, page 159: Kepler had to hire several lawyers to defend his seventy-year-old mother incarcerated on a charge of witchcraft, and "Another woman born in the same town as Kepler's mother, and accused of complicity with her, had already left one of her thumbs stuck in the rack".)

I can't help thinking of Ronald Reagan sitting in the White House as the most powerful leader in the world, with the Bomb decisions in his hands and his brain ailing, and relying on astrology for his day to day plans. That makes George Bush look like a statesman and an intellectual.
http://www.nytimes.com/1988/05/04/us...o-a-point.html

Give me rational thinking any day of the week.

Last edited by Janice D. Soderling; 08-27-2014 at 01:24 PM.
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  #413  
Unread 08-27-2014, 01:30 PM
Janice D. Soderling's Avatar
Janice D. Soderling Janice D. Soderling is offline
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I'm going to spare you a retort Janice and strip out the questions. No harm done.
Norm, we are debating, not fighting. Friends can differ in opinion, you know.
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  #414  
Unread 08-27-2014, 01:59 PM
Michael Cantor Michael Cantor is online now
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Allen - yeah, but that was in a different thread - Orwn's fiction hoot - so that by Bouckaert's Law of Penumbral Similarities it doesn't count.
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  #415  
Unread 08-27-2014, 02:24 PM
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Michael F Michael F is offline
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Matt,

I have learned enough from Socrates (Socrates was a man; I am a man; I, alas, am not Socrates) to know that there is very much that I don’t know. I find I increasingly like to be a lover, not a fighter. I tire quickly of even civil, well-mannered disputes likes this one, so this is where I must leave things, with sincere respect for you, and thanks for your civility.

When I posit the concept of freedom is metaphysical, that does not mean I claim that I know that it exists. I am using the term in the Kantian sense of first critique: it may, or may not, exist. Indeed: the point of the Kantian critique is that pure reason cannot decide the question. I hoped to make that point clear in my first post.

I do believe there is a discontinuity in our understanding of the human creative act; that the Newtonian mechanical stochastic association of ideas doesn't account for true novelty, such as the miraculous metaphor-spinning of Shakespeare and Dickinson, and the sublime and tremendous fugues of Bach – which we find so overwhelmingly delightful and meaningful. To me, creativity seems a case of 2 + 2 = 5. So I (and others) invoke ‘freedom’, because the process seems unaccountable and discontinuous with mere mechanism, and because we can't help ourselves and practically are accustomed to assume that we do, indeed, exercise some measure of freedom in our (less creative) lives.

Hawking may be right: there may be no such thing as freedom; it may be an illusion. Again, I say: I cannot know that it exists. Perhaps someone waits to prove that freedom doesn’t exist and never did – but to date, no one has done that convincingly IMHO (and Kant would say, no one can).

Consciousness is a sphinx. I suspect that if anyone ever teases out all its secrets, including the riddle of human creativity, it will not be with the bulldozer of Newtonian thinking. But what that subtler instrument will be -- I don’t know that, either.

Cheers,

Mike

Last edited by Michael F; 08-27-2014 at 04:01 PM. Reason: better said
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  #416  
Unread 08-27-2014, 04:29 PM
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W.F. Lantry W.F. Lantry is offline
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Originally Posted by Michael Cantor View Post
Really? That joke is like 20 years old. The giggles were gone by the end of the 90's. There must be something newer by now...
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  #417  
Unread 08-27-2014, 06:26 PM
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Allen Tice Allen Tice is offline
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Tarzan Hawking and just lots and lots of others for years have easily given bullet-proof arguments that "Free Will" cannot exist.

So what. It feels like it exists, at least most of the time.

More important by far is the truth that unless we behave as if free will exists we are lost in a sea of moral and practical inertia, and can (and will) excuse atrocities and fattening diets and stuff.

You Tarzan maybe. Me, Hairy Martini.
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  #418  
Unread 08-27-2014, 06:58 PM
Matt Q Matt Q is offline
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Hi Mike,

On the subject of creativity, yours seems to me to be an argument from wonder. I'm reminded of those arguments where people said (and still say, I guess) look how marvellous and sublime the creatures of the world are, surely no mere stochastic mechanism could possibly have produced such wonderfully adapted creatures. Arguments of this kind appeal to a self-evident truth, which is fine if it's self-evident to everyone, but it's just not evident to me. Creativity just doesn't strike me as all that mysterious.

However, I'm starting to think that we may be coming at it from different angles, or meaning different things when talk about creativity, because I'm also not really seeing how closely creativity ties in with the issue of free will or conciousness. To me, conciousness is a whole other kettle of very mysterious looking fish. I think perhaps what you're talking about is something much bigger/broader than what I've been assuming was the question at hand. (Perhaps I should go reread Kant, and maybe everything will fall into place. I remember being highly resistant to his charms the first time around, and remember very little).

Anyway, I appreciate that you'd rather not debate further, and I think that's wise. I reckon it'll save us spending a lot of time working out that we were arguing at cross purposes and quite possibly not really disagreeing on very much at all, as is so often the way.

I apologise for taking advantage of your reluctance to continue by having the last word, just couldn't help myself

All the best,

Matt
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  #419  
Unread 08-28-2014, 12:35 AM
William A. Baurle William A. Baurle is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Janice D. Soderling View Post
He certainly wielded a wicked pen, and doubtless had some real-life prototype in mind. He was a master of the cutting phrase, a master of his art.

Thank you for mentioning him. It's been far too long since I read his work, and, being now reminded, I shall try to remedy that a.s.a.p. His era produced many wonderful writers, often neglected today, but perhaps the interest on WW I will revive them.
I read Maugham's The Hero recently and was quite blown away by it, though it's not one of his most popular novels. If you haven't read that, I'd suggest giving it a go. It's short, a breeze of a read, but terribly tragic. It's one of the most bleakly tragic stories I know of, but it was so well done I can't help but recommend it.
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  #420  
Unread 08-28-2014, 07:59 AM
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Michael F Michael F is offline
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Apologies, on rereading what I posted this am, it was way too obtuse.

What I meant to say was, simply, I recognize that I broke my own rules. I own that I did make the argument from wonder: the genius of Bach, Shakespeare et al is irrelevant to the argument.

Now, carry on.

Last edited by Michael F; 08-30-2014 at 08:38 PM. Reason: clarification
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