Inspiration and Novelty: Creativity and the Modularity of Mind

Creativity is the channel by which new ideas are generated, and through which all new and valuable things of any kind, artefacts or ideas, are added to human culture. As the entire cultural environment is composed of entities which are either themselves new or are copies of things which once were new, the subject is of some ontological significance. It is therefore regrettable that it is still far from completely understood, even though there has been considerable progress in recent years. The thesis examines the current state of philosophical thinking on the subject, and also on modularity of mind, which it takes as a framework against which to investigate creativity. It then sets out to work towards a naturalistic explanation of the origin of novelty in creative thought. Darwinian evolution by natural selection explains the origin of novelty in the biological sphere, and theories of creativity drawing an analogy with evolution are examined. It is concluded that whereas creativity clearly shares some of the most general characteristics of evolution, there are crucial points of variance. The outcome of the investigation draws particular attention to the known requirement for the creative product, which does not have a direct evolutionary analogue. Focusing on the requirement and the direction of internal and external searches is shown to provide for the inception and exploration of possible creative solutions and also to circumvent the associated Meno paradox. This in turn is the basis for the positive assessment of the feasibility of proceeding to model a creative process. The study culminates in the construction of such a model, at a necessarily high level of aggregation. This is offered as a candidate route towards a naturalistic explanation of the genesis of new ideas and cultural innovation