How can we account for the sudden appearance of such dazzling artists and scientists as Mozart, Shakespeare, Darwin, or Einstein? How can we define such genius? What conditions or personality traits seem to produce exceptionally creative people? Is the association between genius and madness really just a myth? These and many other questions are brilliantly illuminated in The Origins of Genius. Dean Simonton convincingly argues that creativity can best be understood as a Darwinian process of variation and selection. (...) The artist or scientist generates a wealth of ideas, and then subjects these ideas to aesthetic or scientific judgment, selecting only those that have the best chance to survive and reproduce. Indeed, the true test of genius is the ability to bequeath an impressive and influential body of work to future generations. Simonton draws on the latest research into creativity and explores such topics as the personality type of the genius, whether genius is genetic or produced by environment and education, the links between genius and mental illness, the high incidence of childhood trauma, especially loss of a parent, amongst Nobel Prize winners, the importance of unconscious incubation in creative problem-solving, and much more. Simonton substantiates his theory by examining and quoting from the work of such eminent figures as Henri Poincare, W. H. Auden, Albert Einstein, Marie Curie, Charles Darwin, Niels Bohr, and many others. For anyone intrigued by the spectacular feats of the human mind, The Origins of Genius offers a revolutionary new way of understanding the very nature of creativity. (shrink)

The target article ignores the crucial role of correlational methods in the behavioral and social sciences. Yet such methods are often mandated by the greater complexity of the phenomena investigated. This necessity is especially conspicuous in psychological research where its position in the hierarchy of the sciences implies the need for both experimental and correlational investigations, each featuring distinct assets.

The Simonton (1991) study of 120 classical composers may provide evidence for the existence of innate talent. A weighted multiplicative model of talent development provides a basis for evaluating the adequacy of Howe et al.'s conclusions.

Campbell (1960) proposed a “blind-variation and selective retention” model of creative cognition. Subsequent researchers have developed this BVSR model into a comprehensive theory of human creativity, one that recognizes that human creativity operates by more than one cognitive process. The question is then raised of how the BVSR model can be accommodated within the Hull et al. selectionist system.

Cultural evolution may be even more prolific in the generation of new forms than is biological evolution – especially when it takes the form of creative genius. Yet evolutionary theories have tended to overlook the factors that might select for outstanding individual creativity. A recent dual-inheritance theory is outlined and then integrated with the niche-construction theory of Laland et al.

This is a book review of Dean Simonton's Creativity in Science.

Mayo Clinic is recognized as a worldwide leader in innovative, high-quality health care. However, the Catholic mission and ideals from which this organization was formed are not widely recognized or known. From partnership with the Sisters of St. Francis in 1883, through restructuring of the Sponsorship Agreement in 1986 and current advancements, this Catholic mission remains vital today at Saint Marys Hospital. This manuscript explores the evolution and growth of sponsorship at Mayo Clinic, defined as “a collaboration between the Sisters (...) of St. Francis and Mayo Clinic to preserve and promote key values that the founding Franciscan sisters and Mayo physicians embrace as basic to their mission, and to assure the Catholic identity of Saint Marys Hospital.” Historical context will be used to frame the evolution and preservation of Catholic identity at Saint Marys Hospital; and the shift from a “sponsorship-by-governance” to a “sponsorship-by-influence” model will be highlighted. Lastly, using the externally-developed Catholic Identity Matrix (developed by Ascension Health and the University of St. Thomas, Minnesota), specific examples of Catholic identity will be explored in this joint venture of Catholic health care institution and a secular, nonprofit corporation (Mayo Clinic). (shrink)

Keith Reader _Robert Bresson_ Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2000 ISBN 0 7190 5365 X (hardback) 0 7190 5366 8 (paperback) 166 pp.

Keith Augustine’s critical evaluation of the essay contest sponsored by the Bigelow Institute of Consciousness Studies (BICS) is an interesting but problematic review. It mixes reasonable and detailed criticisms of the contest and many of the winning essays with a disappointing reliance on some of the most trite and superficial criticisms of parapsychological research. Ironically, Augustine criticizes the winning essays for using straw-man arguments and cherry-picked evidence even though many of his own arguments commit these same errors.

Description: Since its inception, the discussion surrounding Open Theism has been dominated by polemics. On crucial philosophical issues, Openness proponents have largely been devoted to explicating the underlying framework and logical arguments supporting their perspective against competing theological and philosophical perspectives. As a result, very little constructive work has been done on the interconnections between Open Theism and the natural sciences. Given the central place of sciences in today's world, any perspective that hopes to have a broad impact must necessarily (...) address such disciplines in a sustained and constructive manner. To date such engagements from the Openness perspective have been rare. God in an Open Universe addresses this deficiency. This book demonstrates that Open Theism makes a distinctive and highly fruitful contribution to the conversation and constructive work occurring between philosophy, theology, and the sciences. The various essays explore subjects ranging from physics to prayer, from special relativity to divine providence, from metaphysics to evolution, and from space-time to God. All who work at the intersection of theology and the sciences will benefit greatly from these essays that break new ground in this important conversation. Endorsements: ""These essays present what is, in my view, the most promising development in theological thinking in our time, and they do so in a way that is both scholarly and accessible. The book is a must for anyone interested in Christian faith and in science."" -Keith Ward University of Oxford ""Open theists affirm the same openness of the future that religious believers assume when they pray and almost all humans assume when they act. The open future is intuitive; but can it be rigorously defended? God in an Open Universe shows that it can. Open theism has always been an attractive view of God; now it becomes a philosophically rigorous one as well. -Philip Clayton Claremont School of Theology About the Contributor(s): William Hasker is Profesor Emeritus of Philosophy at Huntington University. He is the author of numerous articles and five books, including The Emergent Self and The Triumph of God Over Evil. Thomas Jay Oord is Professor of Theology and Philosophy at Northwest Nazarene University. He is the author or editor of more than a dozen books, including Defining Love and Creation Made Free. Dean Zimmerman is Professor in the philosophy department at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. He is editor or co-editor of several books, including (with Peter van Inwagen) Persons: Human and Divine. (shrink)

Creativity pervades human life. It is the mark of individuality, the vehicle of self-expression, and the engine of progress in every human endeavor. It also raises a wealth of neglected and yet evocative philosophical questions: What is the role of consciousness in the creative process? How does the audience for a work for art influence its creation? How can creativity emerge through childhood pretending? Do great works of literature give us insight into human nature? Can a computer program really be (...) creative? How do we define creativity in the first place? Is it a virtue? What is the difference between creativity in science and art? Can creativity be taught? The new essays that comprise The Philosophy of Creativity take up these and other key questions and, in doing so, illustrate the value of interdisciplinary exchange. Written by leading philosophers and psychologists involved in studying creativity, the essays integrate philosophical insights with empirical research. CONTENTS I. Introduction Introducing The Philosophy of Creativity Elliot Samuel Paul and Scott Barry Kaufman II. The Concept of Creativity 1. An Experiential Account of Creativity Bence Nanay III. Aesthetics & Philosophy of Art 2. Creativity and Insight Gregory Currie 3. The Creative Audience: Some Ways in which Readers, Viewers and/or Listeners Use their Imaginations to Engage Fictional Artworks Noël Carroll 4. The Products of Musical Creativity Christopher Peacocke IV. Ethics & Value Theory 5. Performing Oneself Owen Flanagan 6. Creativity as a Virtue of Character Matthew Kieran V. Philosophy of Mind & Cognitive Science 7. Creativity and Not So Dumb Luck Simon Blackburn 8. The Role of Imagination in Creativity Dustin Stokes 9. Creativity, Consciousness, and Free Will: Evidence from Psychology Experiments Roy F. Baumeister, Brandon J. Schmeichel, and C. Nathan DeWall 10. The Origins of Creativity Elizabeth Picciuto and Peter Carruthers 11. Creativity and Artificial Intelligence: a Contradiction in Terms? Margaret Boden VI. Philosophy of Science 12. Hierarchies of Creative Domains: Disciplinary Constraints on Blind-Variation and Selective-Retention Dean Keith Simonton VII. Philosophy of Education (& Education of Philosophy) 13. Educating for Creativity Berys Gaut 14. Philosophical Heuristics Alan Hájek. (shrink)

This essay develops a theological naturalism using Gordon Kaufman's nonpersonal idea of God as serendipitous creativity in contrast to the personal metaphorical theology of Sallie McFague. It then develops a Christian theological naturalism by using Kaufman's idea of historical trajectories, specifically Jesus trajectory1 and Jesus trajectory2. The first is the trajectory in the early Christian church assuming a personal God in the framework of Greek philosophy that results in the Trinity. The second is the naturalistic-humanistic trajectory of creativity (God) that (...) evolves from nonpersonal interactions in the universe and life to creativity in persons and is manifested in Jesus as love. This is elaborated further with Dean Keith Simonton's Darwinian understanding of genius and Marcus Borg's analysis of Jesus as Jewish mystic, teacher of alternative wisdom, and nonviolent resister to the domination system of the Roman Empire. What makes Jesus a religious genius is his exemplifying unconditional, universal love—a new mode of creativity (God) that has evolved from nonhuman to a human form. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 25.1 (2001) 181-196 [Access article in PDF] Bookmarks What is Genius? Denis Dutton There's a school of thought which holds that there's nothing much of interest that can be said about genius. The root idea is older than Kant, but it was well summarized by him: genius is a natural endowment, deep, strange, and mysterious, at least with respect to putative explanations. Schubert can get up (...) in the morning and before lunch knock off five songs that captivate us hundreds of years later. There's no way for us to account for this, and we ought not to expect, Kant claims, that genius can explain itself either: Schubert doesn't have a clue how he does it.Yet trying to figure out how creative geniuses do it remains a permanent source of fascination, most of it fairly naïve. When the ingénue reporter is sent out by the City Editor to interview the famous, crusty old novelist, the first question is normally, "Where do you get your ideas?" Of course, if the novelist knew that, he'd not be likely to blab it in the press. Kant's point is that he cannot really know; no one can. Monroe Beardsley relays a story about Picasso, who claimed to suffer from "an indigestion of greenness" from walking in the woods on a summer's day: "I must empty this sensation into a picture," Picasso said. "Green dominates it. The painter paints as if in urgent need to discharge himself of his sensations and his visions." Beardsley observes that green indigestion could have been even more plausibly used to "explain" a red painting ("I needed an antidote to all that green"), or a pen-and-ink drawing ("I needed to get away from color"), or anything else. There is in this a general point about why we are so often disappointed by interviews with artists. The artist can do; the artist can't explain how. [End Page 181]It does not follow, however, that nothing of interest can be learned, at least at a descriptive level, about genius. Dean Keith Simonton has spent most of a career looking at the subject as a psychologist, and his Origins of Genius: Darwinian Perspectives on Creativity (Oxford University Press, $27.50) ties together much of his research and that of others in a way that extends thinking on genius far beyond armchair meditations or mere platitudes. At the heart of Simonton's project are two very different ideas: first, he argues that evolution and processes of natural selection provide illuminating models to explain the existence and operation of creative genius in the sciences and the arts. Second, he propounds a rather more dubious thesis, that the process of natural selection itself is an adequate model for understanding genius at work, that the history of human ideas demonstrates a kind of secondary evolution. To these hypotheses, Simonton adds a further Darwinian overlay: he returns repeatedly to the personality and biography of Charles Darwin himself as the paradigm of a life of creative genius. While this has the advantage of anchoring the discussion, giving it a kind of ostinato ground, it diverts Simonton from the manifestations of genius, especially artistic genius, which do not resemble Darwin's personal example.Creative genius is defined by Simonton as the capacity to originate scientific discoveries, artistic works, technical inventions, or engage in political leadership, in a manner that achieves what is conventionally termed eminence. The eminent person creates, discovers, or invents something that passes the test of time and, like the similar test devised by Hume to mark out artistic greatness, appeals to cultures beyond that of the original act of creation. It is not hard for the philosophically trained reader to devise counter-examples to Simonton's general theses, but the value of his book does not require a rigorous definition at the outset. Whatever genius is, and however we might dispute it, there is no doubting that Leonardo Da Vinci, Shakespeare, Newton, and Einstein count as creative geniuses in Simonton's sense. High raw IQ is frequently associated with genius... (shrink)

Contents: PART I. PHILOSOPHICAL EXPLANATIONS OF CREATIVITY AND CONSCIOUSNESS. Krystyna ZAMIARA: The psychological approach to creativity. A critical appraisal. Rick L. FRANKLIN: Creativity and depth in understanding. Zdzis??l??awa PIATEK: Creativity of life and F.W. Nietzsche's idea of Superman. Jaromír JANOUSEK: Dialogue and joint activity: A psychological approach. Krystyna ZAMIARA: Some remarks on Piaget's notion of "consciousness" and its importance for the studies of culture. Anna GA??L??DOWA, and Aleksander NELICKI: Attitudes towards values as a factor determining creativity. PART II. THE ROLE (...) OF CREATIVITY IN THE THEORY-BUILDING. Leszek NOWAK: On creativity in theory-building. Izabella NOWAK: Discovery and correspondence. A contribution to the idealizational approach to science. Jerzy BRZEZI??N??SKI: Research process in psychology in the context of the researcher's methodological consciousness. Andrzej FALKOWSKI: Cognitive similarity in scientific discovery: An ecological approach. PART III: CONSCIOUSNESS IN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE. Kathleen V. WILKES: Inside insight. Franco DI MARIA, and Gioacchino LAVANCO: History and epistemology of the unconscious. Franco DI MARIA, and Gioacchino LAVANCO: Conscious/unconscious and group-analysis. Banjamin WALLACE, Andrzej KOKOSZKA, and Deanna D. TUROSKY: Historical and contemporary thoughts on consciousness and its altered states. PART IV. BETWEEN EXPRESSION AND PROJECTION. Micha??l?? STASIAKIEWICZ: Creativity and projection: Paradigm opposition and implicit correspondence. Anna BRZEZI??N??SKA: Creative expression versus projection. PART V. THE ROLE OF PSYCHOPHYSIOLOGICAL COMPONENTS IN EXPLANATION OF PHENOMENA OF CONSCIOUSNESS AND CREATIVITY. Mario BUNGE: Explaining creativity. Piotr WOLSKI: Hemispheric asymmetry and consciousness. Is there any relationship? Andrzej KOKOSZKA: A rationale for psychology of consciousness. PSYCHOLOGICAL EXPLANATIONS OF CREATIVITY AND CONSCIOUSNESS. Santo DI NUOVO: Consciousness and attention. Tomasz MARUSZEWSKI: Two looks on consciousness. Is there any interface between philosophy of science and psychology? Marek KOWALCZYK: On the question of the functions of consciousness. Dean Keith SIMONTON: From childhood giftedness to creative genius. Magdalena FAFROWICZ, Tadeusz MAREK, and Czes??l??aw NOWOROL: Effectiveness of innovation as a function of creative style of behavior and type of leadership. Mark A. RUNCO, and Joni RADIO GAYNOR: Creativity and optimal development. (shrink)

Recently, new life has been breathed into the ancient philosophical topic of skepticism. The subject of some of the best and most provocative work in contemporary philosophy, skepticism has been addressed not only by top epistemologists but also by several of the world's finest philosophers who are most known for their work in other areas of the discipline. Skepticism: A Contemporary Reader brings together the most important recent contributions to the discussion of skepticism. Covering major approaches to the skeptical problem, (...) it features essays by Anthony Brueckner, Keith DeRose, Fred Dretske, Graeme Forbes, Christopher Hill, David Lewis, Thomas Nagel, Robert Nozick, Hilary Putnam, Ernest Sosa, Gail Stine, Barry Stroud, Peter Unger, and Ted Warfield. The book opens with a thorough introduction that outlines the skeptical problem, explains the dominant responses to skepticism, and discusses the strengths, weaknesses, and unresolved issues of each response, providing undergraduate students and nonphilosophers with the background and context necessary to understand the essays. Skepticism: A Contemporary Reader serves as an ideal text for courses in epistemology and skepticism and will also appeal to professional philosophers and interested general readers. (shrink)

Boys, Boyz, Bois concerns questions of ethics, gender and race in popular American images, national discourse and cultural production by and about black men. The book proposes an ethics of masculinity, as ethnics refers to a system of morality and valuation and as ethics refers to a care of the self and ethical subject formation. The texts of analysis include recent films by black/African American filmmakers, gansta rap and hip-hop and black star persona: texts ranging from Blaxploitation and New Black (...) Cinema to contemporary music video to autobiography and the public image of Sidney Poitier. The book is a significant contribution to cultural studies and gender studies and critical race theory. What is distinctive about the book is the question of ethics as a question of race and gender. (shrink)

The eminent philosopher Keith Lehrer offers an original and distinctively personal view of central aspects of the human condition, such as reason, knowledge, wisdom, autonomy, love, consensus, and consciousness. He argues that what is uniquely human is our capacity for evaluating our own mental states (such as beliefs and desires), and suggests that we have a system for such evaluation which allows the resolution of personal and interpersonal conflict. The keystone in this system is self-trust, on which reason, knowledge, (...) and wisdom are grounded. (shrink)

‘Molinism’, in contemporary usage, is the name for a theory about the workings of divine providence. Its defenders include some of the most prominent contemporary Protestant and Catholic philosophical theologians.¹ Molinism is often said to be the only way to steer a middle..

This book is available either individually, or as part of the specially-priced Arguments of the Philosphers Collection.

This paper brings together two positions that for the most part have been developed and defended independently of one another: contextualism about knowledge attributions and the knowledge account of assertion.

Non-invasive prenatal testing is an emerging form of prenatal genetic testing that provides information about the genetic constitution of a foetus without the risk of pregnancy loss as a direct result of the test procedure. As with other prenatal tests, information from NIPT can help to make a decision about termination of pregnancy, plan contingencies for birth or prepare parents to raise a child with a genetic condition. NIPT can also be used by women and couples to test purely ‘for (...) information’. Here, no particular action is envisaged following the test; it is motivated entirely by an interest in the result. The fact that NIPT can be performed without posing a risk to the pregnancy could give rise to an increase in such requests. In this paper, we examine the ethical aspects of using NIPT ‘purely for information’, including the competing interests of the prospective parents and the future child, and the acceptability of testing for ‘frivolous’ reasons. Drawing on several clinical scenarios, we claim that arguments about testing children for genetic conditions are relevant to this debate. In addition, we raise ethical concerns over the potential for objectification of the child. We conclude that, in most cases, using NIPT to test for adult-onset conditions, carrier status or non-serious traits presenting in childhood would be unacceptable. (shrink)