This article addresses the issue of units of analysis and atomistic models in psychology taking creativity research as a case study. A classic typology in this area, initially proposed by Rhodes, distinguishes between the four P's of creativity: person, process, product, and press. Continuing an effort to rewrite this basic language of the discipline from a cultural psychological perspective in the form of five A's, the discussion here focuses on bringing relationships to the fore within this framework and problematising strict (...) distinctions between each of the five elements. A closer look at the five A's of creativity, drawing on theoretical considerations and illustrated by interviews with creators working in different domains, reveals the permeable borders surrounding these units and challenges clear divisions between actors and audiences, action and artefacts, actors and artefacts. In the end, it is argued that creative phenomena cannot be properly understood and studied outside of their integrated and dynamic totality defined as a creativity complex. Implications of adopting this “molecular” perspective for theory and methodology are discussed. (shrink)

The current pandemic and the measures taken to address it, on a global scale, are unprecedented. Times of crisis call for creative solutions, and these are not reduced to the work of scientists or politicians. In everyday life, both in online and offline spaces, people use their creativity to make sense of the current situation, to cope with it, and to learn its lessons. Social media is a privileged space for mundane and participative creativity through the production and sharing of (...) coronavirus Internet memes. In this article, we examine the creativity of such memes from a dedicated Reddit community. We ask, in particular, what makes a coronavirus meme creative and what this creativity tells us about the pandemic and popular understandings of it. To answer these questions, we use a triangulation of quantitative and qualitative methods by having 480 memes coded by three social media users for surprise, meaningfulness, elaboration, humor, and creativity and qualitatively analyzing those memes that score highly on each dimension. An interesting finding concerns the importance of elaboration and humor for the evaluation of creativity in the case of memes, above the more traditional criteria of surprise and meaningfulness, perhaps a feature unique for Internet spaces. The article ends with reflections on what these findings tell us about creativity on social media more generally and the creative processes involved in the generation and reception of coronavirus memes in particular. (shrink)

Creativity — A New Vocabulary proposes a novel approach to the way in which we talk and think about creativity. It covers a variety of topics not commonly associated with creativity that offer us valuable insights and open up new and exciting possibilities for creative action. This collection of essays challenges the 'traditional' vocabulary of creativity and its preference for individuals, brains, cognition, personality, divergent thinking, insight, and problem solving. Instead, the book proposes a more dynamic and relational perspective that (...) considers creativity as an embodied, social, material, and cultural process. This book will be useful for a wide range of specialists within the humanities and social sciences, as well as practitioners from applied fields who are looking for novel ways of thinking about and doing creative work. (shrink)

Creativity is of rising interest to scholars and laypeople alike. Creativity in the arts, however, is very different from creativity in science, business, sports, cooking, or teaching. This book brings together top experts in the field from around the world to discuss creativity across many different domains. Each chapter includes clear definitions, intriguing research, potential measures, and suggestions for development or future directions. After a broad discussion of creativity across different domains, subsequent chapters look deeper into those individual domains to (...) explore how creativity varies when expressed in different ways. Ultimately, the book offers a future-looking perspective integrating the different variations of creativity across domains. (shrink)

The nature of craft creativity has often been ignored in research which focuses on innovative and novel ideas and thought processes. This view of creativity casts the repetitive nature of craft as antithetical to the disruptive nature of genuine creativity. Drawing on combined enactivist and pragmatist accounts of habits and on a focused cognitive ethnography of a wooden bowl turner, this paper explores the nature of the constraints wrought by habitual action. Habitual action will be shown to be less repetitive (...) than may be initially assumed because of the uncertainty inherent in working with both the wood which forms the initial material and the tools necessary to transform it. Rather, this paper proposes habitual learned movements as an important concept in a pragmatist-informed theory of creativity since they mark the skilled co-ordination of material, tool and maker, at once constraining and enhancing the creative craft process. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Cultivating the PossibleKseniya Fiaduta Prokharchyk and Luciana Dantas de PaulaReimagining Education and Society / 3rd International Conference of Possibility Studies, All Hallows Campus, Dublin City University, Dublin, 07 17–21, 2023[End Page 290]Since its inaugural conference in May 2021, the Possibility Studies Network (PSN) has emerged as a vibrant space of hope, inspiring scholars, and practitioners around the globe to revive, (re)discover, and (re)imagine a central dimension of human existence: (...) the possible. Following the success of the first two conferences online, in 2023 the network organized its first fully inperson event on the theme of Cultivating the Possible: Reimagining Education and Society. Hosted by the School of Psychology at Dublin City University, in partnership with Creative Ireland, the latest conference brought together more than 150 participants from over twenty-five countries with the aim of "advancing the theoretical and practical understanding of how individuals and collectives become aware of and explore possibilities in the realm of the psychological, material, technological, social, cultural and political." 1In his inaugural keynote speech, Vlad Glăveanu (Dublin City University), the founder and president of PSN, outlined five key questions for the emergent, transdisciplinary field of possibility studies: (1) what kinds of psychological, social, material, technological and cultural resources and processes enable our engagement with the possible?; (2) how do individual differences, environmental contexts, and situational factors "collaborate" in shaping experiences of the possible?; (3) what is the relation between individual, group, community, and societal forms of becoming aware of and exploring possibilities?; (4) how do power relations structure our imagination of the possible, and with what consequences for how self and society are constituted?; and [End Page 291](5) what is our guide for deciding which possibilities to enact and which to reject, which possibilities are valuable, and which are harmful?These questions guided the conference experience, while still leaving space for other challenging questions to emerge. The five days of engaging discussions were due to not only the diversity in themes but also the variety of formats for presentations, workshops, and debates. The first three days of the conference were organized around keynote speeches by global scholars, who represented a wide range of disciplines from cognitive psychology to creative writing. The keynotes were followed by paper presentations and symposia—as well as "Principles of Circus" workshops by the National Circus School of Montréal, 2—and presentations from Creative Ireland. Finally, the last two days of the conference featured a debate between Michael Hanchett Hanson (Columbia University) and Giovanni Corazza (University of Bologna) on the status of "the real" in possibility studies, interactive workshops, 3the presentation of possibility hubs, and ample networking opportunities.The ethos of the conference was explicitly multidisciplinary, featuring contributions from many possibility-related fields, including creativity, imagination, serendipity, utopias/dystopias, psychology, futures studies, education, philosophy, ethics, literary and narrative studies, queer and (trans)gender studies, health and well-being research, environmental studies, and the arts, among other disciplines. While some of these fields count on their own rich and long-standing traditions of reflections on the possible, the conference provided a unique space where diverse theoretical and methodological perspectives could engage, nurture, and challenge each other in open, dialogic, and transdisciplinary encounters.As highlighted by the conference co-organizer Wendy Ross (London Metropolitan University) in her keynote lecture "Cultivating the Possible," such genuine interdisciplinary encounters represent an opportunity to push ourselves beyond the limits of our disciplines, to develop more comprehensive theoretical frameworks and methodologies, and to formulate new questions, advancing the study of possibility in exciting new directions. Given the complex, multifaceted and dynamic nature of the possible, this inter-, multi-, and transdisciplinary ethos lies at the very heart of PSN's annual conferences. Moreover, the polyphonic nature of the event was anchored by a set of common themes and questions that held diverse voices and disciplinary perspectives in both collaborative harmony and reciprocal tension. [End Page 292]Pedagogies of the Possible I: Educating in a VUCA WorldMany papers explored the connections between possibility studies, education, and pedagogy in a world characterized by volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity (VUCA). 4Most contributions emphasized the urgency of reimagining traditional educational systems... (shrink)

Depuis Kant, les philosophes ont appris à parler, avec prudence, du surnaturel et de sa relation avec la nature. En général le surnaturel n’est meme pas reconnu comme faisant partie de la philosophie. La situation n’aurait pu être plus différente aux XVIIe-XVIIIe siècles, lorsque les philosophes comprenaient la relation entre Dieu et le monde comme l’un des problèmes les plus importants que la philosophie fût censée résoudre. Les solutions étaient bien sûr extrêmement diverses : Spinoza niera même que l’on puisse (...) faire la distinction entre principe créateur et création, tandis que d’autres, tel Robert Boyle, s’imagineront un maître horloger créant une machine absolument parfaite, qui depuis sa création ne requiert aucun acte supplémentaire de la part de son créateur. Jusque dans la pensée du jeune Kant, cette idée se rencontrera sous des formes diverses. Tous convenaient, tout de même, qu’il fallait rejeter l’ancien modèle aristotélicien d’une nature désirante, reconstruisant la nature comme un système reposant sur quelques lois fondamentales et repensant à nouveaux frais le rôle que Dieu peut, ou doit, jouer dans un tel système. Les contributions du présent volume traitent d’aspects historiques et systématiques des théories modernes de la nature et du surnaturel, tout en essayant de comprendre, dans ce contexte, l’importance des théories de la relation entre Dieu et le monde. (shrink)

The theological program of Archpriest Georges Florovsky is understood as a conception of the neopatristic synthesis that he developed. From the beginning, its appearance was associated with the participation of its creator in a public discussion about the historical ways of Russia within the framework of the Eurasian movement, then, with his scientific investigations into the history of Russian Orthodoxy and ancient Christian thought and later with his activity in the ecumenical movement. It is noteworthy that the positive content of (...) the program for modern Orthodox theology turned out to be an indirect response to broader challenges of historical and social order. The focus of attention in this case are some peculiarities in the reception of the program in international and Russian contexts, which in turn requires the clarification of the content of its main points, such as a question about a true fatherland or the sense and meaning of Christian Hellenism. The conclusion notes the significant relevance and openness of Florovsky’s ideas for modern Orthodox theology. (shrink)

Článek se věnuje nejnovější knize Charlese Taylora Secular Age (2007). Poukazuje na její kořeny v hegeliánství a v novějších kritikách modernity a probírá některé námitky vůči Taylorově koncepci včetně Taylorových odpovědí. Taylor představuje dva typy současných etických projektů. Na jedné straně tzv. výlučný humanismus, na druhé straně imanentní antihumanismus. A smyslem jeho genealogie moderního sekularismu je ukázat vzájemnou podmíněnost mezi antihumanismem, humanismem a religiozitou s tím, že bez nějaké formy transcendence se každý západní hodnotový systém vystavuje nepřekonatelným tenzím, aby následně (...) navrhl koncept originality volající k následování jako spojnici hlavního nároku křesťanství ztělesněného v pojmu lásky k bližnímu s moderním uměním jako náhražkovým náboženstvím. Taylorova práce je nejen v tomto ohledu postavena na jeho celoživotním zájmu o Hegelovu filosofii, v níž se hledá takový způsob, jak spojit etiku autenticity se smyslem pro společenství, který by překonal omezení reflektující racionality. Taylorovo obohacení Hegela můžeme chápat jako snahu nahradit tradiční nárok lásky k bližnímu srozumitelnějším pojmem podpory rozmanitosti v jednotě (resp. pojmem kultury). The essay examines Charles Taylor’s latest book The Secular Age (2007) by unveiling its Hegelian roots together with its debt to other critics of modernity and by considering some objections as well as Taylor’s answers. Taylor sketches two types of contemporary ethical projects. On the one hand he considers exclusive humanism, on the other the immanent antihumanism. The moral of Taylor’s story of modern secularism comes to his claim that the anti-humanism is enabled by humanism and humanism again by religiosity. According to him this comes to indispensability of religion: namely, some notion of transcendence is necessary for coherence of any set of values available to western man. Actually the originality inspiring its following is what he understands as the key element that is shared by the central claim of Christianity embodied in the notion of love (agape) overcoming the rigorism of explicit rules on the one hand and modern art as Ersatzreligion.(Not only) this aspect of Taylor’s recent work is rooted in his lifelong interest in Hegel, who looked for such pairing of the ethics of authenticity with a sense for community that could overcome the limits of reflective rationality. We can interpret Taylor’s amendement to Hegel as a substitution of „support for differentiation in unity“ (or simply „culture“) for „love for neighbour“. (shrink)

The beginning of the current decade witnessed the collapse of many ambitious and costly initiatives in distance learning, but that does not mean that this was just a short-lived fad, and that the march of change was halted. There appeared on stage forces and processes that work more slowly than decisions of university administrators, but that are also much more difficult to ignore or reverse. This article describes these change factors and the how they influence American higher education.

This article discusses the problem of the ineffable in Damascius’ treatises De principiis and In Parmenidem. I argue that the ineffable—which is the ultimate principle proposed by Damascius—is also the theme that underlies the whole frame of the reality, in his perspective. Each level of reality that he discusses comes into play on the background of the original attempt to suggest the ineffable principle. Each of them—One, unified, soul, material forms, matter and sensible realm—tries to approximate and suggest the previous (...) level and thus, eventually, the ineffable itself. Consequently, each level of reality develops its own degree of ineffability, and therefore presents itself to our mind in an aporetical manner. It is impossible for our mind to reveal in an exhaustive and noncontradictory fashion even the levels closest to us. The aporiai that are specific for every part of reality are eventually consequences of the original aporia of an absolute and unique principle that governs everything. (shrink)

This article explores notions of death and subjectivity, through the zombie, in the first four seasons of the AMC show, The Walking Dead. The body of the zombie elicits intriguing speculations. In its death, zombie lingers in the overlapping wedge between the grotesque and the sublime. Stemming from this idea, and through a re-analysis of the zombie as a concept, we propose an update to the Lacan/Zizek psychoanalytical models for death and subjectivity, as well as offer an explanation, through the (...) Holocaust, for this ubiquitous post-apocalyptic fantasy. (shrink)

In this article, I discuss an interpretation of Hegel's concept of the “Inverted World”, which is present in the final part of the chapter on Force and Understanding in the Phenomenology of Spirit. Other than my own reading of the chapter, I also summarize the three most important interpretations of the verkehrte Welt from the last century: those of Jean Hyppolite, Hans-Georg Gadamer and Joseph Flay. I have chosen these three due to the typology of interpretation within them: the first (...) one adopts a Christian reading of Hegel, the second a Hellenistic phenomenological interpretation, and the last one, which is closest to the interpretation I also propose, a reading consistent with the thought of Immanuel Kant. The article ends with a possible interpretation of Hegel's verkehrte Welt through Kant's “Schematism of the Pure Concepts of Understanding” from his Critique of Pure Reason, where I argue that Kant's fundamental faculty of imagination and its object, schemata, play the same role in Kant's system that Hegel's verkehrte Welt does in the development of natural consciousness. (shrink)

Reshaping the neo-Aristotelian doctrines about the human soul was Descartes’s most spectacular enterprise, which gave birth to some of the sharpest debates in the Republic of Letters. Neverthe- less, it was certainly Descartes’s intention, as already expressed in the Discours de la méthode, to show that his new metaphysics could be supplemented with experimental research in the field of medicine and the conservation of life. It is no surprise then that several natural philosophers and doctors, such as Henricus Regius from (...) Utrecht, who had studied in Padua with William Harvey, rallied in support, in order to gain a more substantial theoretical basis for their research. Taking as his ground some general metaphysical assumptions, such as the existence of God, the immortality of the soul, and perhaps the separability of the pure understanding, Regius intended to secure a new philosophy of man, which was able to reflect his medical interests and complement his account of human nature. This is the story that is now gaining currency, and it is surely accurate, at least in part. Desmond Clarke has recently defended the same view1, based on the remarkable studies of the Utrecht scholars Theo Verbeek and Erik-Jan Bos. Here I would like to challenge some aspects of this view and ask how Regius, who was perceived as the philosopher most closely associated with Descartes, became a betrayer of his mentor. (shrink)

Can one extend crisp Peano arithmetic PA by a possibly many-valued predicate Tr(x) saying “xis true” and satisfying the “dequotation schema”for all sentences φ? This problem is investigated in the frame of Łukasiewicz infinitely valued logic.

Between the zone of certainty beyond all doubt and the zone of incomprehensible uncertainty, the sources of which are nothing but chance, we need to use solid results from a vast interdisciplinarity. We wish to give here a sense of the factors in play and the state of the debate and advance in the territory of how interdisciplinarity may help to solve problems which are common in many areas of knowledge. Chaos and complexity certainly put limits on what we can (...) know. High complexity, asymmetry and/or non-linearity are universal types of imprecision. Can hazard have purpose and direction?The idea is that the more effort we put into project design to cover as many details and possible consequences as possible we can grasp in our in-depth analysis aiming to create the project (in art or science or society), the greater the chances that the random occurrence of the unpredictable event will settle on the project's purpose and direction and not on contrary to them. There is no vicious circle here. This kind of method can explain many good results already obtained in such circumstances. Simplicity, beauty, rationalistic optimism, are features of unshakeable scientific results We may call this feature of scientific theory or art _uniqueness. _Uniqueness is strongly correlated with _essentialization. _Science is working in that sense: to simplify a phenomenon to its essence in order to study it easily without losing anything important in the analysis. That is _essentialization. _Why and how complex systems move to the edge of chaos? And what do they do to stay there? They are in constant struggle to create or keep order in complexity. That is the pattern of self-organization, the specific feature of human nature. That is why our action is meant to build resilience to deal better with unpredictable events and prevent the emergence of a critical threshold. Uncertainty, indeterminacy, randomness, and contradictions appear, not as non-essential substances of debate to be eliminated by explanation, but as everlasting ingredients of our conception of reality. There are compelling reasons to believe that it is impossible to make accurate, nontrivial predictions concerning human behavior. Logic and reason are and remain priority, but unpredictability forces us to imagination and creative thinking. Indeed we are confronted with a new human landscape. The anomalies become the new normal. (shrink)

The idea of gender equality has been and still is an exogenous concept in Romanian culture. Initially introduced and institutionalized by communist ideology after World War II along with other utopian egalitarian principles, gender equality remains to this day a somewhat alien concept in practice for the majority of the Romanian population. Nevertheless, in the early twenty-first century, with renewed economic growth and more liberal governance in Romania, the gender equality debate has intensified, and multiple advocacies now compete on the (...) political and social arenas. The most notable actors shaping current attitudes toward women in Romania are the Orthodox Church, political parties, feminist organizations, and the media. (shrink)

Shows how different forms of skepticism can lead to remarkably different moral and political implications.

An important task for every major philosopher is to offer us an understanding of the nature of mind. The essays in this volume discuss different aspects of the philosophical theories of mind put forward in the century and a half that followed Descartes' Meditations of 1641. These years, often referred to as the 'early-modern' period, are probably unparalleled for originality and diversity in conceiving the mind. The volume not only includes two essays on Descartes' own thinking, but there are also (...) examinations of what Spinoza, Malebranche, Locke, Berkeley, Reid, the Cambridge Platonists, and others, have to say about the nature of mind. The aim of the volume is to represent some of the best contemporary research and reflection on mind in early-modern philosophy. The contributors, who teach at a range of universities in mainland Europe, Great Britain and North America, are Margaret Atherton, Miran BozoviÄ, Petr GlombìÄek, Boris Hennig, James Hill, Nicholas Jolley, Jan Palkoska, G. A. J. Rogers, and Anthony Savile. All the essays appear here for the first time. (shrink)

This article explores managers’ views on various ways in which business schools can contribute to providing solid ethics education to their students, who will ultimately become the next generation of business leaders. One thousand top level managers of Icelandic firms were approached and asked a number of questions aimed at establishing their view on the relationship between ethics education and the role of business schools in forming and developing business ethics education. Icelandic businesses were badly hurt by the 2008 crisis, (...) and therefore Iceland provides an interesting foundation for an empirical study of this sort as the aftermath of the crisis has encouraged managers to consciously reflect on the way their business was and should be conducted. Based on the results of the survey, a few main themes have developed. First, it appears that according to practicing managers, business schools should not be held responsible for employees’ unethical behavior. Nevertheless, managers believe that business schools should assist future employees in understanding ethics by including business ethics in teaching curricula. Second, managers believe that the workplace is not where ethics are learned, while also insisting that former students should already have strong ethical standards when entering the workplace. Third, managers call for business schools not only to contribute more to influencing students’ ethical standards, but also to reshape the knowledge and capabilities of practicing managers through re-training and continuous education. Based on the results of the study, the article also offers some recommendations on how to begin reformulating the approach to business ethics education in Iceland, and perhaps elsewhere. (shrink)

Marilena Vlad Cet article se focalise sur le concept de lumière dans les traités du Pseudo-Denys l’Aréopagite Sur les noms divins et La théologie mystique. Le but de l’analyse est de montrer que la lumière n’est pas seulement un nom divin, mais qu’elle a un rôle beaucoup plus complexe dans la pensée de Denys. Premièrement, c’est la lumière qui rend possible le déploiement de tous les noms divins. En outre, elle explique le sens et le fonctionnement du nom divin (...) de « bien ». La lumière est l’essence de ce nom, aussi que de tous les autres noms divins, qu’elle parcourt et unit en une structure originaire. Enfin, son ultime suppression — qui identifie la lumière à son contraire absolu, la ténèbre — engage la suppression de tous les autres noms divins et lumières théologiques, ce qui ouvre vers les plus hauts mystères de la théologie. (shrink)

People have always tried to make predictions; they are necessary and useful, but very often they commit obvious errors, which have negative consequences on decision-making. Prediction errors are in some cases, not few, unavoidable, because the world itself is unpredictable, subject to chance (or randomness in mathematics). Chance is a property of nature. The causes of random events are physically determined, but so numerous and complex that they (the events) are unpredictable. Science is not about certainty. Human knowledge itself is (...) not certain. We can only have provisional truths. Therefore, we must manage to reach a state of accommodation with uncertainty and unpredictability. The complexity of natural phenomena generates events that we cannot control through theoretical modeling precisely because of the ignorance of the causal mechanisms, which exist in their privacy but have not (yet) been revealed by the data and observations at our disposal. We have, on the one hand, life experience taken over and assimilated and established in society and, on the other hand, experience gained from real life. Norm and chance follow each other rather chaotically. The duration of validity of a norm and the moment of occurrence of the random event are unpredictable. However, norms and events coexist in our consciousness. Order and predictability are born (formed and exist) from rules; chance and unpredictability are born from the lack of rules. The highest truths, recognized as such by society cannot be transposed into the life of society only by the force of reason. It is imperative that they are reinforced and embedded in the social behavior of all citizens. Rules are needed. Without rules there is no freedom. (shrink)

This study deals with the issue of Plato’s political interest. Some say he had none. We’ll try to show that in fact he was very political, to the extent that the core ofhis work is a political agenda, and is politically orientated. There’s also the aspect of the relation between metaphysics and politics in his work; that is a delicate issue, as some consider that Plato “disguised” his political convictions in myths. That too will be taken into consideration.1. The number (...) of metaphysical dialogues is small, compared to the vast majority of the platonic dialogues2. No only the writings, but also the life of Plato show him as political3. Even the “metaphysical” dialogues have a political agendaThere are authors that consider Plato to be no less than a forerunner of Christianity, a mystic conscious of the contemplation of an ideal “beyond”. One should bear in mind that Plato has even been declared a saint by the Orthodox Church. We choose to be more cautious in dealing with the interest that Socrates’ pupil is supposed to have taken into mystics (theory or practice). In the following pages, we’ll try to explain these reserves. (shrink)

Under communism, the symbolic potential of the body was multiplied in the mass gymnastic displays in order to portray the society as disciplined, strong, happy and beautiful and thus to legitimize its leadership. These gymnastic rituals followed the volkisch tradition of 19th-century mass gymnastics, which aimed at mobilization and homogenization of the `imagined community' of the nation. Behind the symbolic play of the mass gymnastics, there was, as Kracauer pointed out, a deeper relationship between modernity with its mode of production (...) and gymnastics with its mechanization of the body. The relation, however, was not a direct one, mass gymnastic displays were used to aestheticize the mass production and therefore to deny the very logic of instrumental rationality that both the gymnastics and the production were built upon. (shrink)

_ Source: _Volume 11, Issue 1, pp 46 - 70 In this article, I analyze the idea of “stepping into the void”, which can be traced in the thinking of both Proclus and Damascius, but which sets their perspectives apart. Thus, I show how Proclus warns us that to speak about the absolute principle, taking it as an object of thought, is a negative “stepping into the void” that should be avoided. On the contrary, I show that Damascius starts from (...) this warning and tries to prove that the only adequate manner in which we can trace the absolute principle and approach it is precisely through “stepping into the void,” yet, this time, in a positive sense, as a constant attempt to understand that the principle is an absolute void which reverses our discourse. (shrink)

Within Descartes' philosophy, the problem of the Eucharist provides scholars the occasion to investigate a nexus of questions belonging to different domains of his thought. In taking up this problem, about which there has been much written in the past few decades , I hope first of all to discern some order in the texts themselves, as well also as in their various interpretations, and then, from there, to propose a new perspective.