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)

How is it possible to think new thoughts? What is creativity and can science explain it? And just how did Coleridge dream up the creatures of The Ancient Mariner? When The Creative Mind: Myths and Mechanisms was first published, Margaret A. Boden's bold and provocative exploration of creativity broke new ground. Boden uses examples such as jazz improvisation, chess, story writing, physics, and the music of Mozart, together with computing models from the field of artificial intelligence to uncover the (...) nature of human creativity in the arts. The second edition of The Creative Mind has been updated to include recent developments in artificial intelligence, with a new preface, introduction and conclusion by the author. It is an essential work for anyone interested in the creativity of the human mind. (shrink)

Humanity and the very notion of the human subject are under threat from postmodernist thinking which has declared not only the 'Death of God' but also the 'Death of Man'. This book is a revindication of the concept of humanity, rejecting contemporary social theory that seeks to diminish human properties and powers. Archer argues that being human depends on an interaction with the real world in which practice takes primacy over language in the emergence of human self-consciousness, thought, emotionality and (...) personal identity - all of which are prior to, and more basic than, our acquisition of a social identity. This original and provocative new book from leading social theorist Margaret S. Archer builds on the themes explored in her previous books Culture and Agency (CUP 1988) and Realist Social Theory (CUP 1995). It will be required reading for academics and students of social theory, cultural theory, political theory, philosophy and theology. (shrink)

This paper raises two problems for plan-expressivism concerning normative judgments about non-corealizable actions: actions which cannot both be performed. First, plan-expressivists associate normative judgment with an attitude which satisfies a corealizability constraint, but this constraint is (in the interpersonal case) unwarranted, and (in the intrapersonal case) warranted only at the price of a contentious normative premise. Ayars (2022) holds that the pair of judgments ‘A should φ’ and ‘B should ψ’ is coherent only if one believes that A can φ (...) while B ψ’s. But this is false. Both Gibbard (2003) and Ayars hold that the pair of judgments ‘A should φ’ and ‘A should ψ’ is coherent only if one believes that A can φ and ψ. But this assumes possibilism. Second, the paper demonstrates, cases involving interpersonal non-corealizability prompt judgments about what multiple agents should do which – contra Gibbard – are not plausibly associated with any planning subject. (shrink)

This book is about the methods used for unifying different scientific theories under one all-embracing theory. The process has characterized much of the history of science and is prominent in contemporary physics; the search for a 'theory of everything' involves the same attempt at unification. Margaret Morrison argues that, contrary to popular philosophical views, unification and explanation often have little to do with each other. The mechanisms that facilitate unification are not those that enable us to explain how or (...) why phenomena behave as they do. A feature of this book is an account of many case studies of theory unification in nineteenth- and twentieth-century physics and of how evolution by natural selection and Mendelian genetics were unified into what we now term evolutionary genetics. (shrink)

The applications of Artificial Intelligence lie all around us; in our homes, schools and offices, in our cinemas, in art galleries and - not least - on the Internet. The results of Artificial Intelligence have been invaluable to biologists, psychologists, and linguists in helping to understand the processes of memory, learning, and language from a fresh angle.As a concept, Artificial Intelligence has fuelled and sharpened the philosophical debates concerning the nature of the mind, intelligence, and the uniqueness of human beings. (...) Margaret A. Boden reviews the philosophical and technological challenges raised by Artificial Intelligence, considering whether programs could ever be really intelligent, creative or even conscious, and shows how the pursuit of Artificial Intelligence has helped us to appreciate how human and animal minds are possible. (shrink)

In this article, we present an analysis of defeasible generalizations -- generalizations which are essentially exception-laden, yet genuinely explanatory -- in terms of various notions of privileged conditions. We argue that any plausible epistemology must make essential use of defeasible generalizations so understood. We also consider the epistemic significance of the sort of understanding of context that is required for understanding of explanatory defeasible generalizations on any topic.

Many contexts shape and limit moral thinking in philosophy and life. Human conditions of vulnerability and interdependency, of limited awareness and control, of imperfect insight into ourselves and others are inevitable contexts that neither moral thought nor theory should forget. To be truly reflective, moral thinking and moral philosophy must become aware of the contexts that bind our thinking about how to live. This collection of essays by Margaret Urban Walker seek to show how to do this, and why (...) it makes a difference. Contingent and changeable contexts that shape moral thinking include our individual histories, our social positions, and institutional roles, relationships, cultural settings, and social arrangements, and the specific moral idioms we pick up along the way. The paradigms and specialized language of ethical theory are contexts, too; they shape how moral theory looks and what or whom it looks at. Ethical theory and practice are meaningless without these Moral Contexts. (shrink)

Developing a boundary-crossing ethics by paying attention to our stories, myths, and moral intuition.

For those open to the possibility that philosophical thought can improve life, David Hume's Essays: Moral, Political, and Literary have something to say. In the first comprehensive study of the Essays, Margaret Watkins engages closely with these neglected texts and shows how they provide important insights into Hume's perspective on the breadth and depth of human life, arguing that the Essays reveal his continued commitment to philosophy as a discipline that can promote both social and individual progress. Addressing topics (...) such as politics, war, slavery, the priesthood, the development of industry, aesthetics, emotional disorders, egoism, friendship, sexuality, gender relations, and the nature of philosophy itself, the volume examines Hume's purposes and aims against the backdrop of the eighteenth century society in which he lived. It will be of interest to scholars of modern thought in philosophy, politics, history, and economics. (shrink)

Many of the arguments against reductionism and fundamental theory as a method for explaining physical phenomena focus on the role of models as the appropriate vehicle for this task. While models can certainly provide us with a good deal of explanatory detail, problems arise when attempting to derive exact results from approximations. In addition, models typically fail to explain much of the stability and universality associated with critical point phenomena and phase transitions, phenomena sometimes referred to as "emergent." The paper (...) examines the connection between theoretical principles like spontaneous symmetry breaking and emergent phenomena and argues that new ways of thinking about emergence and fundamentalism are required in order to account for the behavior of many phenomena in condensed matter and other areas of physics. (shrink)

This chapter examines one of the most serious problems with the principle of self‐determination, viz., that this concept does not tell us who the peoples are that are entitled to self‐determination or the jurisdictional unit that they are entitled. It examines indigenous, historical, superior culture, and occupancy arguments for rights to a particular territory and suggests normative principles for thinking about jurisdictional units.

Can one be fooled into believing that one intended an action that one in fact did not intend? Past experimental paradigms have demonstrated that participants, when provided with false perceptual feedback about their actions, can be fooled into misperceiving the nature of their intended motor act. However, because veridical proprioceptive/perceptual feedback limits the extent to which participants can be fooled, few studies have been able to answer our question and induce the illusion to intend. In a novel paradigm addressing this (...) question, participants were instructed to move a line on the computer screen by use of a phony brain–computer interface. Line movements were actually controlled by computer program. Demonstrating the illusion to intend, participants reported more intentions to move the line when it moved frequently than when it moved infrequently. Consistent with ideomotor theory, the finding illuminates the intimate liaisons among ideomotor processing, the sense of agency, and action production. (shrink)

The systemic difficulties of health care in the USA have brought to light another issue in nurse—patient advocacy — those who require care yet have inadequate or non-existent access. Patient advocacy has focused on individual nurses who in turn advocate for individual patients, yet, while supporting individual patients is a worthy goal of patient advocacy, systemic problems cannot be adequately addressed in this way. The difficulties nurses face when advocating for patients is well documented in the nursing literature and I (...) argue that, through collective advocacy, professional nursing associations ought to extend the reach of individual nurses in order to address systemic problems in health care institutions and bureaucracies. (shrink)

In 1648, J. Marcus Marci of Prague anticipated two chief features of Isaac Newton's celebrated 1672 theory of light and color, namely that colors are inherent to light and that the role of the prism is to separate the rays of color by means of refraction. Furthermore, Marci argued that colors produced by a first refraction are immutable when subjected to refraction by a second prism. This paper argues that the key to Marci's achievement derived from his chymical view of (...) light, which he tested by means of prism trials and geometrical constructions. I also suggest that Marci's unusual coupling of chymical philosophy with mathematics was a move unusual in the history of alchemy; and that his chymical understanding of light belongs to an underexplored tradition in the history of optics, which is distinct from mechanistic and Aristotelian theories of light. (shrink)

Prepare for practice with the essential text dedicated to Canadian legal and ethical issues! Focused solely on the ever-changing, and often complex health care landscape in Canada, Ethical & Legal Issues in Canadian Nursing 4th, Edition expertly covers the often intertwined ethical and legal issues that health care professionals face today. This fourth edition includes discussion points at the end of every chapter along with tables and illustrations to help you fully comprehend the material. Plus, the clear and straightforward writing (...) style presents information just as you will encounter it in your day-to-day practice, ensuring you're even more prepared to make an impact from the start! -- From the publisher. (shrink)

Studies of participatory governance generally examine the input and/or output side of policy processes. Often neglected is the throughput: Does the state have the political and technical capacity to implement the decisions that deliberative bodies make? In this study of Brazilian river-basin committees, the authors find that activists inside and outside the state often must collaborate to overcome resistance to change and provide state officials with resources they lack. They argue that this does not constitute the transfer of state responsibility (...) to private actors but rather the mobilization of a state's capacity to defend the public interest. (shrink)

Austen's heroines need all their resources to overcome the suffering that their virtues occasion. Isolation threatens Emma Woodhouse, Anne Elliot, and Elinor Dashwood because of rather than in spite of their characteristic excellences. But this cannot be: virtue is supposed to contribute to flourishing, not detract from it. Fortunately, Emma, Anne, and Elinor also possess proper self-sufficiency, enabling them to endure and overcome the trials of their own virtue. Thus, Austen's heroines avoid misery, and virtue theorists learn to attend to (...) virtues that respond to the struggle that partially constitutes even excellent human lives. (shrink)

Contemporary economists deem virtually every piece of reasoning and argumentation in economics a model, forgetting that there may well be other conceptual tools at hand. This article demonstrates that David Hume used thought experiments to make some remarkable breakthroughs in monetary economics, and that this resolves a longstanding debate about an apparent inconsistency in Hume, between the neutrality and non-neutrality of money. In the actual world, money is never neutral for Hume; only in thought experiments does a sudden growth in (...) the money stock result in an identical and hence neutral increase in the price level. Thought experiments isolate tendencies but do not lend themselves to direct confirmation. Moreover, Hume’s dislike for the French model builders, Melon and Quesnay, captures an important juncture in mid eighteenth-century economic discourse regarding the warranted level of abstraction and of idealization. (shrink)

This major two volume reference work focuses on the works of contemporary Marxism which take as their inspiration the classical Marxian political economy, especially that of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Luxemburg and Gramsci. The authors reprinted here are engaged in the common enterprise of attempting to understand the world in a manner that might facilitate its transformation for the better, or at least help prevent the worst outcomes from predictable and inevitable changes. Committed to the critical, scientific and explanatory project of (...) Marxism, the authors represented in these volumes tend to be structuralist and determinist but they also acknowledge the role of voluntarism, chance or untheorized circumstance. All have borrowed from the philosophical, political, and most importantly, political economic strands of the classical Marxist legacy to create a new and contemporary Marxian political economy. These authoritative volumes will be an essential reference point for an analysis of one of the most influential political ideologies of the 20th century. (shrink)

I defend moral objectivism against charges that it cannot plausibly preserve or explain morality's action-guiding nature. I take as my starting point the intuitive view that morality has a special connection to motivation: one who genuinely accepts a moral verdict must have a motivating reason to follow its dictates and, indeed, must often enough be motivated to act as it recommends. ;Many have argued that this connection vindicates subjectivism. Some argue that there can be no universally accessible truths whose acknowledgements (...) necessarily give one reason to act, because all reasons for action are based on desires that vary across rational agents. I argue against the Humean doctrine, implicit in this claim, that beliefs alone cannot move rational agents. The 18th-century metaphors of "passive" belief and "active" desire rest on arguments which either beg the question, equivocate, or misunderstand what would be involved in attributing the appropriate motivational power to belief. Others ground their objection in morality's holistic tie to desire, claiming that desires distort truth, rather than reveal it to us. I argue that there is nothing mysterious about the idea that possession of certain desires can be preconditions to seeing how things are. (shrink)