creativity

What is involved when we think up an idea or engage in the free play of imagination? Take a simple example. I imagine a golden horse. Where does this horse come from? There seem to be five possibilities.

(1) The golden horse is the result of psychological laws having to do with mental events. Earlier mental events are lawfully connected in such a way (via "association") to produce this new imagine in the mind (Hume0

(2) The golden horse is produced by consciousness. Its not an idea "inside" the mind, but rather an object that is produced and sustained by the activity of consciousness (Sartre)

(3) The image is produced by a substantial self, an immaterial ego that has the power to will, and one of the things it wills, is the golden horse object. (Descartes, various agent causation people)

(4) The image is produced by physiological processes in the brain. Its not produced by anything mental, but by physical brain processes of one sort or another (epiphenomenalists, some non-redutive materialists)

(5) The image itself, along with its cause are themselves physical processes. (standard materialists views)

I hope I did not leave anything out. Assuming I did not, then it follows that on any of these views creativity is a radical thing. It is, literally, the creation of a new object (or image), out of nothing. Unlike familiar examples of physical world causation, does not re-arange, there is no energy or matter that is "conserved." It is really, not just nominally, creative.

If my image is the result of psychological laws relating to images, then certain previous mental states are necessary and sufficient for the creation of a new one. Its not that the prior states are re-aranged or transformed. they simple combine together to produce something utterly new, the golden horse image. I don't find this view plausible because it rejects the spontaneity of the will, but even if it was true, it would still be the case that creativity creates something new. The existence of prior causal conditions does not change the fact that the new image is itself not made of anything that existed it prior. it is, literally created ex nihilo.

On the more plausible Sartrean view, the situation is even more obvious. Consciousness spontaneously produces the image. The image is an object before consciousness not inside it. Through a kind of spontaneous activity that each of us is reflectively aware of we make the golden horse appear before us. Its not an existent thing, not a physical object, but it is phenomenological datum that is present and obtains only because of the creative conscious activity. Again, this is a case of creation ex nihilo.

On the agent causation view, the situation is simliar, though on this view the self is more robust, the phenomenology of creation is the same. Whatever a self or ego might be, it certainly does not contain the material out of which our imagined objects are produced.

Let us consider the epiphenomenalist view. On this sort of view, the mental image is created by the brain. But the mental image is still mental, still ontologicaly distinct from the physical processes in the brain. So on this view too, the mental object is created ex nihilo. It is a new addition to the world

Finally we have the standard materialist understanding of the mind. Only if this view is correct is creativity not genuinely creative. If my image is simply a process going on in my brain, however this is understood, the process is itself made up of physical matter, matter that existed prior to the existence of the image. the causal process of mental creativity is thus no different from material object causation, matter and energy are conserved, and the newness is, fundamentally, simply a matter of re-arangement

Therefore, if we think standard materialism is false, we should also believe that creation ex nihilo is a reality whenever we imagine or think up anything.