One could say that we humans are the creative result of processes found in the natural world unless non-agents can not truly create something. We can say that the glacier created the fjord but, in some sense, it did not intend to do so because inanimate things can not have mental representations (so we assume, but can not truly know).
Creativity is a characteristic applied to those beings that demonstrate some degree of novelty in their creation. But, certainly it does not take novelty to simply create. But, to be creative, as in the adjective, implies more than just any action that results in the production of something.
If a student builds a birdhouse that looks exactly like the sample model for the class, then he or she certainly created something but they are not necessarily creative. However, a student who builds a very ornate and irregular birdhouse with novel features will have both demonstrated creativity at the same time he or she created something.
I think the important aspects of creativity involve the imagination and novelty. Imagination is our ability to compare and manipulate mental representations so that there is a degree of difference between the creative result and previously constructed things or ideas. A creative expression could be a painting that is, to some degree or another, different than any painting that has ever been painted.
Just by being a separate object a painting would not necessarily qualify as creative. The painting must have a degree of originality to it in form, composition, subject, or style.
A creative expression could be a novel that draws on ideas from the author's previously read stories and books. The more unlike anything that has ever been observed a particular creative expression is, the more creative it can be said to be. However, creation that denies any familiarity to previously observed creations will run the risk of being too alien to others.
This is largely the central theme of Frederick Nietzsche's analysis of the Apollonian and Dionysian forces that must work in balance to create good art. The objectivity (or Apollonian side) of a piece of art must be maintained so that others can, to some degree, relate to it.
Books, for instance, must be written in a known language for them to be read at all or understood at all. The subjectivity (or Dionysian side) of a piece of art must also be maintained for the art to be novel, interesting, or original.
We can not simply copy someone else's words and say that we created it. This idea has gone so far as to be a violation of copyright in much of the world.
What is original and what is not is a rather subjective matter and an ongoing legal debate continues to redefine and interpret what, exactly, qualifies as created and what qualifies as stolen or, in other words, what is too close to someone else's creation.
Some say that nothing original can possibly be done or said. I would argue that this is completely false because each new way in which any idea is expressed is novel and, moreover, there are infinite concepts and formulations that have never been conceived or formulated before. I would say, rather, that there are infinite completely original ideas yet to be thought of.
There is a link between creativity and mental illness that has been found many times over. It is not that all mentally ill people tend to be creative but that a great number of creative people tend to be mentally ill.
Perhaps this has something to do with the way in which various areas of the mentally ill mind associate or communicate that is different than the mind's of others.
How would we program a computer to be creative? By doing things that the computer has never done before, it will, essentially, be creative.
A creative chess program would, as part of it's programming, be inclined to try novel moves in the chess game that it has not, in reference to a database of past games, made before. |
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But, this creativity in playing chess would have to be balanced with objective understanding of the particular rules and winning strategies of the past.
Otherwise, the creativity will, in effect, go too far and become insanity. A program that paints could either be directed to abstract from some given representation, perhaps a facial portrait, or create an expressionist piece from scratch based on fuzzy logic neural networks that allow for degrees of intention about particular paint strokes.
Creativity gone too far towards the subjective, Dionysian force, will be looked at as insanity. For instance, one could say that the following sentence, CS1, is, to some degree, creative:
CS1: "Every summer, along Amsterdam's canals, beautiful, multi-colored tulips adorn the streets like open crayola box tops."
But, while the next sentence, CS2, is, to some degree, creative, it is too subjective to be understood:
CS2: "Eva Sumla is WATER FLOWER COLORS winat WAXCRAYONOLAS"
If CS2 was how I wrote, I would not be considered creative but in need of help.
