This document discusses creativity from a cognitive science perspective. It focuses on theories of creativity and computational models of creativity. The document examines definitions of creativity that involve producing something novel and useful. It also discusses transforming conceptual spaces as a way to achieve genuine creativity rather than just novelty, such as by dropping or negating constraints within a conceptual space. The document references several computational models that have been created to generate creative works in different styles like music, stories, and drawings.

1. What is creativity?:
A Cognitive Science approach
Prof. Filippo Fabrocini
2015/07/06

2. Video from David Cope:
Experiments in Musical Intelligence
(EMI)

3. They focus on the four Ps:
- Product
- Person
- Place
- Process
Theories of creativity

4. Do you know
how the first
abstract painting
was created?

5. Wassily Kandinsky, Composition VII, 1913. The State Tretyakov Museum, Russia
One evening in the summer of 1909, Wassily Kandinsky became
aware of the power of abstract art after he saw “indescribable
beauty with an inner glow” in a painting.
“I was startled momentarily, then quickly went up to this
enigmatic painting in which I could see nothing but shapes and
colours and the content of which was incomprehensible to me.”
The answer to the riddle came immediately: it was one of his
own pictures leaning upside down against the wall. But from then
on, Kandinsky was bewitched by the idea that “subject matter
was detrimental to my paintings”.

6. Claude Monet, Wheatstack (Sun in the mist), 1891. Minneapolis Institute of Art.

7. The nine dot puzzle (1)

8. The nine dot puzzle (3)

9. The nine dot puzzle (4)
...The puzzle seems
difficult only
because "we
imagine a boundary
around the edge of
the dot array".
Prof. Daniel Kies

10. The way we look at the problem is an essential part of the problem itself!

11. The main features of any definition of creativity are the following:
"Over the course of the last decade, however, we seem to have reached a general
agreement that creativity involves the production of novel, useful products” (Mumford,
2003)
Behind the definitions... (1)
1. Creativity is the novel combination of old ideas (unpredictability)
2. The novel combination of ideas must be worthwhile
The surprise caused by a creative idea must be due to the improbability of the combination
of such ideas.
 What is generally unexplained by the combination-theory are the mechanisms according
to which this new combination of old ideas arises.

12. Behind the definitions… (2)
 The combination-theory does not explain the most interesting
cases of creativity: many creative ideas are surprising because they
concern novel ideas which could not have happened before (did not
happen before ≠ could not have happened before).

13. - Psychological view: what is creativity? how is it possible?
- Computational view: what are the mental processes involved by
creativity?
The computational view

14. Linguistics speaks of the "creativity" of natural
language, by which it means that language is
an unending source of novel sentences.
Yet these sentences are novelties which clearly
could have happened before, being generated by
the same rules that can generate other
sentences in the language. Any native speaker
could produce novel sentences using the
relevant grammar.
First-time newness vs. radical originality

15. The Computational Theory of Mind
- a set of representations
- a set of operators
- a set of constraints
The Computational Theory of Mind holds that mind is basically an algorithmic device. In this
view thinking means searching a specific search space defined by:
Search space, representations, operators, constraints define the conceptual space in which
ordinary thinking takes place. Therefore ordinary thinking is a search over an ordinary, not
necessarily deductive, search space, while creative thought is a meta-search using a different
set of operators.

16. The main hypothesis
 A merely novel idea is one which can be produced by the same
set of generative rules as are other, familiar ideas.
A genuinely original, or creative, idea is one
which cannot.

17. To justify calling an idea creative, then, one must specify the particular set of generative
principles--what one might call the conceptual space--with respect to which it is
impossible. Conceptual spaces are established styles of thinking.
Creative search implies changing or extending the constraints, the operators, the
representations, the search space itself. It means creating a new conceptual space, a new
style of thinking.
Creativity and
Computational Theory of Mind

18. What is it to transform
a conceptual space? (1)
- Non-Euclidean geometry
- Pollocks’s abstract painting
- Schoenberg's atonal music
- Oscar Wilde’s Dorian Gray
Dropping a constraint is, for instance, a general heuristic for transforming conceptual spaces:

19. Negating a constraint is another general heuristic for transforming conceptual spaces:
Kekule’s discovery of the benzene ring is a good example of the use of this heuristic.
In the past Kekule had assumed that any organic molecule is based on strings of carbon
atoms. He negated this assumption starting from the following three considerations:
1. The possibility of using “negative’ heuristics
2. The topological assumption that a string is an open curve
3. The analogy between snakes, curves and molecules
What is it to transform
a conceptual space? (2)

20. What do we need for a scientific
account of creativity?
- The notion of “conceptual space” must be clearly identified and mapped
- A theory of analogical reasoning must be provided
- A theory of case-based reasoning must be provided
- The notion of “meta-search” and the corresponding operators must be clearly
identified and mapped
As concerns the combinatorial-theory:

21. Computational models of
creativity
- EMI (David Cope): creates music in different styles;
- MINSTREL (Scott Turner): composes novel stories;
- AARON (Harold Cohen): generates line-drawings;
- EURISKO (Douglas Lenat): generates and explores mathematical concepts;
…plus many others such as: BACON, DENDRAL, TALE-SPIN, etc.
- Margaret Boden, The Creative Mind: Myths and Mechanisms, New York, Basic, 1991
- Douglas Hofstadter, Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies, London, Harvester, 1995
Some references:

22. Thanks!