Re: Creativity

You can mechanize your own creativity through categorical substitution. For
instance, suppose I wanted to write an adventure story and I started
thinking about using a businessman as the main character.  But a businessman
seems a little dull for my story, and since I would want the main character
to heroically defeat the bad guys, I might try some different occupations
for him. I could try soldier, policeman, a businessman with a military
background, etc.  Or perhaps he is a businessman who had been involved in
some minor illegal businesses in his past like smuggling.  These
occupational substitutions are categorical: Businessman, soldier, policeman,
smuggler.

In addition to categorical substitution there are other associative methods
that can be used to "automate" your creativity.

Then I would have to fit the pieces of the story together to see if they
make sense.  For instance, how would anyone with a wild past be content to
live the life of a dull businessman.  One answer is that people are not
consistent, and it happens all of the time.  Another answer is that I could
use the past life to help explain the story.  The dull businessman had once
been involved in some risk-taking, and his gradual involvement in the
adventure that I am writing about might be explained by a suppressed desire
to be involved in something out of the ordinary.  Why did he become a dull
businessman?  Because he has a family, and he didn't want to expose them to
the risks that his former life and the people he met in that life might
present.

So an "automated" process of creativity can generate ideas, and through
integration a novel idea can lead you toward story lines that are creative,
entertaining and might even seem plausible.

Jim Bromer

"M. Ciumeica" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Greetings, everyone.
>
> While I'm not a mathematician or a physhologist, I've taken cognitive
> philosophy as a secondary course here at my university, and I've yet
> to figure out the answer to a set of simple questions, which seem to
> bother my teacher a lot:
>
>  What is creativity? How exactly do you define it, and how do you
> simulate it? Is it purely random, or it is somehow linked to our
> memory?
>
> So far, I wasn't able to produce a suitable answer to them. Maybe
> someone here could help?
>
> Thank you.
>
>  -- Mihai.