Creativity,biology, and culture: Further comments on evolution of the creative mind

Abstract:

Lumsden and Findlay (1988) presented a sociobiological model concerned with the ontogeny of the creative act and its potential influences on geneculture coevolution. In reviewing the content and implications of this model, we found that it is consistent with certain aspects of the creative process, and that it suggests several promising new research avenues. When the ongoing debate concerning biological and cultural determinants of human behavior was considered, however, we came to the conclusion that biologically based models must be applied cautiously, particularly as they pertain to cultural innovation.     

The chimpanzee mind: in search of the evolutionary roots of the human mind

One advantage of living in a social group is the opportunity to use information provided by other individuals. Social information can be based on cues provided by a conspecific or even by a heterospecific individual (e.g., gaze direction, vocalizations, pointing gestures). Although the use of human gaze and gestures has been extensively studied in primates, and is increasingly studied in other mammals, there is no documentation of birds using these cues in a cooperative context. In this study, we tested the ability of three African gray parrots to use different human cues (pointing and/or gazing) in an object-choice task. We found that one subject spontaneously used the most salient pointing gesture (looking and steady pointing with hand at about 20 cm from the baited box). The two others were also able to use this cue after 15 trials. None of the parrots spontaneously used the steady gaze cues (combined head and eye orientation), but one learned to do so effectively after only 15 trials when the distance between the head and the baited box was about 1 m. However, none of the parrots were able to use the momentary pointing nor the distal pointing and gazing cues. These results are discussed in terms of sensitivity to joint attention as a prerequisite to understand pointing gestures as it is to the referential use of labels.     

How the mind works

by Steven Pinker, W.W. Norton & Co., 1997. $29.95 (xii+660 pages) ISBN 0 393 04535 8.     

Homelessness in the mind

In this article, I am going to present several related, themes, based on data gathered from years of consulting to homelessness services, particularly staff and management working in the voluntary sector, who are responsible for the teams that deliver care to some of the most vulnerable and challenging individuals in society. The three concepts that I will put forward are as follows: firstly, the idea that there is a fundamental human concern, or state, regarding homelessness. What I will refer to as 'homelessness in the mind'. I will consider this from psychoanalytic and systems-psychodynamic viewpoints and explore the idea of an internalised homeless state and the structures which attempt to contain it. Second, is an almost universal hatred and repulsion of this state and a need for its expulsion and relocation, in phantasy, into individuals and services associated with the homeless population. Next, I will link the concept of homelessness in the mind with Bion’s idea of sophisticated/specialised basic assumption groups; groups, budded off from mainstream society to contain specific psychological aspects of the population. I will suggest that the associated psychological stressors and pressures of homelessness, and ‘homelessness in the mind’ and its subdivisions, dependency and shame, relate to aggressive and violent elements associated with the inability to correctly process, engage with, or contain, specific internal states related to homelessness. Throughout, I will refer to my practice as an organisational consultant, and my experience of working with managers and teams who work with the homeless population.     

Spatial metaphors of the mind

A case in which the author began to understand her patient as "collapsing the space between them," rather than as continuing only to free associate, is the occasion for a contemplation of the way psychoanalytic theory effects a transition between what is inner, or lived, and outer, or experienced. Metaphor is seen as the agent of this transition. The author discusses metaphor in relation to the case described, while also examining spatial metaphors of mind in classical analysis and in Kleinian theory. It is suggested that both may be integrated in a third metaphorical-spatial construct, Green's analytic space.     

How to share a mind: Reconsidering the group mind thesis

Standard accounts in social ontology and the group cognition debate have typically focused on how collective modes, types, and contents of intentions or representational states must be construed so as to constitute the jointness of the respective agents, cognizers, and their engagements. However, if we take intentions, beliefs, or mental representations all to instantiate some mental properties, then the more basic issue regarding such collective engagements is what it is for groups of individual minds to share a mind. Somewhat surprisingly, this very issue has not received much attention in the respective debates and when it has, typically the outlook has been skeptical or outright negative. In this paper, I argue that it is epistemologically possible for a group of individuals to literally share a single mental unit. In particular, I will put forward and defend what I shall call the zombie conception of group minds.     

Keeping the reader's mind in mind: Development of perspective-taking in children's dictations

This study investigated when children can take the perspective of their reader if the information-processing demands of writing are removed by means of dictation to a scribe. Participants (N = 96) aged 5, 6 and 7 years dictated letters to an addressee who possessed requisite content knowledge, and then revised the letter or dictated a new letter to an addressee who lacked this knowledge (counterbalanced). Results showed that 19% of 5-year-olds, 41% of 6-year-olds, and 72% of 7-year-olds considered their reader's missing knowledge. Children's awareness of their reader's knowledge was neither related to performance on higher-order theory of mind tasks, nor to measures of executive function. Significantly greater perspective-taking was demonstrated in children's new letters than revised letters. However, although revision is considered a late-developing skill, half of even the 5-year-olds were able to make revisions (albeit few revisions demonstrated actual perspective-taking). Findings have significant implications for the emergent-literacy curriculum.     

Dimensions of mind

In their papers for this issue, Sterelny and Sutton provide a dimensional analysis of some of the ways in which mental and cognitive activities take place in the world. I add two further dimensions, a dimension of manipulation and of transformation. I also discuss the explanatory dimensions that we might use to explain these cases.     

Non-reductivism and the metaphilosophy of mind

ABSTRACT

This paper discusses the metaphilosophical assumptions that have dominated analytic philosophy of mind, and how they gave rise to the central question that the best-known forms of non-reductivism available have sought to answer, namely: how can mind fit within nature? Its goal is to make room for forms of non-reductivism that have challenged the fruitfulness of this question, and which have taken a different approach to the so-called “placement” problem. Rather than trying to solve the placement problem, the forms of non-reductivism discussed in this paper have put pressure on the metaphilosophical assumptions that have given rise to the question of the place of mind in nature in the first instance.     

Searle on rediscovering the mind

John R. Searle,The Rediscovery of the Mind (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1992), 270 pp. $22.50. I would like to thank my colleagues Bernard Dauenhauer and Beth Preston for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of this essay.     

Pragmatism and the predictive mind

Predictive processing and its apparent commitment to explaining cognition in terms of Bayesian inference over hierarchical generative models seems to flatly contradict the pragmatist conception of mind and experience. Against this, I argue that this appearance results from philosophical overlays at odd with the science itself, and that the two frameworks are in fact well-poised for mutually beneficial theoretical exchange. Specifically, I argue: first, that predictive processing illuminates pragmatism’s commitment to both the primacy of pragmatic coping in accounts of the mind and the profound organism-relativity of experience; second, that this pragmatic, “narcissistic” character of prediction error minimization undermines its ability to explain the distinctive normativity of intentionality; and third, that predictive processing therefore mandates an extra-neural account of intentional content of exactly the sort that pragmatism’s communitarian vision of human thought can provide.     

Peering into the opaque mind

Abstract

Carolyn Saarni’s pioneering research showed that young children learn how to hide their feelings—to conceal disappointment with a smile or to conceal amusement with a neutral expression. By 6 years of age, children understand the implications of such concealment. They can distinguish between: (i) an individual’s true but hidden emotion; (ii) the emotion that the individual overtly expresses; and (iii) the emotion that other people might mistakenly attribute to the individual. Effectively, young children grasp that the mind is opaque. Its contents can remain hidden from others. We examine two issues raised by this important conceptual insight. First, we ask how it emerges in young children—what experiences lead them to acknowledge the mind’s opacity? Second, in light of Saarni’s emphasis on the impact of cultural beliefs and practices, we discuss anthropological evidence that in certain cultures the mind’s opacity is regarded as a social desideratum so that enquiries into, or speculations about, a person’s private mental states are regarded as inappropriate. We consider the understanding of hidden emotion that children will acquire if they grow up in such a culture. We propose—paradoxically—that they will readily differentiate between what is actually felt and what is overtly expressed. We conclude by reviewing recent cross-cultural evidence lending initial support to that prediction.     

Functional integration and the mind

Different cognitive functions recruit a number of different, often overlapping, areas of the brain. Theories in cognitive and computational neuroscience are beginning to take this kind of functional integration into account. The contributions to this special issue consider what functional integration tells us about various aspects of the mind such as perception, language, volition, agency, and reward. Here, I consider how and why functional integration may matter for the mind; I discuss a general theoretical framework, based on generative models, that may unify many of the debates surrounding functional integration and the mind; and I briefly introduce each of the contributions.