Creative Problem-Solving in Art: A Model for Idea Inception and Image Development

A model for creative problem-solving specific to the creation of art is proposed. The development of the Osborn-Parnes and Isaksen-Treffinger models are reviewed. An adaptation of the Osborn-Parnes/Isaksen-Treffinger models is presented. The Model for Idea Inception and Image Development in Art is presented with five primary stages: Associative Exploration, Problem Parameter Exploration, Multiple Focus Exploration, Primary Focus Exploration and Refinement. Transitional stages are delineated. The significance and implications of the model for artists, students and instructors in art education are discussed.     

The Point of Creative Frustration and the Creative Process: A New Look at an Old Model

An extension of Graham Wallas's model of the creative process is presented. Wallas's stages of preparation, Incubation, Illumination and Verification are reviewed, extended and integrated with the present model. Periods of Problem-Solving, Incubation and Growth are established with specific points of Initial Idea Inception, Creative Frustration and Illumination. The idea that a specific point of creative frustration occurring within the creative process is introduced. Responses to the Point of Creative Frustration are proposed: Denial, Rationalization, Acceptance of Stagnation and New Growth. The significance of the extended model is discussed.     

Social influences on creativity: Evaluation,coaction, and surveillance

Numerous anecdotal accounts exist of an incubation period promoting creativity and problem solving. This article examines whether incubation is an empirically verifiable phenomenon and the possible role therein of nonconscious processing. An Idea Generation Test was employed to examine (a) whether an incubation effect occurred and (b) the impact of different types of break on this effect. In the Idea Generation Test, two groups of participants were given a distracting break, during which they completed either a similar or an unrelated task, and a third group worked continuously (N = 90). The Idea Generation Test was validated against established measures of cognitive ability and personality, and was found to exhibit variance distinct from those marker tests. Most important, results demonstrated that having a break during which one works on a completely different task is more beneficial for idea production than working on a similar task or generating ideas continuously. The advantage afforded by a break cannot be accounted for in terms of relief from functional fixedness or general fatigue, and, although it may be explicable by relief from task-specific fatigue, explanations of an incubation effect in terms of nonconscious processing should be (re)considered.     

The concept of the simulacrum: Deleuze and the overturning of Platonism

This article examines Gilles Deleuze’s concept of the simulacrum, which Deleuze formulated in the context of his reading of Nietzsche’s project of “overturning Platonism.” The essential Platonic distinction, Deleuze argues, is more profound than the speculative distinction between model and copy, original and image. The deeper, practical distinction moves between two kinds of images or eidolon, for which the Platonic Idea is meant to provide a concrete criterion of selection “Copies” or icons (eikones) are well-grounded claimants to the transcendent Idea, authenticated by their internal resemblance to the Idea, whereas “simulacra” (phantasmata) are like false claimants, built on a dissimilarity and implying an essential perversion or deviation from the Idea. If the goal of Platonism is the triumph of icons over simulacra, the inversion of Platonism would entail an affirmation of the simulacrum as such, which must thus be given its own concept. Deleuze consequently defines the simulacrum in terms of an internal dissimilitude or “disparateness,” which in turn implies a new conception of Ideas, no longer as self-identical qualities (the auto kath’hauto), but rather as constituting a pure concept of difference. An inverted Platonism would necessarily be based on a purely immanent and differential conception of Ideas. Starting from this new conception of the Idea, Deleuze proposes to take up the Platonic project anew, rethinking the fundamental figures of Platonism (selection, repetition, ungrounding, the question-problem complex) on a purely differential basis. In this sense, Deleuze’s inverted Platonism can at the same time be seen as a rejuvenated Platonism and even a completed Platonism.     

Conceptual Art,Ideas, and Ontology

Peter Goldie and Elisabeth Schellekens have recently articulated the Idea Idea, the thesis that “in conceptual art, there is no physical medium: the medium is the idea.” But what is an idea, and in the case of works such as Duchamp's Fountain, how does the idea relate to the urinal? In answering these questions, it becomes apparent that the Idea Idea should be rejected. After showing this, I offer a new ontology of conceptual art, according to which such artworks are not ideas but artifacts imbued with ideas. After defending this view from objections, I briefly discuss some implications it has for the ontology of art in general.     

Reviews

Dray, William H., History as Re-enactment: R.G. Collingwood's Idea of History
Lamarque, Peter, Fictional Points of View     

Book Reviews

Books reviewed:
John Lachs, In Love with Life: Reflections on the Joy of Living and Why We Hate To Die
Lou Marinoff, Plato not Prozac: Applying Philosophy to Everyday Problems
Victoria Davion and Clark Wolf (eds), The Idea of a Political Liberalism: Essays on Rawls     

Reviews

Books reviewed in this article:
Richard Allen and Malcolm Turvey (eds), Wittgenstein, Theory and the Arts
Christopher Cordner, Ethical Encounter: The Depth of Moral Meaning
Stephen Horton (ed), Michael Durrant, Sortals and the Subject–Predicate Distinction
Duke Maskell and Ian Robinson, The New Idea of a University     

Reviews

Thomas Ryba, The Essence of Phenomenology and Its Meaning for the Scientific Study of Religion
Daniel C. Dennett, Darwin's Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meaning of Life
Edited by Clifford N. Matthews and Roy A. Varghese, Cosmic Beginnings and Human Ends: Where Science and Religion Meet     

Reviews

Books reviewed:
William H. Brenner, Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations
John W. Cook, Wittgenstein, Empiricism and Language
Frank Cioffi, Wittgenstein on Freud and Frazer
Brian R. Clack, Wittgenstein, Frazer and Religion
Nigel Pleasants, Wittgenstein and the Idea of a Critical Social Theory     

Book Reviews

Books reviewed:
Randy E. Barnett, The Structure of Liberty: Justice and the Rule of Law
Scott Soames, Understanding Truth
David C. Jacobs (ed), The Presocratics After Heidegger
Daniel C. Dennett, Brainchildren: Essays on Designing Minds
Jerry A. Fodor, Concepts: Where Cognitive Science Went Wrong
John Haugeland, Having Thought: Essays in the Metaphysics of Mind
Brian Garrett, Personal Identity and Self-Consciousness
JoséLuis Bermúdez, The Paradox of Self-Consciousness
Alan Patten, Hegel's Idea of Freedom
Amie L. Thomasson, Fiction and Metaphysics     

《周氏太极图》原图考

本文以朱震所列周敦颐<太极图>"动阳"二字的标注为突破口,对比杨甲<六经图>、<道藏·周易图>所列及朱熹改造等诸流变图,结合周敦颐<太极图易说>及<易通>的文字叙述,考证了周敦颐<太极图>的原貌.笔者认为,对<周氏太极图>的考辨,应从其"流变"人手,进而求得其图之原貌,然后方可进入考证其图之来源.文中指出:周敦颐以太极为一气,主太极有动静而生阳生阴之说,而朱熹则以太极为一理,而"理不会自动静",动静只是阴阳自身之动静,出于建立其理学系统的需要,便有意对杨甲所列<周氏太极图>进行了改造.于是,通过比较二人太极观之不同,便可从中分辨<太极图>原图与改造图之间的差别,从而分析其二人各自的理学思想.     

Book Reviews

Books reviewed in this article:
Benjamin Morison, On Location: Aristotle's Concept of Place
James G. Lennox (ed.), Aristotle: On the Parts of Animals
Bryan W. van Norden (ed.), Confucius and the Analects: New Essays
Katherine Hawley, How Things Persist
John Perry, Knowledge, Possibility and Consciousness
Michael Tye, Consciousness, Color and Content
Peter Goldie, The Emotions: a Philosophical Exploration
Christopher Cordner, Ethical Encounter: the Depth of Moral Meaning
Mary Warnock, Making Babies: Is There a Right to Have Children?
David Braybrooke, Natural Law Modernized
Gordon Graham Universities: the Recovery of an Idea     

Book Reviews

Books reviewed in this article:
Peter Kivy, The Possessor and the Possessed: Handel, Mozart, Beethoven, and the Idea of Musical Genius
Kirk Pillow, Sublime Understanding: Aesthetic Reflection in Kant and Hegel
William Irwin, Intentionalist Interpretation: A Philosophical Explanation and Defense
Allen Carlson, Aesthetics and the Environment: The Appreciation of Nature, Art, and Architecture
Elizabeth Grosz, Architecture from the Outside
David Leatherbarrow, Uncommon Ground: Architecture, Technology, and Topography
Caroline Joan S. Picart, Thomas Mann and Friedrich Nietzsche: Eroticism, Death, Music, and Laughter
Caroline Joan S. Picart, Resentment and the "Feminine" in Nietzsche's Politico–Aesthetics     

Effects of reading span and textual coherence on rapid-sequential reading

Subjects’ Comprehension and Memory of Conventional Presentations (Pages) And Rapid, Serial Visual Presentations (Rsvps) Of Text Were Investigated With A Statement-Recognition Test. Texts Were Presented With Sentences in An Intact Or A Scrambled Order At Rates Of 300 And 600 Words Per Minute (Wpm). Subjects’ Memory for Text Meaning And Surface Structure Was Better In 300-Than In 600-Wpm Conditions, And Subjects Retained More Textual Meaning From Coherent than Incoherent Texts Regardless of Display Rates. These Findings Are Inconsistent With the Idea That Rapid Reading Disrupts the Intersentence Integration Processes of Comprehension, but are Consistent With The Hypothesis of Consolidation Limitation: Furthermore, Subjects Were Separated Into Two Groups Based on Their Performance on the Reading Span Test of Daneman And Carpenter (1980). Low-Span Subjects Retained Significantly Less Text Meaning than High-Span Subjects with Pages, But They Did Almost As Well With RSVPs. This Interaction Suggests that the RSVP Technique Could Be Useful For Improving the Reading Abilities of Less Efficient Readers.     

Book Reviews

Book reviewed in this article: Saints: Visible, Orderly and Catholic — the Congregational Idea of the Church, by Alan P.F. Sell. The Chronicle of the Hutterian Brethren, Volume I. The Oxford Dictionary of Saints, ed. David Hugh Farmer. Conflict and Context: Hermeneutics in the Americas, ed. by Mark Lau Branson and C. René Padilla. The Churches and Racism: a Black South African Perspective, by Zolile Mbali.     

Critical Notices

The Law of Peoples, with "The Idea of Public Reason Revisited". john rawls .
William James and the Metaphysics of Experience. david c. lamberth .     

How rejection of essences expresses despair

The Self and the ego in Jung's psychology are an instance of what Edmund Husserl called a 'double intentionality': one tending toward meaning is distinct from another tending toward meaning, yet they are reciprocally inseparable from each other. As perception in a present moment and memory of a past are impossible without each other, so an intending of ego and that of Self are impossible without each other. Accompanying the ego (mostly in the background) during each moment of time is a tending towards a particular Idea or essence. This reciprocity is expressed in a unique way over a lifetime and is like the relation of mother and child, and so it is important for all of us born of women to retain a sense of essences and the fullness of Self. 'Constructivism', however, is a current belief held by some feminists, and it influences both theorizing and practice in analytical psychology. It involves a rejection of essences, a revision of Jung's Idea of Self, and an attempt to conduct analysis without reference to an intentional subjective Self. Such constructivist revision expresses a despair both about essences as Ideas and about Self as intentional and subjective. It is despair over Self in a Kierkegaardian sense.     

Forest lights: Notes on the conceptualization of the unconscious

Using the metaphor of lights appearing unexplained in the night, the author argues for a conceptualization of the unconscious based on a posture of trust and acceptance rather than one of fear and explanation.His last book,Idea and Experience, dealt with Husserl's project of phenomenology inIdeas I. He has recently completed another book,The Embers and the Stars: A Philosophical Inquiry into the Moral Sense of Nature.     

Reviews

Book reviewed in this article:
Political Philosophy 1: Rights. The New Quarrel between the Ancients and the Modems. By Luc Ferry, translated by Franklin Philip.
Political Philosophy 2: The System of Philosophies of History. By Luc Ferry, translated by Franklin Philip
Political Philosophy 3: From the Rights of Man to the Republican Idea. By Luc Ferry and Alain Renaut, translated by Franklin Philip
Philosophic du Droit. By Alain Renaut and Lukas Sosoe.
Theories of Truth. A Critical Introduction. By Richard L. Kirkham.
Understanding Phenomenology. By Michael Hammond, Jane Howarth, Russell Keat
Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth: Philosophical Papers, Volume 1. By Richard Rorty
Essays on Heidegger and Others: Philosophical Papers, Volume 2. By Richard Rorty
Marxism Recycled. By Phillipe Van Parijs