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The Notion of Creativity Revisited: A Philosophical

Perspective on Creativity ResearchSøren Harnow Klausen

a

aInstitute of Philosophy, Education, and the Study of Religions, University of Southern

Denmark

Available online: 09 Nov 2010

To cite this article: Søren Harnow Klausen (2010): The Notion of Creativity Revisited: A Philosophical Perspective on

Creativity Research, Creativity Research Journal, 22:4, 347-360

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The Notion of Creativity Revisited: A PhilosophicalPerspective on Creativity Research

Søren Harnow Klausen

Institute of Philosophy, Education, and the Study of Religions,

University of Southern Denmark

This article is a critical, yet constructive, review of some recent attempts to define andunderstand creativity, informed by the methods and debates of contemporary philosophy.I argue that the definitional project is not essential to creativity research, but important

nevertheless. The standard definition of creativity as the production of something thatis both novel and appropriate is on the right track, but needs further qualification andtends to be elaborated in ways that make it either too narrow or too broad. I argue thatthe product, and not the person or process, should be viewed as the primary bearer of creativity and criticize some influential theorists for making creativity too strongly depen-dent on social acceptance, while also recognizing that the realist alternative tends towiden, and thus threatens to trivialize, the central notion of an appropriate product.The notion of response-dependence might be of some help to find the proper balancebetween the two extremes, and some comparisons with evolutionary theory also help toshed further light on the problem. Finally, I try to spell out the practical consequencesof my investigation for creativity research.

THE NEED FOR CONCEPTUAL ANALYSIS

People seldom know exactly what they talk about. Theydo not think about the meaning of the words they use,and if asked to do so, they are usually not able toprovide any tenable definition. This is so not only ineveryday life, but even within large parts of science. Itseems particularly ubiquitous in the social and businesssciences, where one can get away with writing ascholarly book on the impact of knowledge on societywithout the slightest attempt at defining or clarifyingwhat one means by the term knowledge. Although thishas been an annoyance, especially to philosophers,

who have been complaining about semantic ignorancesince the time of Socrates, there may be nothing veryproblematic about it. It seems that individuals mostlydo succeed in communicating their thoughts and coordi-nating their practical tasks, and this indicates that they

have a sufficient implicit grasp of the meaning of theirconcepts, even if they elude their capacities for reflectiveknowledge and explication. Since conceptual analysis is,at any rate, a notoriously difficult and controversialbusiness, it is understandable that science does not awaitthe resolution of definitional disputes, but simply moveson to inquire deeper into the nature of those things andphenomena to which individuals seemingly refer withtheir concepts. Amabile (1996) thus remarked, veryaptly, that ‘‘there is scientific precedence for conductingresearch in the absence of a widely accepted objectivedefinition of the entity under study’’ (p. 19).

It is important to keep this in mind when it turns out,

as argued in this article, that the standard definition of creativity is problematic and maybe in an even worsestate than is generally acknowledged by creativityresearchers themselves. This should not be consideredfatal or scandalous; it need not shake the foundationsof creativity research, even though it is likely to havesome practical consequences.

In fact, creativity research is considerably better off than most comparable fields of study when it comes to

Correspondence should be sent to Søren Harnow Klausen,

Institute of Philosophy, Education, and the Study of Religions,University of Southern Denmark, Campusvej 55, DK-5230 OdenseM, Denmark. E-mail: [email protected]

CREATIVITY RESEARCH JOURNAL, 22(4), 347–360, 2010

Copyright# Taylor & Francis Group, LLCISSN: 1040-0419 print=1532-6934 online

DOI: 10.1080/10400419.2010.523390



conceptual clarity and terminological regimentation.There have been many serious definitional efforts, andthere is widespread awareness of the problems andlimitations of extant definitions (see, e.g., Amabile,1996; Csikzentmihalyi, 1999; Eysenck, 1994; Sternberg,1999, 7). Hence, there can be no question of interveningarrogantly into the field of creativity research, sweeping

away established patterns of thought by means of philo-sophical conceptual analysis. A more appropriate aim isto reveal tensions and difficulties within the establishedframework, argue for further caution, and suggest someminor amendments.

But why bother at all with the definition of creativity,if it is not a practical necessity and likely to presentintractable difficulties? First, even empirically mindedcreativity researchers generally acknowledge the needfor conceptual clarification. Amabile (1996), after urgingthat we should go on studying creativity before havingsettled the definitional issue, hastened to add that this‘‘is not to say, however, that we can postpone indefinitely

any concerns about defining creativity’’ (p. 19). A mainreason for the widespread interest in the definitional issueis that creativity, whatever else it may be, is obviously nota concrete and immediately identifiable phenomenon(Mumford & Gustafson, 1988). It is not like height oracidity, but more like, say, humor or beauty, a qualitythat people—although they may concur in many of theiractual judgments—are prone to disagree about.Yet it isalso something psychologists and educational research-ers are keen to detect and measure. This engenders a needfor precise and explicit criteria: Researchers must knowand be able to state what they are going to look for.Creativity tests have thus been criticized for actually

testing other abilities that are either merely componentsof creativity or factors typically accompanying it (see,e.g., Hocevar, 1981; Ward, 1974). Such criticism, as wellas the development of more appropriate methods,presupposes more than just an implicit grasp of whatcreativity is.

The connection between the interest in the definitionalissue and the interest in devising reliable methods formeasurement and assessment is also the source of oneof the basic problems with the extant creativity defini-tions. In this, as in other areas, there is a tendency toassimilate the definition of the entity under study tothose properties that happen to be most convenientlymeasurable. Although perfectly understandable, thisbegs the question against those who hold creativity tobe an elusive phenomenon or at least something thatdoesn’t have to be manifested in some specific observablebehavior. In the technical vocabulary of analytical philo-sophy, we can say that creativity researchers are pulledtoward verificationism (viz. the view that the nature of an entity, or the meaning of a concept, is determinedby epistemic factors, like the methods or criteria used

to gain knowledge about the entity in question). The bestknown example of this tendency is psychological beha-viorism, which originated out of a legitimate concernfor providing psychology with a scientific basis, butquickly developed into a program of ontologicalreduction, eventually denying the existence of any mentalreality besides behavior or dispositions to behave.

Although behaviorism was soon abandoned, and wehave since learned to be more wary of verificationisttemptations, the tendency persists in more subtle forms.Even those creativity researchers who take pains to dis-tinguish between theoretical and operational definitionsof creativity (such as Amabile, 1996) may still be influ-enced by their concern for empirical applicability whentheorizing about the nature of creativity. In any case,the concern for assessment and measurement of creativ-ity is an important source of interest in the definitionalquestion.

Second, there is widespread suspicion that the notionof creativity is ambiguous. It can hardly be taken for

granted that we all share a common implicit understand-ing of creativity. In fact, there is evidence that concep-tions of creativity differ among people, societies, andcultures. For example, teachers may have in mindfamous cases of artistic genius or specific romanticnotions of creativity when assessing students’ perfor-mances, and thus tend to overlook aspects that should,according to a more inclusive definition, neverthelessbe considered creative (Diakidoy & Kanari, 1999). Ithas also been argued that what has been presented asthe notion of creativity is actually only one—Western,perhaps even Anglo-Saxon—among several culture-dependent notions that differ, for example, as to whether

the product or personal self-growth is most crucial (cf.Lubart, 1999). Lubart (1999) does, however, seem toconfound the context-dependence of notions of creativ-ity (and, especially, views about the creative process)with the context-dependence of creativity itself. Onlyon the implausible assumption that creativity is a thor-oughly socially constructed phenomenon can one intferthe former from the latter. Lubart also adopts the highlycontroversial Sapir-Whorf thesis of linguistic determin-ism, the view that language shapes thought, withoutreservation.

Third, even though it may be difficult to improve verymuch on the extant definitions, examining them criti-cally may reveal finer distinctions within the generalnotion and thus serve to highlight aspects and nuancesof creativity that would otherwise go unnoticed. It mayprovide hints of what to look for, and what to abstractfrom, in empirical studies. Conceptual analysis can beseen as a way of doing ontology, of inquiring into thenature of an entity, even if it needs to be supplementedand informed by empirical studies. In recent years, thismodest yet optimistic view of the conceptual analysis

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has become widely accepted (see, e.g., Jackson, 1998).1

Hence, even if analytical efforts fail to yield a completeand precise definition, they can make people aware andmore knowledgeable about various aspects of creativity.

Fourth, we quite generally do like to know what weare dealing with, regardless of whether this knowledgecan be of much practical use. This is true not least

of creativity, which has been perceived through much of history as both one of the most distinctive features of humanity and a puzzle, if not a mystery. Creativityresearch may be motivated by recognition of theimmense practical importance of creativity and a wishfor being able to foster it more systematically, but thisshould not swamp the element of fundamental curiositythat drives all good science.

DEPARTING FROM THE STANDARD VIEW

According to the received definition, creativity is ‘‘theproduction of ideas which are both novel and useful’’(Sternberg & Lubart, 1999, p. 3). The basic idea behindthis definition is clear: Creativity requires novelty; theobvious contrast to creativity is mere repetition and rep-lication. But not every kind of novelty will do; divergingfrom established practice is not considered creative if itdoes not lead to a positive result. Hence, creativity isabout breaking with norms or practices, doing some-thing unexpected or unpredictable, but still meetingcertain—albeit more liberal—constraints.

So far, so good; but the devil is in the details, andthere is already more than a hint of a dilemma in this

initial description. Problems emerge when one takes acloser look at the more elaborated or individuallyphrased definitions that can be found in contemporarywork on creativity. They reveal not only certain tensionswithin the standard view, but also a not inconsiderabledisagreement beneath the apparent consensus.

For at start, consider what is often mentioned as thebirth of modern theorizing about creativity, Stein’s(1953) suggestion that a creative process must resultin‘‘a novel work that is accepted as tenable or useful orsatisfying by a group at some point in time’’ (p. 311).A problematic, yet probably unintended and easilycorrectible, feature of the definition is that it demands

of a creative process that it must actually result in a workdisplaying the crucial quality, that creativity is necessar-ily successful. This seems overly restrictive. It should bepossible to engage in a genuinely creative process which,

for some reason or another, nevertheless fails to producea result that is accepted as tenable, useful, or satisfying. Itis thus preferable to speak instead of a process which hasa propensity for resulting in a novel work. Inspiration forsuch a move can be found in contemporary epistemology,in which one of the dominant theories—reliabilism— takes a belief to be justified if it has been produced by a

sufficiently reliable process, that is, a process with a sig-nificant propensity for producing true beliefs. This allowsthat a belief can be justified even if it happens to be false(Goldman, 1986). Similarly, a process with a significantpropensity for leading to creative achievements may bedeemed creative even if the actual outcome doesn’texhibit the desired quality.

Apart from this technical quibble, three points areparticularly worth noting.

1. The definition takes creativity to be a property of a certain process, although the process is speci-fied with reference to the peculiar quality of the

work in which it results. This raises the questionof what is the bearer of creativity (see section on‘‘The Bearer of Creativity’’).

2. The definition makes creativity dependent onsocial acceptance, albeit very liberally construed.A work may count as the result of a creative pro-cess even if it is not accepted by a contemporaryaudience; but it must be accepted by some groupat some time. This raises the important issue of the extent to which creativity should be seen asan audience- or judgment-relative property, or,to put it in philosophical terms, the issue of realism versus antirealism with regard to creativ-

ity. Stein (1953) obviously attempts to steer amiddle course, recognizing a certain degree of audience-dependence while allowing that creativeachievements may go unnoticed for a long—per-haps even indefinitely long—time. This is a sensi-ble move; but the issue is complex, and almost anypossible answer to it has its problems (see‘‘Realism, Antirealism, and Response-Dependence’’ section).

3. The quality of the product is defined very broadly.It just has to be tenable, useful, or satisfying. Thisis controversial, although perhaps not quiteimplausible. The invention of a novel word pro-cessor that might be deemed tenable and no doubtcould be useful, but performed less well thanalready existing programs, would probably notbe considered creative. Or it might be, in somecircumstances—think of the invention of techno-logical devices in the Eastern Bloc or in similarconditions in which the global state of the art isnot available or applicable. This highlights twogeneral problems with the extant definitions of

1Devitt (2006) argued that philosophers’ intuitions about themeaning of concepts draw on their empirically based expertise in the

identification of kinds. Lowe (2002) gives a nice account of howreflection on adequate concepts can be source of insight into the natureof things.

THE NOTION OF CREATIVITY REVISITED 349



creativity: Merely being useful or appropriatefor solving a task is not sufficient for being agenuinely creative product. The novelty and use-fulness requirements cannot be split; what weare after is a qualified usefulness, probably anovel kind of usefulness (see ‘‘Novelty and Use-fulness’’ section). And creativity ascriptions seem

to be highly context-dependent: In differentcircumstances, almost anything might count as acreative product.

Most of the problems and issues raised by Stein’s(1953) definition carry over to the more recent propo-sals, and attempts to develop it have given rise to furtherdifficulties. Most definitions vacillate between vaguenessand excessive permissibility on the one hand, and over-specification and excessive restrictiveness on the other;not an extraordinary or crippling defect, but worthnoting nevertheless. Consider Amabile’s (1996) moreelaborate version of the standard view:

A product or response will be judged as creative to theextent that (a) it is both a novel and appropriate, useful,correct or valuable response to the task at hand, and (b)the task is heuristic rather than algorithmic. (p. 35)

At first, this seems overly restrictive. Creativity isviewed as a matter of adapting to given conditions; acreative product must be a ‘‘response to the task athand,’’ and this seems to rule out the possibility of posing a new task instead, which is often seen as oneof the most creative ways of acting (Sternberg, 2006,for example, included ‘‘redefinition,’’ ‘‘redirection,’’

and ‘‘reinitiation’’ of a field in his taxonomy of creativecontributions, p. 96; earlier, Getzels and Csikszentmiha-lyi, 1976, pointed to problem finding as a typical mani-festation of creativity). The restriction, however, ismitigated by the addition that the task must be heuristic.A heuristic task is defined by Amabile (1996) as a taskthat does not have ‘‘a clear and readily identifiable pathto solution,’’ and that ‘‘might or might not have aclearly identifiable goal’’ (p. 35). This is fine for widen-ing the definition, but makes the requirement of being a‘‘response to the task at hand’’ very vague—what is thetask at hand, if it neither has a clear, identifiable path toa solution nor a clearly identifiable goal? It might be justanything.

This is not to say that the definition is wrong or todeny that it is a noticeable accomplishment. I think itis highly intuitive and obviously on the right track; Iam seriously impressed by the care taken by contempo-rary creativity researchers in stating precisely what theymean. But one should be aware that it merely ‘‘passesthe buck,’’ defining creativity in terms of other conceptsthat are also vague and, at best, implicitly understood.

Again, this is nothing special or fatal, but it is worthnoting nevertheless. The following section addressesthe issues raised by the standard view more systemati-cally, spelling out the difficulties as well as suggestingsome solutions.

THE BEARER OF CREATIVITY

There are three obvious candidates for the role as bearerof creativity: persons (including collective subjects suchas groups, organizations, and nations), processes, andproducts. In ordinary language, the term creativity isregularly applied to all three—people say things suchas, ‘‘She’s very creative,’’ but also, ‘‘He was engaged ina creative process,’’ and ‘‘That is one of the most creativeads I have ever seen.’’ Hence, if the aim of the definitionaltask is simply to capture common usage, one has to bevery inclusive in this respect. One may, however, aiminstead to provide a notion that is slightly revisionary

in that it captures large parts of ordinary usage and pre-serves most intuitions while being more perspicuous,coherent, and better suited for purposes of theory devel-opment empirical research—just like, say, the scientificnotion of mass could be said to improve on the folknotion of weight. In any case, it is quite plausible thatone of the three usages is the basis of the other two.

Not surprisingly, recent creativity research has tendedto highlight the creative product (cf. Amabile, 1996). Themain motivation for this choice seems to be methodologi-cal considerations—it is easier to examine products thanprocesses or personality traits—but there are strong con-ceptual reasons for it as well. As Amabile (1996) rightly

noted, it is just difficult to judge the quality of a processexcept as by its fruits. There is widespread consensus inphilosophy that value judgments all relate to the efficacyof achieving goals or ends (see, e.g., Foley, 1987).

The orientation toward the product has, nevertheless,received a fair amount of criticism. As already noted, ithas been claimed to reflect a particular Western concep-tion; the Eastern conception is said to be focused more onthe process (Lubart, 1999). And I have myself arguedthat creative behavior need not actually bring about acreative product. In fact, it should be possible— pace

Bailin (1984)—for a person to be considered creativeeven if she has never created anything. The move froman actual-production view to a propensity-for-producingview severs, to some extent, the link between processand product, retaining the definitional priority of theproduct. Maslow (1963) warned that by focusing on theproduct, one might come to overlook the essence of crea-tivity; because one knows the product already from itsoriginal sources, in its most perfect form, the person failsto recognize the genuine creativity displayed by, say, achild who rediscovers a piece of scientific knowledge.

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I do not, however, think that the criticism and correc-tions suffice to rebut the product-oriented view; I sidewith Amabile (1996) in finding the alternative—a pureprocess view—almost unintelligible. Yet, it should benoted that in areas that appear relevantly similar, viewsthat focus exclusively on the process continue to enjoyconsiderable popularity. Deontologists in ethics hold

that actions may be right or wrong, regardless of theirconsequences (Kagan, 1998); according to some versionsof the view, they can be right or wrong merely in a virtueof their form. Parallel views can be found within epis-temology; quite a few philosophers claim that beingrational or having a justified belief is only a matter of fulfilling certain obligations, acting on the availableevidence, or following certain canonical rules of infer-ence (for a sample of such views, see Alston, 2005). Ithink, however, that these views have been convincinglyrebutted (see, e.g., Alston, 2005; Kagan,1989), although,especially in ethics, there seems to be a fundamentaldeadlock between conflicting intuitions. More impor-

tant, the analogy with creativity may not hold. Creativ-ity seems more intimately related with the product thanboth moral conduct and rational thinking. As the wordsays, it’s about creation, and to create plainly means tobring something about.

In fact, the evidence cited in favor of a more process-oriented conception can be handily accommodated bythe product view. Much of the criticism is not reallydirected against the product view per se, but againstcertain overly narrow versions of it. The critics objectto making creativity depend on the achievement of short-term tangible effects, pointing instead to long-termor intangible effects such as self-development, enlighten-

ment, or seeing the world with fresh eyes. Rightly so;creativity is not innovation, which is more appropriatelyconceived as achieving a concrete and immediately usefuloutcome. But self-development or enlightenment canalso be considered ‘‘products’’ in the appropriate senseof the word; they are outcomes or results of a process.

Moreover, many of the allegedly alternative concep-tions differ from the standard Western view, not in theirunderstanding of the concept of creativity itself, butmerely of the best means for bringing about a creativeproduct, e.g., preferring meditation and identificationwith the subject matter to analysis and consciously goal-oriented work (Lubart, 1999). There may be qualitiessuch as, say, open-mindedness or playfulness, whichoften go together with creativity and do not need tohave any propensity for producing a desirable outcome.But they are not creativity; they are possible or likely,but not absolutely necessary elements in a creativeprocess. Csikszentmihalyi (1999) contended, rightly inmy view, that there can be ‘‘creative accomplishment’’without any distinctive traits or abilities being displayed(p. 314), that is, without creativity being based on any

one particular process. The definitional issue shouldbe divorced from the issue of finding the best typicalmeans for furthering creativity (which is, understand-ably, the most central concern to many creativityresearchers); when this is done, the apparent counterexamples lose their significance. Sometimes the bestway to bring about a creative product may be to

forget altogether about production; this is implied byromantic views of creativity, as well as many self-descriptions of artists and scientists, and in no realtension with the product view.

Another source of resistance to the product view is asound, yet misguided, skepticism regarding verification-ism about creativity. This seems to have been Maslow’s(1963) primary concern: Creative achievements need notbe recognized as such. True—but a creative productmay very well exist unrecognized. Verificationism aboutcreativity may entail the product view—for creativity tobe verifiable, it probably has to be manifested in anobservable product. But the converse does not hold:

Although creativity may necessarily involve a product,or at least a propensity for producing something, it neednot be verifiable, since the product could be of an imma-terial, unobservable kind. The realism versus antirealismissue (see the next section) should not be confused withthe process versus product issue. If a process can beunverifiable as such, so can a creative product.

As to the alleged evidence for cross-cultural differ-ences in the notion of creativity, one should allow forthe possibility that alternative (e.g., Eastern or African)conceptions of creativity are actually conceptions of something else. Non-Western cultures may value quali-ties other than creativity higher. Some of the evidence

provided by Lubart (1999) seems to support such a con-clusion, e.g., the fact that Indian painters view their taskas one of ‘‘recreation’’ or ‘‘reactivation,’’ or that OmahaIndians maintain that ‘‘there is but one way to sing asong’’ (p. 343).This is not arrogant ethnocentrism. Onthe contrary, it seems to me that to insist that very differ-ent views about what makes an artistic performancevaluable are nevertheless conceptions of creativity is toimpose on other cultures a Western idea of creativityas the most fundamental artistic or cultural value (‘‘If acultural practice is at all good, it must embody a strongnotion of creativity’’). Some of the cases discussed byLubart actually suggest that it would be unfair to judgeother cultural practices according to the norm of creativ-ity, as members of other cultures seem to have deep rea-sons for downplaying creativity or even valuing imitationand repetition (for example, the circular view of timecharacteristic of Hindu cosmology).

Note that I am not claiming that non-Western cul-tures do not have a concept of creativity comparable toour own. As a matter of fact, I believe that most culturesshare roughly the same conception of creativity,




although they value it differently or differ as to whichdegree of creativity they consider most desirable. I ammerely arguing that if I should be wrong, if it turns outthat, contrary to what I assume, Western and non-Western views differ more radically, then one shouldbe prepared to conclude that non-Western culturesemploy an altogether different notion, rather than over-

stretching the notion of creativity in order to accommo-date cases of extreme cross-cultural diversity.

Hence, at least with respect to the bearer of creativity, itseems that one is able to achieve a fairly clear and definiteresult: The product has a certain priority; talk about cre-ative persons and processes are derivative, although thelink can be merely indirect (allowing for creative personsand processes which happen to be unsuccessful).

REALISM, ANTIREALISM, AND

RESPONSE-DEPENDENCE

Realism about an entity is the view that it exists indepen-dently of the way it is experienced, conceived, or copedwith by conscious beings (Klausen, 2004); antirealismis the denial of this, i.e., the view, which comes in manydifferent versions and strengths, that an entity dependssomehow on the way it is experienced, conceived, orcoped with by someone. As I have already shown, thereis generally a strong antirealist current within creativityresearch, as verificationism is a prominent species of antirealism. Most definitions of creativity link it withsocial acceptance, thus making it dependent on the waythe product is experienced by an audience. Here are somefurther clear statements of antirealism:

According to my definition, a creative individual . . .

fashions products . . . in a way that is . . . eventuallyaccepted within at least one cultural group . . . . Noperson, act or product is creative or noncreative in itself; judgments of creativity are inherently communal.(Gardner, 1994, p. 145)

Creativity denotes a person’s capacity to produce new ororiginal ideas . . . which are accepted by experts as beingof scientific, aesthetic, social, or technical value. (Vernon,1989, quoted in Eysenck, 1994, p. 200)

Hence onemust conclude that creativity is not an attributeof individuals but of social systems making judgments

about individuals . . . . The point is that without the com-parative evaluation of art historians, Rembrandt’s crea-tivity would not exist. (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990, p. 198f,emphasis added)

Several motives for this pull toward antirealism can bediscerned. As mentioned earlier, the concern for devisingreliable methods for measurement and obtaining results

that are intersubjectively valid naturally leads research-ers to conceive of creativity in terms of responses to pro-ducts, as these happen to be conveniently measurable(Amabile, 1996). Moreover, reflection on pretheoreticalnotions of creativity—and the general type of conceptwe are dealing with—strongly suggests that it is some-how a ‘‘construct.’’ It is not something one might bump

into or find by peering into the brain; it seems, rather,to reflect a certain habit to judge and classify humanbehavior in a certain way. This intuition is further sup-ported by noting that creativity ascriptions are a speciesof value judgment, and values are often considered moresubjective or otherwise relative than, e.g., physicalproperties, and thus something people are, prima facie,less prone to be realists about.

Yet, there are strong reasons for resisting this pulland opting for some, albeit qualified, form of realismabout creativity. The main reason is that people cannot

just imagine, but actually happen to know about casesof genuine creative achievement that went unnoticed,

of creative people who were unable to persuade theirpeers. Famous cases include Mendel’s founding of gen-etics, the poetic work of Emily Dickinson, the paintingsof Van Gogh, and Barbara McClintock’s discovery of genetic transposition.

A likely objection is that these achievements did not,of course, remain unnoticed; otherwise, one would notnow be able to recognize them as creative, and I couldnot use them to support my argument. McClintockwas eventually awarded a Nobel prize, long entries inencyclopedias are now devoted to Mendel, and VanGogh’s paintings are sold for exorbitant sums. True— but this, by no means, dismantles my argument. By

reflecting on such cases, one comes to see that the recog-nition was contingent, that the works might just as wellhave been completely lost to posterity, but that theywould, in that case, still have been worthy of recog-nition, and thus no less creative. People can employ afamiliar kind of extrapolation argument for realism:Everybody agrees that neither immediate recognitionnor recognition by all groups is necessary for creativity.Most would agree that creativity may go unnoticed for avery long time, or be recognized by only a small groupof experts. One might then press this point, and pullthe antirealist down the slippery slope toward realism,by insisting that creativity could surely remainunnoticed for a very long time, and only be recognizedby a very small group, or even a single person, perhaps

just in a temporary flash of insight. Having come thisfar, it should be easy to convince the antirealist of takingthat last small step and concede that social acceptance isnot necessary for creativity. (Boden, 1994b, for one, hasbeen admirably clear on this point, distinguishingbetween conditions of creativity and the culture-relativevaluation of creative ideas.)

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In fact, the most liberal formulations of the socialacceptance requirement involve a tacit concession of thispoint and, therefore, hardly ought to be labeled antireal-

ist. Recall, for example, that Stein’s (1953) version of thestandard view merely required acceptance by somegroup at some time. Since it is always imaginable thateven the most blatantly useless ideas or devices will find

some appreciative audience in some far-out circum-stances (bear in mind that ripped jeans, hopelessly ama-teurish B-movies, bungee-jumping, and body piercinghave already found their enthusiastic audiences in thereal world), this hardly imposes any genuine constraintson the product. If people are just told that a creativeproduct must be acceptable, without any amendmentspecifying a certain audience or point of view, then itamounts to a concession that something may be creativeansich. The same holds for the structurally similar viewthat what is real or true is what an idealized scientificcommunity will agree on in the (indefinitely) long run(a view championed by Peirce, 1931ff, and, more

recently, Putnam, 1981). In spite of its antirealist flavorand motivation, it imposes no substantial constraints onwhat might count as reality, since it can be assumed thata sufficiently idealized scientific community with unlimi-ted time and resources would be able to find out aboutabsolutely everything.

Just as social acceptance is not necessary for creativ-ity, it is obviously not sufficient, either. A product maybe recognized as creative without actually being so.Audiences and even experts can be fooled. Of course,as the saying goes, you cannot fool all the people allthe time, but this is, at best, something that is likely(assuming, rather optimistically, that audiences tend to

be competent rather not, and that frauds and impostorsare not perfect) or that one might hope for, not some-thing for which there is any conceptual guarantee.

Let’s take a closer look at a particular defense of antirealism about creativity. Csikszentmihalyi (1999)argued that it is impossible to separate creativity from

persuasion: ‘‘For if you cannot persuade the world thatyou had a creative idea, how do we know that youactually had it? And if you do persuade others, then of course you will be recognized as creative’’ (p. 314).Csikszentmihalyi contended that the connectionbetween creativity and persuasion is ‘‘not only methodo-logical, but epistemological as well, and probably onto-logical’’ (p. 314). This is revealing, as it displays afamiliar, understandable, but problematic tendency toslide from methodological to epistemological and,eventually, ontological conclusions characteristic of ver-ificationism (see Devitt, 1991, for an apt description andconvincing criticism of this tendency). As Csikszentmi-halyi was obviously aware of, the most contentious stepis from epistemology to ontology: Why couldn’t a cre-ative idea simply remain inaccessible to the rest of the

world? Moreover, shouldn’t one allow for the possibilitythat someone might succeed in faking creativity?Csikszentmihalyi’s account bestows on audiences aninfallibility and power to enforce creativity that theyhardly posses. Audiences may learn about their formermistakes—‘‘We thought it was creative, but now wesee that it wasn’t’’—and, again by the familiar way of

extrapolation, they might generalize and conclude thatthey could also be wrong in their current judgment,indeed that they (and everybody else) might, in prin-ciple, be wrong permanently, about all cases of apparentcreativity. Another relevant possibility is an audiencebeing overruled by another audience with a higher auth-ority, notably a group of experts. I might succeed in per-suading my neighbors that I am an extremely creativephilosopher or musician, but this judgment is of dubiousvalue if my neighbors are largely ignorant about philo-sophy and music.

Csikszentmihalyi (1999) might, indeed, have had inmind a certain authoritative audience, and not just any

social group whatsoever. But what he needs in order tosubstantiate his claim that persuasion is constitutive of creativity is an audience that is simply infallible; andthere probably are no such audiences. There is alwaysa possibility that current judgments, even those of experts, are based on false perceptions or assumptions.

Csikszentmihalyi’s (1999) epistemological worrieswere not, however, completely unfounded. Realism isoften accused of generating inscrutable epistemologicalproblems, divorcing, as it does, reality from the appear-ances that individuals actually have to go by in theirdealings with the world. And it does not make life easier.The worries can, however, be dismantled by noticing

that the possibility that creativity might be inaccessibleto people is no hindrance to its actually being mani-fested and verifiable in a whole lot of cases. Indepen-dence does not entail inaccessibility. Moreover, onecan take comfort from a moderately empiricist theoryof concept acquisition: people acquire the notion of creativity from encounters with certain paradigm casesin which creativity is revealed in a particularly strikingand obvious manner; on this basis, they then go on toform a notion of creativity as something that might alsoexist without actually being recognized as such. Thisgives the notion a sufficient empirical foundation to fendoff accusations of mysticism and vacuity, without tyingcreativity implausibly close to specific manifestationsand conditions.

The antirealist pull should be resisted, yet it remains inforce. Realism also has its problems. Creativity is hardlya natural kind, something that one might stumble uponor that might exist without any link whatsoever to theinterests and judgments of human or other intelligentbeings. In one sense, it is obviously a human construct.Hence, researchers must look for a way to reconcile the




realist and antirealist intuitions; to maintain at the sametime that creativity is recognition-independent and that itnevertheless reflects our peculiar way of engaging withand the world.

The notion of response-dependence, which has gainedmuch attention in philosophy recently (see, e.g., Casati& Tappolet, 1998; the term was introduced by Johnston,

1989), offers a possible way out. Although the expressionis relatively new, the basic idea is at least as old as thetheory of secondary qualities espoused by the Britishempiricist philosopher Locke (1698=1965). Secondaryqualities such as color are not independent features of reality in the same sense as primary qualities such aslength and mass. Still, they do not seem to be mere pro-

jections; they have a certain, albeit lesser or more quali-fied, kind of objectivity. People assume that their visualexperiences are registering them, rather than bringingthem into being. The red picture in the hall remains redwhen nobody is looking at it, even in the dark. Accordingto the standard dispositional theory of colors, being red

is a disposition to produce in an observer an experiencewith a certain quality, i.e., a certain response.

This seems to be what we are after: Creativityappears to be a response-dependent property in muchthe same way a color is. A creative product is some-thing that would appear creative to an appropriateaudience under suitable conditions. This holds evenfor my imagined cases of completely unrecognized crea-tivity. Maybe Linda’s creative achievement, say, hervery personal style of painting, will never find anappropriate audience in the actual world. But if herpaintings can nevertheless count as creative, then itmust be the case that they would, under suitable con-

ditions, be recognized as such by an appropriate audi-ence. We might put it like this:

x is creative¼ x is such as to elicit, under suitableconditions, in anappropriate audience an impressionofcreativity.

Creativity may thus be more objective and less directlyaudience-dependent than most creativity researcherstend to assume, but not completely independent of human responses.

Notice that this makes the view I am envisaging intoa doubly dispositional, or double-propensity, view:Being creative is having a propensity for bringing aboutproducts that have a propensity for being recognized ascreative! That may sound frighteningly complex, but Ithink it is right nevertheless, and much more intuitiveand straightforward than it sounds. In fact, it seemsto capture the same sort of complexity that Csikszent-mihalyi’s (1990) system theory and other ‘‘confluenceapproaches’’ (which are based on the idea that ‘‘mul-tiple components must converge for creativity to

occur,’’ cf. Sternberg & Lubart, 1999, p. 10) weredesigned to account for.

But although I do think this is a helpful suggestion, asit brings together and expresses more precisely some of the otherwise potentially conflicting and vague intuitionsabout creativity, it is not without problems. There is alegitimate worry that creativity is not sufficiently anal-

ogous with the paradigm examples of response-dependent properties such as redness or sweetness. Thelatter are closely related to very specific mental processes(viz. visual and gustatory sensation) and physical struc-tures (e.g., triples of integrated reflectances), whereas rec-ognition of creativity is not connected to any particularmental process or property of the environment. We havefaculty of color vision, but hardly any comparable fac-ulty for perceiving creativity. The latter is not, however,the most serious aspect of the problem. For althoughthere is probably no unique set of psychological traitsor practical competences necessarily involved in dis-playing creativity (as argued forcefully by, inter alia,

Csikszentmihalyi & Weisberg, 1986), it still seemsplausible to assume that different acts of recognizing orexperiencing creativity must have something distinctivein common, either with regard to their experientialquality or the recognitional capacities involved, if thereis to be any point at all in describing them as acts of recognizing the same phenomenon, or manifestationsof the same concept.

More seriously, the proposed account is threatenedwith circularity. The definiendum still contains the termcreativity, which is left unexplained. And although circu-larity is also thought to be a real problem for a disposi-tional account of colors (see, especially, Stroud, 2000), it

is more pertinent to the dispositional account of creativ-ity. For one might succeed in escaping the charge in thecase of red by defining impression of redness ostensively,as referring to the content of a particular experience(say, the experience I have while gazing at a field of pop-pies). But in the creativity case, this move is hamperedby the disanalogy mentioned earlier. Although differentacts of recognizing creativity must have something incommon, they can be qualitatively very diverse, makingit much less clear which property is referred to in the actof definition. Creativity is a less basic, less immediatelyexperience-related, and more complex concept thanred, and therefore an ostensive definition cannot getone out of the circle.

The lack of a distinctive corresponding environmentalfactor in the creativity case also threatens to underminethe analogy. Colors have their dispositional propertiespartly in virtue of the surface structures of the objects theyare colors of, partly in virtue of the human sensory system.This allows for a suitable compromise between realismand antirealism, objectivity and subjectivity: Colorsare linked to subjective responses, but these are not

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merely subjective whims, they are genuine responses thathave to answer to a certain determinate part of reality.But since no such objective counterpart can be foundin the creativity case, the account slides toward theantirealist side, putting the weight on one’s own contri-bution. This tendency is further emphasized by notingthat that the dispositional account actually confers a

kind of infallible authority on the audience. If theconditions are suitable and the audience appropriate, thena creative product cannot go unnoticed. This might seemto vindicate Csikszentmihalyi’s (1990) view and clash withthe realist intuitions I have been pressing. Yet whether itreally is so depends on how narrow the scope of the termssuitable and appropriate are taken to be.

Now where do these considerations lead? Once again,I think researchers should take a balanced view andavoid exaggerating the negative results. One can ruleout both extreme antirealist and extreme realistaccounts. Creativity is neither dependent on actualsocial acceptance nor is it a completely objective pro-

perty of actions or products.2

The notion of response-dependence helps in cashing out this intuition andfurther delineating the notion of creativity. It does notput an end to the search for a more illuminating versionof the standard definition, since it still leaves some of thefundamental tensions unresolved—most significantly,the scope of the term appropriate is left open and asubject of controversy.

NOVELTY AND USEFULNESS

The most problematic element in the standard view turnsout to be the specification of what makes a product cre-ative—the requirement that it be both novel and usefulor otherwise appropriate. I noted at the outset that thestandard definition harbors a dilemma: Creativity is bothabout breaking with norms and complying with norms.This doesn’t have to be a paradox, as long as one is talk-ing about different sets of norms—breaking with the nar-row or local ones while still meeting some generalrequirements. The standard definition hints at a balancepoint between conformity and divergence, but it hasproven notoriously difficult to say something moreilluminating about where this balance point might be.

Part of the problem is connected with the realismissue: if appropriateness is defined as acceptability, andthis in turn is analyzed, in an antirealist fashion, as beingeither actually accepted by an audience at some time, oracceptable to a particular specified audience, then therequirement does take on a sufficiently precise meaning.Such a specification does, however, make creativity a

matter ofmeeting fixed constraints, and thus tips thebalance toward the overly conformist side. At least moreradical kinds of creativity often contain an element of genuine surprise; the products are appropriate in wayswe could not have foreseen, so there is no guarantee thatthey will be recognized as such by a particular audience.Considerations of this sort have led Smith (2005) to urgethat individuals should give up the usefulness or appro-priateness requirement altogether:

For creativity research to remain part of the greaterdomain of psychology it should divest itself of the utilityaspect. Creativity should be defined by the novelty of its

products, not by their usefulness, value, profitability,beauty, and so on. What is not useful now may becomeuseful in a distant future. Even if it is never applied forthe benefit of mankind it may, in principle, be called cre-ative in so far as it has developed in dialogue with theconception of reality it is intended to replace. (p. 294)

I think, however, that this should be read more like a noteof warning and provocation than a serious proposal. AsSmith himself noted, people want to be able to dis-tinguish creativity from sheer craziness. He is quite rightto warn against narrowing the definition of the conceptby making it ‘‘more appealing, more romantic, more

adapted to commercial interests’’ (Smith, 2005, p. 294).But we should avoid this pitfall by widening the appro-priateness requirement, not by abandoning it completely.It is true that such a widening threatens to trivialize it,but this is a problem people have to cope with.

The problem resembles some familiar quibbles withevolutionary theory, which has often been accused of being, at least when formulated in very general terms,trivial, vacuous, vague, or at least less substantial orinformative, than is otherwise assumed. A version of thiscriticism has been recently been advanced by Fodor(2008), who noted that

Whether a trait is conducive to fitness appears to just asarbitrarily dependent on which sort of creature it’s a traitof and what sort of ecology the creature inhabits (2008,20) . . .which traits are adaptive for which phenotypesdepend very much on the context . . . . There are many,many traits that are fitness enhancing in some circum-stances or other but not across the board. . . . The worryis that . . .ecological niches wouldn’t seem to be naturalkinds. . . . All they have in common is that some kind of creature or other, does or would, flourish in each. (p. 23)

2The historiometric approach of Simonton (e.g., 1980) to originalityis sometimes described as providing a completely objective measure of

creativity. Yet I think this is precisely what it does not do. It measuresoriginality in terms of deviance from the mean (differential eminence, or,in the case of musical originality, thematic rarity). Apart from not being

able to distinguish the creative from the merely bizarre (because it dis-penses with the appropriateness requirement; cf. Amabile, 1996), such

an approach makes judgments of creativity relative to the (presumablyarbitrary) level of achievement in the chosen population (remember thesaying: ‘‘In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king’’).




Fodor makes a provocative analogy to the case of getting rich: the extreme context sensitivity of the waysof getting rich—Genghis Kahn and the heirs of AndrewCarnegie became rich in very different ways—‘‘makes itunlikely that there could be a theory of getting rich per se;all those how-to-get-rich books . . .notwithstanding’’(Fodor, 2008, p. 24). Like evolutionary explanations,

studies of creative processes are historical, backward-looking, post hoc —they manage to explain, case by case,what it was about a person, a process, or a product invirtue of which it became recognized as creative in theparticular circumstances, but they do not support wide-ranging generalizations, counterfactual claims, andpredictions, because they do not manage to single outany specific traits or factors which are conducive tocreativity independently of the context.

In a somewhat similar vein, Lewontin (1983) mounteda convincing criticism of adaptionism, pointing out thatevolution is not just a matter of adapting to the environ-ment, since organisms are able to alter their surround-

ings, reconstructing rather than just accommodating totheir environment. The analogy to this is the case inwhich creativity is displayed not by solving the task athand, but by formulating a whole new task. Chanceand luck also play their part. Sometimes the key to cre-ative achievement may not consist in adapting to orreconstructing the environment or task at hand, but sim-ply in happening to be there when the environment favorsone’s particular abilities. Gardner (1983) has provided anice example of this by pointing out that Einstein’s mindhad strength and weakness superbly matching the chal-lenges faced by the physics of the early part of the 20thcentury (e.g., field theory), whereas they turned out to

be less well matched to the physics of the mid-20thcentury, when quantum theory came to the fore.

Noting the parallel to evolutionary theory should,however, also been seen as a source of comfort to creativ-ity researchers: Even though the status, exact formu-lation, and explicatory potential of evolutionary theoryturns out to be less obvious, or at least more contro-versial, than might have been hoped for, there is nodenial that the species (and their heritable, geneticallydetermined traits) have evolved, that they have beenshaped by environmental pressures and competition forsurvival, etc. There is nothing wrong in talking aboutan organism’s adaptive response; it is just that thisdoesn’t say a lot, especially when the response need notbe an accommodation to circumstances. If a well-established and obviously thriving discipline such asbiology can proceed on the basis of a theory displayingthis kind of conceptual unclarity or open-endedness, socan the merely aspiring discipline of creativity research.

I noted at the outset that it is a certain qualified kindof usefulness or appropriateness we are after. This maybe seen as an instance of the general problem that

ascriptions of creativity are extremely context-sensitive.Yet one should not give up specifying more closely thekind of property in question. For one thing, it shouldbe remembered that by talking of usefulness or appro-priateness, even in the widest sense, people alreadyimpose some significant constraints on the creative pro-duct. They make it clear that the product must, at any

rate, be able to appear satisfying to human beings.And it is possible to be more precise about the relevantkind of usefulness. My suggestion is that novelty andusefulness should be seen not as independent require-ments, but as internally related: A creative product mustbe useful in a particularly novel way, and novel in a use-ful or appropriate way. It does not suffice for a productto be creative that it is new if it is useful to a degreebelow the state of the art (remember the earlier exampleof the new but insufficiently useful word processor).

There seems, moreover, to be a tradeoff betweennovelty and usefulness. A lesser degree of usefulness iscompensated for by a larger degree of novelty, and vice

versa. A high degree of novelty is not consideredespecially creative if the gain in usefulness or appropri-ateness is relatively small. This can be illustrated bysome well-known cases of musical creativity. Mozart isnormally considered a more creative composer thanSchonberg, although he invented no new musical genresor forms, whereas Schonberg broke completely with thewhole tonal system and devised a new musical system allon his own. Mozart’s subtle exploitation of existingmusical forms is held by most to have resulted in anaesthetically much more satisfying product thanSchonberg’s revolutionary efforts. Similarly, MilesDavis is generally perceived as a more exceptionally

creative artist than, say, radical free jazz musicians suchas Alvin Ayler or Cecil Taylor. On the other hand,artists who stick rigidly to traditional forms, such asthe neoconservative jazz musicians of the 1980s and1990s (e.g., the Marsalis brothers) are, for all their virtu-osity and impeccable performances, considered lesscreative than both.

In the rare cases in which people have a radically new,significantly norm-breaking achievement that, at thesame time, is of a superiorly and uncontroversially usefulor appropriate kind, they judge it almost unanimously toexhibit the highest level of creativity. Some of the majorscientific revolutions—the work of Galileo, Newton, andEinstein—may belong to this category. Artistic achieve-ments are more controversial, as the standards of appro-priateness are more varied and disputed. Goethe comesto mind as a candidate, inasmuch as he developed anew, more subjective kind of literature while attainingwide, almost instant and lasting recognition. Yet it isinteresting to note that, although originality is usuallytreated as one of the most fundamental parameters inaesthetic evaluation, many of those considered most

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creative turn out to be artists working within andperfecting existing forms and genres (apart from Mozart,Shakespeare and Bach immediately come to mind asparadigm creative geniuses who are not known to haverevolutionized their genres or art forms).

INTENTIONALITY TO THE RESCUE

The standard definition omits an import element thatmight help alleviate some of the problems mentionedearlier. A creative product must, apart from being noveland appropriate, have been produced with a specificintention.3 If something is produced by chance and justhappens to be highly useful, people will not deem it cre-ative. (This shows that although the product should beconsidered the primary bearer of creativity, its relationto the creator and the process are still essential.)

But how, exactly, is this requirement to be under-

stood? One should be careful not to formulate it toorestrictively. What is required is merely that the creativeperson intends to make something that is, in some sense,appropriate (and turns out to be appropriate in roughlythe intended sense). She does not have to be able to fore-see in complete detail how her invention will be useful; itis possible that she can, herself, be surprised at learningwhat it is good for. It may not even be necessary that sheintends to create something novel. I do, however, thinkthat a minimal intention of novelty requirement shouldbe upheld. A person who had not the slightest intentionof deviating from established norms or habits, but onlywanted to reproduce them strictly, would not be con-

sidered creative. If she nevertheless managed to producesomething novel and useful, one would take this to bemerely a matter of chance.

The requirement should not, on the other hand, betaken to imply that a creative person must understandherself as such or even have the concept of creativity.It suffices that she intends to produce something newand appropriate; it is then for us to classify this as aninstance of creativity.

A consequence of adding the intentionality require-ment is that serendipity is not creativity (although theability to recognize and exploit the possibilities affordedby serendipity may well be). Yet this is quite in keeping

with normal understanding. Some might object that itclashes with a popular romantic notion of creativity,according to which a creative genius is acting sponta-neously and unconsciously, without plan or purpose— ‘‘Do not seek and you will find.’’ I think, however, that

all realistic cases of even such romantic creativity canbe accommodated by the—very weak and liberal— intentionality requirement. Even the typical romanticgenius will have an intention to create somethingnovel—and a very clear intention not to stick to the con-ventions or imitate—as well as assume that the product,no matter how it is brought about and how its exact

constitution turns out to be, will, in some sense, be satis-fying and valuable. If someone came up with new anduseful ideas without having any intention or awarenessof doing so, I think people should not call her creative,but consider her merely a sort of idea-generatingmachine.

If people are willing to pay this—very reasonable— price for adding an intentionality requirement, consider-able advantage can be gained. It improves the standingof the notion of creativity as compared to some of thebasic concepts of evolutionary theory. For the problemwith the latter can be said to stem from both wanting todispense with all kinds of teleology, seeing biological

nature as devoid of purpose, and, at same time, keeptalking about how organisms have evolved mechanismsfor solving specific tasks, how traits are adaptations toparticular environmental features, etc. The purely causalview on nature makes it difficult to say, when the chipsare down, anything more than que sera sera. With theaddition of an intentionality requirement, creativitytheory eschews this difficulty, since it can allow itself an element of teleology. For example, it does not sufficeto make something a creative achievement that it actu-ally ends up being appreciated by an audience, if thequality for which it is appreciated by the audience isaltogether different from the quality that its creator

intended the product to have. (This is why people don’tconsider directors of B-movies very creative just becausethe movies end up being appreciated for their hopelessamateurism.) The intentionality requirement thus helpsnarrowing down the relevant features—and the relevantkind of appropriateness—of the creative product.

There is an instructive parallel to the philosophy of art.Due to the revolutionary nature of modern art, it hasbecome widely recognized that almost everything cancome to count as an artwork (the most famous examplebeing Duchamp’s ready-made Fountain, a urinal). Butthe popular attempt to define artworks institutionally— requiring merely that they occupy a certain place in acertain social institution (the ‘‘art world’’) and are treatedas ‘‘candidates for appreciation’’ (Dickie, 1974, p. 34)— falters, as it states neither a necessary (as there can beprivate, isolated art) nor a sufficient (as the notion of ‘‘having had conferred upon it the status of candidatefor appreciation’’ remains too unspecific) condition forbeing art. Here, too, one has to bring into the definitionan intention of the individual to produce an object of acertain sort (as argued forcefully by Levinson, 1979).

3Gruber and Wallace (1999) and Nickerson (1999) are among the

few positive exceptions, as they have recognized an intentional compo-nent, although without really trying to integrate it into the standarddefinition.




CONSEQUENCES FOR CREATIVITY

RESEARCH

What lessons can be drawn from my examination of theattempts to define the notions of creativity?

First and not surprisingly, I have shown that creativ-ity researchers tend to conflate that which is really consti-

tutive of creativity per se with factors that are merelytypical causes of creativity, or otherwise closely associa-ted with it. This is understandable and seldom does muchharm, but it sometimes leads to exaggerated claims, aswhen the very notion of creativity is taken to differ acrosscultures, although the evidence shows, rather, thatroughly the same phenomenon is valued differently orpursued by different means.

Second, even the most careful analysis is not able toremove the tension between an exclusive and a moreinclusive understanding. This indicates that the tensionis inherent in the very notion of creativity—people sim-ply think of creativity as a property of objects which are

appropriate in some significant sense, but not necessarilyappropriate in any specific sense.

The reason why individuals are nevertheless able touse the notion successfully and believe to know very wellwhat is meant by it is, I suppose, that they have variousmore specific criteria guiding its application in differentcontexts and domains. We have a pretty good idea of what it means to be a creative chess player (one is notsuch a player if one breaks the rules or very often loses— or, for that sake, if one always follows minutely themoves described in the chess manual). One may still bea creative person if one breaks the rules (and maybe,thereby, invents some new and exciting game), but

people have much less precise criteria for such role-and rule-transgressing achievements, even though theymay tend to think of them as particularly creative.

This has implications for creativity research. Research-ers should be careful not to hypostatize certain context- ordomain-specific criteria of novelty and appropriateness,treating them as constitutive of creativity in general, likeit has arguably been done in some cases of assessing musi-cal creativity. And they should avoid making too sweepinggeneralizations. Even if relatively stable and significantcorrelations can be found between certain personal,environmental, or process characteristics and creativeachievements, this does not permit researchers to conjec-ture that these characteristics are generally conducive tocreativity. This is not just a methodological platitude.Thescope of legitimate generalizations dependson the uni-formity and robustness—i.e., context independence—of the subject matter, andthe present investigation has shownthat creativity is highly context-dependent, even more sothan is commonly recognized.

This is no objection to using expert’s judgments as abasis for creativity assessment (as recommended by

Amabile, 1996). It is just that one should be clear aboutwhat one can get from such an approach. Researchersare likely to get reliable assessments of specific kindsof creativity relative to context-dependent standards of appropriateness. They should not, on the other hand,expect to get any reliable measure of the general creativ-ity of a product, since it might turn out that a product

that is not recognized as being particularly creative bythe experts will, nevertheless, meet some other standardsof appropriateness. A group of judges selected accordingto their familiarity with the field may be very reliable atdetecting creative chess playing but less reliable atdetecting innovative game development; in the lattercase, it is not even clear how the judges should be selec-ted, since it is hard to say which field they are required tobe familiar with.

Of course, there may be ways to gain empirical knowl-edge of the conditions of creativity of even the moreradical and unpredictable sort—for example, by meansof large-scale historiometric studies that enable people

to take advantage of the of the wisdom of hindsight:Which constellations of factors have been correlatedwith the occurrence of unforeseen breakthroughs?Researchers should, however, be open to the possibilitythat different cases of radical breakthrough may not formany natural kind or even have very much in common.

More generally, my investigation has shown that onecannot dismiss an issue such as realism about creativityas being ‘‘too metaphysical’’ (Csikzentmihalyi, 1999,p. 321). Such a dismissal, or the adoption of an antireal-ist stance, might well have practical consequences. Stick-ing too closely to contemporary social standards mayblind researchers to important kinds of creativity. Of

all research fields, creativity is the one in which it seemsthe least appropriate to narrow one’s outlook to theprevailing norms.

Second, and more positively, the connection andtradeoff between novelty and appropriateness deservesmore attention. Researchers cannot simply assess cre-ative products according to their degree of novelty andappropriateness, respectively, but have to assess thesequalities in their specific combination. The most unpro-blematic cases may be the ones that actually allowresearchers to assess the two dimensions indepen-dently—where the relevant kind of appropriateness isvery well defined, and thus can be treated as a fixedvariable—if, for example, one would like to study moreor less creative ways to win a game of chess. Yet suchcases are, although by no means irrelevant, less interest-ing than those that consist in changing the very task athand or otherwise demand that the product is not justnovel and appropriate, but appropriate in a particularlynovel way.

More attention should also be paid to the intentionalcomponent of creativity, which tends to get overlooked

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due to the current strong focus on the social dimension.4

This would actually be in keeping with the otherwisegrowing interest in the link between creativity, motiv-ation, and self-regulated learning (see Schunk &Zimmermann, 2008). I am not claiming that creativitymay be fostered by inducing people to form an explicitintention to become more creative. There is probably

something to the romantic idea that it is often better toget lost an activity, focusing on the task itself, rather thanstraining, trying to be creative. The importance of intrin-sic motivation (Amabile, 1996, p. 259) and flow for crea-tivity points in that direction. Still, there may be somerelevant insights to be salvaged from the older, moreindividualist psychological creativity theory. Althoughby no means sufficient for creativity, a certain openand flexible state of mind and an ability to use the forceof imagination may be a relatively robust (i.e., context-insensitive) ingredient in quite many forms of creativity,and, in contrast to those ingredients in creativity thathave rather to do with the social acceptability conditions,

something that is capable of educational improvement.

CONCLUSION

It has been said time and again that creativity is a mys-tery. Revisiting some prominent attempts at definingthe notion has not confirmed this view. We do know alot about what creativity is, and we can see how we mightcome to know it even better. And it is surely true, asWeisberg (1986) urged, that it is not mysterious in thesense that it denotes some special gift or faculty to be

found only in extraordinary geniuses. There is, however,something to the mystery view. It is not the concretecreative processes that are mysterious or elusive; it isthe very notion of creativity that remains inherently para-doxical. There is something irremediably strange aboutthe idea of simultaneously transgressing the norms whilestill acting appropriately. It is akin to some of the deepphilosophical paradoxes such as, for example, the para-dox of freedom, a notion that seems to require of anaction that it should neither be a product of necessitynor simply of chance, or the learning paradox raised inPlato’s Meno: Human beings cannot search either forwhat they know (for, in that case, they would have it

already) or what they do not know (for, in that case, theywould not even know what to search for).

That the notion of creativity is thus inherentlyparadoxical should not, however, be seen as a barrier to

scientific studies of creativity. It may be the most essentialthing people know about it, not just from a philosophicalpoint of view, when it comes to satisfying fundamentalcuriosity, but also with regard to its application to mat-ters of education and empirical research.

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4There is actually no real tension here, as intentions can be social invarious respects (they can, for example, be joint or group intentions;

see, e.g., Gilbert, 2000; or even socially constituted). It is just thatthe emphasis on the social dimension has led creativity researchersto focus on more distal factors.


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