Phil/Psych 447

Seminar in Cognitive Science

Week 8: The Creative Brain

Thagard and Stewart: The AHA! Experience

Discussion Questions

1. What did you find confusing or hard to understand in this paper?
2. Is all creativity combination of representations? What else might it be? What about art?
3. How are neural representations multimodal? Does this matter to creativity?
4. Why is binding an important psychological and neural process?
5. How are emotional processes part of creativity? Why do they require binding? Why are they both cognitive and physiological?
6. What role do computer simulations play in investigating creativity?
7. Could a digital computer have AHA! experiences?
8. What are the main limitations (psychological, neural, philosophical) of the Thagard and Stewart account?
9. How do neural explanations of creativity mesh with molecular, psychlogical, and social ones?
10. Are neural explanations of creativity compatible with Boden's main ideas?
11. Can convolution and/or synchronizations explain the unity of consciousness?
12. What are the ethical implications of understanding creativity as a brain process?

Neural simulation demos

Phil/Psych 447

Paul Thagard

Computational Epistemology Laboratory.

This page updated Nov. 2, 2009