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Originally Posted by parallaxicality
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I didn't say creativity was impossible. What I said was that no one can imagine anything that is not in some way based on previous experiences or knowledge.
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Which is also unproven. And irrelevant. |
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Why is it irrelevant? The whole point of this argument is whether or not human creativity is finite or infinite.
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Exactly, and truly
new variations of existing thought-- which you seem to dismiss as irrelevant-- can be original even if based on something that has come before.
Based on does not necessarily mean unorignal, not if it's a completely unprecedented variation.
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I argue that human creativity is dependent on past experiences, and the collective well of past human experiences is finite, ergo the ability of human creativity to conceive of ideas is also finite, since we also possess a finite number of known ways with which to combine these thoughts.
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(bold mine)
Ah,
there's your problem! You assume that something based on something old must be merely a recombination of existing factors. I'm talking about endless
variations based on, but not limited to, existing ideas.
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I don't understand why you're being so defensive about this.
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I'm not, we're having a discussion. It's a chat board, that's what we do here.
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You seem to think that because I think that the span of human creativity is not infinite, but merely so big that its vastness defies human comprehension, that somehow I think that human creativity doesn't exist. I made no such claim. I am a creative person myself; I fully respect and understand the nature of human creativity. But simply because I think there might be some finite limit to human creative thought, one that we might conceivably reach in, say, ten to the millionth power years, doesn't mean I think there is no such thing as creative thought. You seem to think that creativity must either be infinite or not exist at all.
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No, I'm merely interpreting what you said to the best of my ability. You said that you think no ideas can exist that are not recombinations of existing ideas. You said, in fact, that you defined creativity as an "idea that formed completely independent of any previous human experience". You set that standard, not me.
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There is some evidence for my claim. The area of the brain that creates and stores memory is also the area we draw on when imagining the future. We construct our possible futures from the memories we possess. A similar process, though more freeform, occurs with creativity.
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In part, we do just that. As I said several times, creative ideas can often be built on the foundation of existing ones. But you claimed that the number of ideas is finite, which would require no real creation of new ideas. This is not proven by your example. All your example shows is that we do use our existing knowledge and ideas in making new ones, not that there's no original ideas as a result. And if there are, then we are producing some variations beyond merely recombining the existing thoughts. Therefore there will always be a few new thoughts produced, varying from the previous ones.
And of course, that's just our present-day, human minds.
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Btw, this thread has gone way off topic and I don't want to overwhelm the discussion; do you think you could split this conversation off, mods? Thanks
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Agreed.