Mike, A very messily formatted rough draft of From Complexity to Creativity is here
http://www.goertzel.org/books/complex/contents.html Alas I long ago lost the wordperfect 5.1 file that was used to generate the final proofs way back when... The chapter that gives an overall theory of the psychology of creativity is here http://www.goertzel.org/books/complex/ch14.html however that chapter is very high level and to make it concrete you'd need to trace the foundations of the ideas there back into the prior chapters... Here is the intro text of that chapter ... some of it sounds like it could have come out of your own mouth ;-) ***** Creativity is the great mystery at the center of Western culture. We preach order, science, logic and reason. But none of the great accomplishments of science, logic and reason was actually achieved in a scientific, logical, reasonable manner. Every single one must, instead, be attributed to the strange, obscure and definitively irrational process of creative inspiration. Logic and reason are indispensible in the working out ideas, once they have arisen -- but the actual * conception* of bold, original ideas is something else entirely. No creative person completely understands what they do when they create. And no two individuals' incomplete accounts of creative process would be the same. But nevertheless, there are some common patterns spanning different people's creativity; and there is thus some basis for theory. In previous chapters, the phenomenon of creativity has lurked around the edges of the discussion. Here I will confront it head-on. Drawing on the ideas of most of the previous chapters, I will frame a comprehensive complexity-theoretic answer to the question: How do those most exquisitely complex systems, minds, go about creating forms? I will begin on the whole-mind, personality level, with the idea that certain individuals possess creatively-inspired, largely medium-dependent "creative subselves." In conjunction with the Fundamental Principle of Personality Dynamics, this idea in itself gives new insight into the much-discussed relationship between inspired creativity and madness. A healthy creative person, it is argued, maintains I-You relationships between their creative subselves and their everyday subselves. In the mind of a "mad" creative person, on the other hand, the relationship is strained and competitive, in the I-It mold. The question of the * internal workings* of the creative subself is then addressed. Different complex systems models are viewed as capturing different * aspects* of the creative process. First, the analogy between creative thought and the genetic algorithm is pursued. It is argued that the creative process involves two main aspects: combination and mutation of ideas, in the spirit of the genetic algorithm; and analogical spreading of ideas, following the lines of the dynamically self-organizing associative memory network. The dual network model explains the interconnection of these two processes. While these processes are present throughout the mind, creative subselves provide an environment in which they are allowed to act with unusual liberty and flexibility. This flexibility is related to the action of the perceptual-cognitive loop, which, when "coherentizing" thought-systems within the creative subself, seems to have a particularly gentle hand, creating systems that can relatively easily be dissected and put back together in new ways. Other subselves create their own realities having to do with physical sense-perceptions and actions; creative subselves, on the other hand, create their own realities having to do with abstract forms and structures. Because the creative subself deals with a more flexible "environment," with a more amenable fitness landscape, it can afford to be more flexible internally. In dynamical systems terms, the process of creative thought may be viewed as the simultaneous creation and exploration of autopoietic attractors. Ideas are explored, and allowed to lead to other ideas, in trajectories that evolve in parallel. Eventually this dynamic process leads to a kind of rough "convergence" on a strange attractor -- a basic sense for what kind of idea, what kind of product one is going to have. The various parts of this attractor are then explored in a basically chaotic way, until a particular * part* of the attractor is converged to. In formal language terms, we may express this by saingy that the act of creative inspiration *creates its own languages *, which it then narrows down into simpler and simpler languages, until it arrives at languages that the rest of the mind can understand. The hierarchical structure of the dual network plays a role here, in that attractors formed on higher levels progressively give rise to attractors dealing with lower levels. One thus has a kind of iterative substitution, similar to the L-system model of sentence production. Instead of sentences consisting of words, however, one has "sentences" (abstract syntactic constructions) consisting of much more abstract structures. The lower levels use their evolutionary dynamics to produce elements that yield the higher-level created structures as * emergent patterns*. An analogy between the structure of creative ideas and the structure of * dreams* is made. Just as dreams provide autopoietic thought systems with what they need, so, it is argued, do creative inspirations. Creative inspiration deals with thought systems whose needs are too complex for dreams to figure out how to solve. Creative activity is, in part, a very refined way of disempowering excessively persistent autopoietic thought sys tems. In this sense the creative state of consciousness is structurally and functionally similar to the dream state of consciousness. There are also other similarities between the two states. For instance, in both states, the perceptual corner of the perceptual-cognitive-active loop is replaced with a reference to * memory*, while the "inner eye" is relieved of its duty of ordinary detached reflection. In dreaming, however, the inner eye often has no role whatsoever, or a very nebulous role; while in creative inspiration it assumes an alien or "godlike" mantle. These observations do not exhaust the richness of human creativity, but they do constitute a far more detailed and comprehensive theory of creativity than has ever been givenbefore. They tie together the actual experience of creativity with the dynamics of existing computational algorithms. And they show us exactly what is missing in the supposedly creative computer programs that we have today. ***** On Sun, Oct 12, 2008 at 6:35 AM, Mike Tintner <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>wrote: > Ben, > > I'm glad that you have decided to respond to, - or at least recognize - my > criticisms/points re creativity, because they are extremely important and > central to AGI - & as I said, it isn't just you but everyone who is avoiding > them - when it is in all your interests to confront them *now*/*urgently*. I > think in fact my criticisms do hold - but obviously I will have to look at > your book first. [I may have looked at it already - I've read quite a bit of > you - but you've written a lot]. If you could link me, or send me a copy, I > will reply in a more considered way. > > ... some loose ends in reply to a message from a few days back ... > > Mike Tintner wrote: > > *** > Be honest - when and where have you ever addressed creative problems? > [Just count how many problems I have raised).. > *** > > In my 1997 book FROM COMPLEXITY TO CREATIVITY > > > > *** > Just as it is obvious that I know next to nothing about programming, it > is also obvious that you have v. little experience of discussing creative > problemsolving - at, I stress, a *metacognitive* level. (And nor, AFAIK, do > any AGI-ers - only partly excepting Minsky). > > *** > > > The 1997 book I referenced above in fact contains a significant amount of > metacognition about creativity. You seem to have the idea that it's > supposed to be possible to explain an AGI's creative process in detail, in > specific instances ... and I don't know why you think that, since it's not > even the case for humans. > > > *** > All this stands in total, stark contrast to any discussion of logical > or mathematical, problems, where you are always delighted to engage in > detail, and v. helpful and constructive - and do not make excuses to cover > up your inexperience. > *** > > Aspects of the mind that are closer to the deliberative, intensely > conscious level are easier to discuss explicitly and in detail. > > Aspects of the mind that are mainly unconscious and have to do mainly with > the coordinated activity of a large number of different processes, are > harder to describe in detail in specific instances. One can describe the > underlying processes but this then becomes technical and lengthy!! > > -- Ben > > > -- > Ben Goertzel, PhD > CEO, Novamente LLC and Biomind LLC > Director of Research, SIAI > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > "Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections must be first > overcome " - Dr Samuel Johnson > > > ------------------------------ > *agi* | Archives <https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now> > <https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/> | > Modify<https://www.listbox.com/member/?&;>Your Subscription > <http://www.listbox.com> > > ------------------------------ > *agi* | Archives <https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now> > <https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/> | > Modify<https://www.listbox.com/member/?&;>Your Subscription > <http://www.listbox.com> > -- Ben Goertzel, PhD CEO, Novamente LLC and Biomind LLC Director of Research, SIAI [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections must be first overcome " - Dr Samuel Johnson ------------------------------------------- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244&id_secret=117534816-b15a34 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
