Hostname: page-component-745bb68f8f-f46jp Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-01-09T15:44:46.070Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Group Creativity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 October 2022

Berys Gaut
Berys Gaut*
Affiliation:
University of St Andrews
*
[email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Group creativity is vital in overcoming the numerous challenges that the world faces. Yet group creativity is deeply puzzling. It seems plausible that only agents can be creative, so group creativity requires group agency. But how could groups possess the mental states required to be agents, let alone the rich range of them required to be creative? It appears more reasonable to hold that group creativity is not a real phenomenon, but is merely the summed creativity of the individuals forming the group. There is also much empirical evidence that groups are no more creative than their members. In this paper I examine the conceptual and empirical challenges to group creativity, defend its existence, and offer an explanation of how it is possible.

Type
Paper
Information
Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements , Volume 92: Values and Virtues for a Challenging World , October 2022 , pp. 5 - 26
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy and the contributors 2022

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Astola, Mandi, ‘Collective Responsibility Should be Treated as a Virtue’, Royal Institute Philosophy Supplementary Volume, 92 (2022) 27–44.Google Scholar
Boden, Margaret A., The Creative Mind: Myths and Mechanisms, second edition (London and New York: Routledge, 2004).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bouchard, Thomas J. Jr. and Hare, Melana, ‘Size, Performance, and Potential in Brainstorming Groups’, Journal of Applied Psychology, 54 (1970), 51-55.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bratman, Michael E., Faces of Intention: Selected Essays on Intention and Agency (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bratman, Michael E., Shared Agency: A Planning Theory of Acting Together (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Catmull, Ed, ‘How Pixar Fosters Collective Creativity’, Harvard Business Review (September 2008), 64-72.Google Scholar
Dunbar, Kevin, ‘How Scientists Really Reason: Scientific Reasoning in Real-World Laboratories’ in Sternberg, Robert J. and Davidson, Janet E. (eds.), The Nature of Insight. (Cambridge Mass.: MIT Press, 1995).Google Scholar
Dunbar, Kevin, ‘How Scientists Think: On-Line Creativity and Conceptual Change in Science’ in Ward, Thomas B., Smith, Steven M. and Vaid, Jyotsna (eds.), Creative Thought: An Investigation of Conceptual Structures and Processes (Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, 1997).Google Scholar
Gaut, Berys, A Philosophy of Cinematic Art (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gaut, Berys, ‘Mixed Motivations: Creativity as a Virtue’, Philosophical Aesthetics and the Sciences of Art: Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 75 (2014), 183–202.Google Scholar
Gaut, Berys, ‘The Value of Creativity’ in Gaut, Berys and Kieran, Matthew (eds.), Creativity and Philosophy (Abingdon: Routledge, 2018).Google Scholar
Gilbert, Margaret, ‘Walking Together: A Paradigmatic Social Phenomenon’, Midwest Studies in Philosophy XV (1990), 1–14.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gilbert, Margaret, ‘Shared Intention and Personal Intentions’, Philosophical Studies 144 (2009), 167-87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Henrich, Joseph, The Secret of Our Success: How Culture is Driving Human Evolution, Domesticating Our Species, and Making Us Smarter (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hong, Lu and Page, Scott E., ‘Some Microfoundations of Collective Wisdom’ in Landemore, Hélène and Elster, Jon (eds.), Collective Wisdom: Principles and Mechanisms (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012).Google Scholar
Jefferson, Anneli and Sifferd, Katrina, ‘Practical Wisdom and the Value of Cognitive Diversity’, Royal Institute Philosophy Supplementary Volume, 92 (2022) 149–66.Google Scholar
Kieran, Matthew, ‘Creativity as a Virtue of Character’ in Paul, Elliot Samuel and Kaufman, Scott Barry (eds.), The Philosophy of Creativity: New Essays (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014).Google Scholar
List, Christian and Pettit, Philip, Group Agency: The Possibility, Design, and Status of Corporate Agents (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mazzucato, Mariana, The Entrepreneurial State: Debunking Public vs. Private Sector Myths, revised edition (London: Anthem Press, 2015).Google Scholar
Mehta, Ravi and (Juliet) Zhu, Rui, ‘Blue or Red? Exploring the Effect of Color on Cognitive Task Performances’, Science 323 (2009), 1226–1229.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Mercier, Hugo and Sperber, Dan, The Enigma of Reason: A New Theory of Human Understanding (London: Allen Lane, 2017).Google Scholar
Moshman, David and Geil, Molly, ‘Collaborative Reasoning: Evidence for Collective Rationality’, Thinking and Reasoning 4 (1998), 231–248.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nemeth, Charlan J., Personnaz, Bernard, Personnaz, Marie and Goncalo, Jack A., ‘The Liberating Role of Conflict in Group Creativity: A Study in two Countries’, European Journal of Social Psychology 34 (2004), 365–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Paul, Elliot Samuel and Stokes, Dustin, ‘Attributing Creativity’ in Gaut, Berys and Kieran, Matthew (eds.), Creativity and Philosophy (Abingdon: Routledge, 2018).Google Scholar
Pettit, Philip, ‘Corporate Agency: The Lesson of the Discursive Dilemma’ in Jankovic, Marija and Ludwig, Kirk (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Collective Intentionality (Abingdon: Routledge, 2018).Google Scholar
Poincaré, Henri, ‘Mathematical Creation’ in Ghiselin, Brewster (ed.), The Creative Process: A Symposium (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1985).Google Scholar
Price, David A., The Pixar Touch: The Making of a Company (New York: Vintage Books, 2009).Google Scholar
Raihani, Nichola, The Social Instinct: How Cooperation Shaped the World (London: Jonathan Cape, 2021).Google Scholar
Keith Sawyer, R., Group Genius: The Creative Power of Collaboration (New York: Basic Books, 2007).Google Scholar
Keith Sawyer, R., Explaining Creativity: The Science of Human Innovation, second edition (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012).Google Scholar
Searle, John R., Making the Social World: The Structure of Human Civilization (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Simonton, Dean Keith, ‘Creativity as a Darwinian Phenomenon: The Blind-Variation and Selective-Retention Model’ in Krausz, Michael, Dutton, Denis and Bardsley, Karen (eds.), The Idea of Creativity (Leiden: Brill, 1999)Google Scholar
Simonton, Dean Keith, ‘Hierarchies of Creative Domains: Disciplinary Constraints on Blind Variation and Selective Retention’ in Paul, Elliot Samuel and Kaufman, Scott Barry (eds.), The Philosophy of Creativity: New Essays (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014).Google Scholar
Singh, Simon, Fermat's Last Theorem (London: Harper Perennial, 2005).Google Scholar
Smith, Matthew Noah, ‘Political Creativity: A Skeptical View’ in Gaut, Berys and Kieran, Matthew (eds.), Creativity and Philosophy (Abingdon: Routledge, 2018).Google Scholar
Sperber, Dan and Mercier, Hugo, ‘Reasoning as a Social Competence’ in Landemore, Hélène and Elster, Jon (eds.), Collective Wisdom: Principles and Mechanisms (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012)Google Scholar
Stasser, Garold and Titus, William, ‘Hidden Profiles: A Brief History’, Psychological Inquiry 14 (2003), 304–13.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Taylor, Donald W., Berry, Paul C. and Block, Clifford H., ‘Does Group Participation When Using Brainstorming Facilitate or Inhibit Creative Thinking?’, Administrative Science Quarterly 3 (1958), 23–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thomasson, Amie, ‘The Ontology of Social Groups’, Synthese 196 (2019), 4829-4845.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tomasello, Michael, Why We Cooperate (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2009).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tomasello, Michael, A Natural History of Human Thinking (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2014).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tuomela, Raimo, Social Ontology: Collective Intentionality and Group Agents (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wuchty, Stefan, Jones, Benjamin F., Uzzi, Brian, ‘The Increasing Dominance of Teams in the Production of Knowledge’, Science 316 (2007), 1036–1039.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed