Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-r5fsc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-25T00:53:25.114Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

The productive mind: Creativity as a source of abstract mental representations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 June 2020

Mark Fedyk
Affiliation:
Betty Irene Moore School of Nursing & School of Medicine (Bioethics), University of California, Davis, Betty Irene Moore Hall, Sacramento, CA95817 [email protected] markfedyk.net
Fei Xu
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, University of California, Berkeley, 3rd Floor, Berkeley Way West Building, Berkeley, CA94720. [email protected]://psychology.berkeley.edu/people/fei-xu

Abstract

Explanations of how the brain makes successful predictions should refer to abstracta. But, the mind/brain system is for more than prediction alone. Creativity also plays an important role in supply the mind/brain system with abstracta that serve a number of valuable ends over and above prediction.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press

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

Fedyk, M., Kushnir, T. & Xu, F. (2019) Intuitive epistemology: Children's theory of evidence. In: Advances in experimental philosophy of science, ed. Wilkenfeld, D. A., Samuels, R. & Beebe, J. R., pp. 122–43. Bloomsbury Academic.Google Scholar
Fedyk, M. & Xu, F. (2018) The epistemology of rational constructivism. Review of Philosophy and Psychology 9(2):343–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fedyk, M. & Xu, F. (2019) The metaphysics of the development of the cognitive system: Why the brain cannot replace the mind. In: Current controversies in philosophy of cognitive science, ed. Cullen, S. & Leslie, S.-J., pp. 6382. Routledge.Google Scholar
Lombrozo, T. (2019) “Learning by thinking” in science and in everyday life. In: The scientific imagination, ed. Godfrey-Smith, P. & Levy, A., pp. 230–49. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Rogoff, B. (1990) Apprenticeship in thinking: Cognitive development in social context. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
West-Eberhard, M. J. (1989) Phenotypic plasticity and the origins of diversity. Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics 20:249–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
West-Eberhard, M. J. (2003) Developmental plasticity and evolution. OUP.Google Scholar
Xu, F. (2020) Towards a rational constructivist theory of cognitive development. Psychological Review 126:841–64. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/rev0000153.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Xu, F. & Kushnir, T. (2012) Rational constructivism in cognitive development, vol. 43. Academic Press.Google Scholar