Human Creativity in the Modern Age

Introduction

The role of creativity in human existence cannot be overlooked because it plays a central role in the progress, survival, and daily life of humans. Developing a more complete philosophical understanding of human creativity and the concept of the creative spark positions thinkers to develop a better understanding of human creativity, especially with regard to developments in the creative capacity for artificial intelligence.

In this dissertation, I will consider that vitality, sensorial experience and consciousness play an integral role in positioning people to come up with creative products. Philosophers like Gout and Stokes provide valuable contemporary insights regarding the essential role of the conscious or the intent in stimulating creativity. Gout emphasizes that agency is an integral component of creativity because creative products require something that acts upon them. Therefore, a conceptualization of the conscious and subconscious effectively highlights why the conscious plays such an integral role in facilitating creativity. Ideally, an idea becomes creative after an agent acts on it. This paper evaluates the philosophical underpinnings of creativity, then evaluates the relation between human creativity and AI creativity in an attempt to illustrate a clear distinction, and concludes by evaluating the implications of expanding AI capabilities.

Section 1: Defining Creativity

Creativity is a fundamental element of human cognition and expression, however the field of philosophy has neglected this area of inquiry. This has resulted in a disconnect regarding proper appreciation of the role that the creative process plays in the generation of creative products. People presume that the subconscious and the conscious make similarly significant contributions to the generation of creative ideas; this is not the case.

There is a significant correlation between creativity and phenomenal consciousness, as I believe the experience of the creative spark establishes, seeing as it is the bridge between a person’s conscious awareness and subconscious storing of information. However, the creative spark is something that is felt, it is a part of our agency, our history and our vitality and is inextricably linked to ourselves as human, living, phenomenally conscious beings. The paradox of the creative spark emphasizes that apparently contradicting conditions create contexts that paradoxically prevent and facilitate creativity, demanding that thinkers develop a delicate balance if they must become innovative (Calic and Helie, 2020, p. 1).

Throughout history, thinkers have proposed similar ideas, such as Nietzsche in The Birth of Tragedy, where he distinguishes between the Dionysian and the Apollonian: chaos and order. He states that creativity requires a delicate balance between the two in order to come into being. Plato describes the creative poet as often experiencing a form of madness when encountering creative inspiration. It seems that a balance between emotionality, sensorial experiences and order is required in order to initiate a creative inspiration and then facilitate its coming into being.

Creativity has a deep connection with artistic pursuits but this concept is philosophically complex because it extends beyond the scope of arts to areas of knowledge like mathematics, science, technology, and developing solutions for daily challenges. Therefore, the process of creativity is not limited to the creation of new and valuable products, but also intentionality, the capacity to develop new thought patterns and question established norms, and agency (Paul & Stokes, 2023).

The word creative derives from the Latin word Creo, which denotes to make or create (Griffith University, 2024). Historical records highlight that creativity had a well-developed connection with divine inspiration. Plato’s Ion and Phaedrus develop the idea of “divine madness.” If a work of art was outstanding in a specific respect, people considered that God inspired the artist to create the work. Artists played a minimal part in creating works of art, and this is one of the reasons why creative individuals rarely attached their names to works of art.

The evolution of philosophy led to the emergence of thinkers like Kant, who introduced the concept of creativity into the domain of human rationality and cognition. In Critique of Judgment, Kant defined creative genius as the capacity to go above pre-established norms and come up with new ideas by tapping into one’s imagination (Kant & Pluhar, 1987). Sigmund Freud developed an alternative perspective by indicating that creativity exists in the unconscious mind, but he does not come up with an account of the role that the conscious plays in stimulating the creative spark.

The Paradox of the Creative Spark

The paradox of the creative spark is the center of my argument because I believe the creative spark is conscious. I do not disregard subconscious processes because they play an integral role in incubating ideas, but I believe that a person’s phenomenal consciousness experiences the “Eureka!” moments or periods of insight. The paradox arises at this point, because I maintain cognizance of the fact that creativity demands conscious intent, but it also manifests from the subconscious in an unpredictable fashion. My point of contention is: what precise role does the conscious play in creativity?

I find defining consciousness as a person’s emotions, sensorial experiences and first-person point-of-view — instead of developing an argument against its role in creativity — an effective way of coming up with a solution to this paradox. Gaut and Stokes assert that acts of creativity demand intentionality and agency. The creative spark is more than intellectual awareness because it is also a profound sensual experience. The creative spark is more of an internal cognition that brings together sensory experiences, cognitive insights, and emotional resonance.

Comparing the philosophical positions of different thinkers develops insightful ideas regarding creativity. Freud conceptualizes creativity as deriving from the subconscious mind, and Kant considers rationality and imagination as integral components in stimulating creativity. Therefore, creativity subsists between the subconscious and the unconscious — the subconscious incubates a creative idea that comes to be discovered following a conscious period of insight. Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy considers that creativity derives from the tension between the Dionysian spark and the Apollonian structure. The Dionysian encompasses intuition, chaos, and emotions; the Apollonian, rationality, and order. Therefore, the Dionysian spark of inspiration has to pass through the Apollonian structure if a valuable idea is to be developed.

Creativity transcends philosophical and cognitive bounds because it is sensual. There are accounts of people conceiving the creative spark as a sudden realization, or feeling that connects with physical sensations, emotions, and increased self-awareness. Therefore, creativity is more than an isolated intellectual process but an experience that is both immersive and personified. For this reason, I find a first-person perspective integral to comprehending the creativity concept.

My position regarding creativity is that it derives from the conscious. Augustine Fuentes articulates the creative spark as a philosophy that acknowledges the centrality of creativity and cooperation in defining the essence of being human (Fuentes, 2017, p. 1). Therefore, creativity is not a luxury but an essential part of the nature of humans. Margaret Boden and Berys Gaut emphasize that a creative product should be surprising, new, and valuable (Paul & Stokes, 2023). The concept of the creative spark is often described as sudden and untraceable and thus raises a paradox — creativity requires conscious agency and intent, yet the inspiration arises from a subconscious process (Calic & Hélie, 2020).

While the precursors to the spark may be subconscious, the experience of the spark is necessarily and undoubtedly conscious. Thus, any and all relevant elements of the creative spark — the actual moment of creative inspiration — are entirely and wholly conscious. For example, a unique idea may emerge unpredictably, but it is only when the agent becomes aware of and then acts upon it that it becomes truly creative.

Section 2: AI Creativity vs Human Creativity

Creativity has been a definitive characteristic of human intelligence, but the advent of AI has introduced questions regarding the capacity of machines to produce creative products or if outputs from computers are sophisticated imitations. To a certain extent, AI-generated outputs meet the criteria for creativity because a deep learning model can synthesize patterns in a way that produces original and valuable outputs. However, AI-generated outputs do not meet the consciousness criteria because artificial intelligence does not experience the world in a manner similar to humans and does not intentionally engage in specific activities.

AI has a limited capacity to integrate personal experience into its outputs. Creative people tap into their experiences when seeking ways of coming up with creative ideas — their struggles, aspirations, and memories. AI uses a different path; it relies on the data that its developers fed it with and the information it extracted from different databases. The lack of personal history limits the creative capabilities of AI since it operates in a probabilistic fashion.

Human creativity is also different from AI creativity because AI cannot develop emotional attachment. AI does not develop an emotional attachment to the output it produces because it only synthesizes patterns. Therefore, it cannot tap into its internal emotions to impulsively develop a creative idea. Humans become attached to their inventions because they spend extensive periods creating them.

The concept of phronesis relates to human creativity because emotional and ethical realities determine the type of knowledge that people generate. Gilbert (2009) is emphatic that the creative process can be overwhelming since the creative spark can surface at the most inopportune moments. Gilbert provides the example of musician Tom Waits, who got ideas from a source he could not identify — the subconscious — at the most inconvenient moments. This demonstrates that human creativity is premised on experiences, failures, and insights that span a lifetime.

Equally, human creativity is premised on praxis because humans intentionally develop specific ideas. Timothy Presto resolved to deal with the problem of infant mortality rates in the developing world. One effective way was getting neonatal incubators into these countries to decrease mortality rates. However, purchasing a $40,000 incubator would only solve the problem for a short period — the device was bound to break down in countries lacking repair expertise. Presto and his colleagues realized that the locals had the capacity to keep their cars on the roads despite extended periods of use, and built a neonatal incubator made entirely of automobile parts (Johnson, 2010). This device presented an effective solution precisely because of embodied, contextual, human knowledge.

Deep language models do not intentionally create specific knowledge systems. These models synthesize patterns and create outputs that are original and valuable. Philosophers like Gaut are emphatic that the act of an agent must be intentional for the associated output to be regarded as creative. Therefore, when a deep learning model synthesizes information in a fashion that produces a new idea, the result is considered valuable but not creative in the fullest sense — the model did not have the intention of producing this output.

AI is probabilistic. It stores data and interprets it through a mechanistic process. However, the role of agency and emotionality is something that is distinctly human. My emotional resonance to a specific piece of art might inspire my creative pursuits. Without emotional resonance or attachment — good or bad — I would not care to exercise creative intent in order to create something innovative. There is something essential about a human’s capacity for emotional resonance and sensuous experience when engaging in the creative process from its initiation.

Section 3: Ontological, Metaphysical, and Practical Perspectives

Human creativity is fundamentally different from AI creativity because human creativity envisages sensuous existence and AI creativity derives from the evaluation of data. Human creativity captures people’s lived experiences and the progress they realize as they evolve through their connection with the physical world. Human creativity is superior to AI creativity because human cognition connects to emotions, people’s sense of belonging, and agency. Therefore, when humans generate creative products, these items are usually extensions of their personalized worldviews, which are premised on their emotions, past experiences, and cultural ideologies.

Kant places the above positions in perspective by using the concept of nature’s subjective purposiveness to connect creativity with agency and rationality. This means that by connecting nature’s subjective purposiveness with humans’ mental powers, Kant comes up with the concept of the “supersensible” — the idea that when people regard something as beautiful, they realize this end through a specific liking that carries universal expectation. Judgment is not simply valid on the basis of the judging subject but universality.

Runco (2023) indicates that the social recognition aspect of creative products is an integral component of creativity, and suggests that a more fitting categorization of creativity related to AI is pseudo-creativity. Nonetheless, Boden recognizes the capacity of computers to be creative within a “conceptual space” — a system with a set of fundamental elements and rules for manipulation. In this respect, Boden argues that the rules and elements of a conceptual space can be captured in a computer program. She cites Dickens’ description of Scrooge — “A squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner” — as surprising but accurate, arguing a deep learning model could meet the same criterion.

Nonetheless, deep learning models lack qualia. Gaut (2018) argues that creative things should be created by agents — naturally occurring phenomena, however beautiful, are not creative. AI follows a configuration akin to natural creativity. The patterns of rain that land on cement may reveal a beautiful design, but calling such a thing “creative” is not logical. The same analogy applies to the outputs of deep learning models.

However, when we automate certain aspects of human creativity, we lose essential elements of human existence. Automation has a negative effect on sustaining skills; history demonstrates that automation results in the loss of craft and the erosion of physical relationships. The absence of a praxeological relation between workers and their tools eventually results in the erosion of critical skills.

The Philosophical and Ethical Risks

The institutions in charge of creating and developing AI should ensure that AI does not transcend its role as a tool for serving human creativity. These groups include policymakers, developers, and the persons in charge of cultural institutions. Ethical oversight should be implemented in a way that prevents AI from undermining human creativity — ensuring that AI does not facilitate a culture shift that strips off the existential and emotional depth related to artistic expression.

AI developers should maintain caution because overlooking philosophical and ethical concerns may elevate the risk of artistic expression commodification. Late-stage capitalist interests oversee the production of AI-generated content because the intention is to realize economic advantage instead of maintaining the integrity of art. Therefore, AI creativity is a byproduct of the desire of the industry to monetize creativity rather than an organic evolution of human expression. The risk of improving AI technology derives from the change from art being a medium of stimulation and beauty to art manifesting as a product.

The monetization of creativity is perceptible through a Dionysian perspective. Art has a Dionysian dimension, which is grounded in desire, disorder, and experience; the commodification of art is eroding this dimension because art is increasingly falling under the purview of market forces. With the gradual improvement of AI capabilities, creativity may develop into an industrialized function instead of a profound human endeavor.

While we cannot limit expanding AI’s capacities, putting in place measures that prevent art from being reduced to an algorithm will go a long way toward maintaining the integrity of art. Instead of seeking ways of transforming AI into a “more creative” algorithm, we should direct efforts to sustain and grow the elements that embody human creativity — because these cannot be replaced.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the most important aspect of creativity is the creative spark because it marks the starting point of innovation. This is where the conscious actively recognizes the value of a specific idea in providing a creative solution for a specific challenge. The creative spark brings together all the elements of creativity because people create new and valuable products after experiencing it. The intentionality aspect of the creative spark positions creative people to address the paradoxes associated with the concept. Intentionality emboldens creative people to embrace and reconcile ideas that are seemingly conflicting, and this positions them to consider both sides of established ideas rather than adopt one-sided arguments.

These types of thought patterns lead thinkers to come up with new solutions to pre-existing challenges. An excellent case is Presto’s creation of a neonatal incubator using automobile parts — a solution born from embodied, contextual, human knowledge of what is available and what works. Therefore, one would be accurate to contend that the precise moment of creative inspiration is entirely and wholly conscious.

Thinkers have to consider multiple perspectives in their quest to find innovative solutions to the challenges that humanity experiences. This perspective highlights the reality that imagination and collaboration are integral elements for realizing creativity. People must work together by expressing differing viewpoints, leveraging ideas from different backgrounds, and sharing experiences about failures.

This position demonstrates that an integral component of creativity is experience — and this is what limits AI outputs from being regarded as fully creative. While AI demonstrates a capacity to mimic human creativity, deep learning models cannot rely on experience as a way of coming up with creative solutions. AI models depend on the information that developers feed them, and cannot draw on the unpublished, lived, embodied knowledge that human collaboration produces. Therefore, while AI has the capacity to develop unique and valuable outputs, they do not entirely fit the creative criteria because deep language models do not intentionally evaluate information to produce creative products.

References

Calic, G. and Hélie, S., 2020. ‘Creative sparks or paralysis traps? the effects of contradictions on creative processing and creative products’, Frontiers in Psychology, 9.

Fuentes, A., 2017. The creative spark: How imagination made humans exceptional. NY, NY: Dutton.

Gilbert, E., 2009. Your elusive creative genius. TED Talk. https://www.ted.com/talks/elizabeth_gilbert_your_elusive_creative_genius

Johnson, S., 2010. Where good ideas come from. TED Talk. https://www.ted.com/talks/steven_johnson_where_good_ideas_come_from

Kant, I. and Pluhar, W.S., 1987. Critique of judgment. Indianapolis: Hackett Pub. Co.

Mihai, A., 2023. Beyond the AI paradox: Are machines capable of genuine creativity? Heidelberg Laureate Foundation.

Paul, E.S. and Stokes, D., 2023. Creativity, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/creativity/

Runco, M.A., 2023. ‘AI can only produce artificial creativity’, Journal of Creativity, 33(3), p. 100063.