arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Liane Gabora.
This article explains how natural selection works and how it has been inappropriately applied to the description of cultural change. It proposes an alternative evolutionary explanation for cultural evolution that describes it in terms of communal exchange.
According to the honing theory of creativity, creative thought works not on individually considered, discrete, predefined representations but on a contextually-elicited amalgam of items which exist in a state of potentiality and may not be readily separable. This leads to the prediction that analogy making proceeds not by mapping correspondences from candidate sources to target, as predicted by the structure mapping theory of analogy, but by weeding out non-correspondences, thereby whittling away at potentiality. Participants were given an analogy problem, interrupted before they had time to solve it, and asked to write down what they had by way of a solution. Naïve judges categorized responses as significantly more supportive of the predictions of honing theory than those of structure mapping.
The Memory Process, edited by Suzanne Nalbantian, Paul M. Matthews, and James L. McClelland, is an intriguing and well-written book that provides a groundbreaking overview of diverse approaches to understanding memory that sets the agenda for an interdisciplinary approach to the topic. Memory has long been a focus of investigation and interest in both the sciences and the humanities. The way memory enriches and distorts lived experience has been widely explored in literature and the arts. Our fascination with the subject is increasingly evident in popular culture, with the widespread proliferation of novels and movies in which events play out in a nonlinear fashion that reflects how memories of them are woven together in the minds of the characters involved. Scientific approaches to memory have focused on the study of amnesiacs, neuroimaging studies, and cognitive studies of the formation, retrieval, and forgetting of memories. Until now, however, humanistic and scientific investigations of memory have been carried out independently. This book provides an exemplary illustration of how disciplinary boundaries can be transcended, showing how approaches to memory from the humanities and the sciences can revitalize one another. With 19 chapters written by academics from a range of disciplines including neuroscience, psychology, psychiatry, cognitive science, cultural studies, philosophy, bioethics, history of science, art, theatre, film, and literature, it is undoubtedly one of the most interdisciplinary books on library shelves. Together these diverse perspectives provide a broad and stimulating overview of the memory process.
Evolutionary and Interpretive Archaeologies, edited by Ethan E. Cochrane and Andrew Gardner, grew out of a seminar at the Institute for Archaeology at University College London in 2007. It consists of 15 chapters by archaeologists who self-identify themselves as practitioners who emphasize the benefits of evolutionary or interpretive approaches to the study of the archaeological record. While the authors' theoretical views are dichotomous, the editors' aim for the book as a whole is not to expound on the differences between these two kinds of archaeology but to bring forward a richer understanding of the discipline and to highlight areas of mutual concern. Some chapters come across as a bit of a sales pitch, but the majority of the contributions emphasize how each approach can be productively used to address the goals of the other. The book seeks to contribute to a mutually beneficial and more productive discipline, and overall, it succeeds in this effort.
There are both benefits and drawbacks to cultural diversity. It can lead to friction and exacerbate differences. However, as with biological diversity, cultural diversity is valuable in times of upheaval; if a previously effective solution no longer works, it is good to have alternatives available. What factors give rise to cultural diversity? This paper describes a preliminary investigation of this question using a computational model of cultural evolution. The model is composed of neural network based agents that evolve fitter ideas for actions by (1) inventing new ideas through modification of existing ones, and (2) imitating neighbors' ideas. Numerical simulations indicate that the diversity of ideas in a population is positively correlated with both the proportion of creators to imitators in the population, and the rate at which creators create. This is the case for both minimum and peak diversity of actions over the duration of a run.
The importance of innovation in the world's economy, now undeniable, draws great attention to the need to improve organizations' creative potential. In the last 60 years, hundreds of books have been written on the subject and hundreds of webpages display information on how to be more creative and achieve innovation. Several North American and European universities offer graduated programs in creativity. However, building an effective and validated creativity training program is not without challenges. Because of the nature of their work, engineers are often asked to be innovative. Without aiming for a degree in creativity, could future engineers benefit from training programs in creativity? This article presents the conceptual framework and pedagogical elements of a new course in creativity for engineering students.
EVOC is a computer model of the EVOlution of Culture. It consists of neural network based agents that invent ideas for actions, and imitate neighbors' actions. EVOC replicates using a different fitness function the results obtained with an earlier model (MAV), including (1) an increase in mean fitness of actions, and (2) an increase and then decrease in the diversity of actions. Diversity of actions is positively correlated with number of needs, population size and density, and with the erosion of borders between populations. Slowly eroding borders maximize diversity, fostering specialization followed by sharing of fit actions. Square (as opposed to toroidal) worlds also exhibit higher diversity. Introducing a leader that broadcasts its actions throughout the population increases the fitness of actions but reduces diversity; these effects diminish the more leaders there are. Low density populations have less fit ideas but broadcasting diminishes this effect.
Creativity is thought to involve searching and selecting amongst multiple discrete idea candidates. Honing theory predicts that it involves actualizing the potentiality of as few as a single ill-defined idea by viewing it from different contexts. This paper reports on a study that tests between these theories. Participants were invited to "Create a painting that expresses yourself in any style that appeals to you", and asked "Were all of your ideas for your painting distinct and separate ideas?" Naive judges were provided with descriptions of the two theories of creativity, sample answers, and practice responses to classify. The judges were significantly more likely to classify the artists' responses as 'H', indicative of honing theory rather than 'S' indicative of a search-select view of creativity.
Excess individual creativity can be detrimental to society because creators invest in unproven ideas at the expense of propagating proven ones. Moreover, a proportion of individuals can benefit from creativity without being creative themselves by copying creators. We hypothesized that (1) societies increase their rate of cultural evolution by tempering the novelty-generating effects of creativity with the novelty-preserving effects of imitation, and (2) this is carried out by selectively rewarding and punishing creativity according to the value of the individuals' creative outputs. We tested this using an agent-based model of cultural evolution in which each agent self-regulated its invention-to-imitation ratio as a function of the fitness of its cultural outputs. In self-regulating societies, agents segregated into creators and imitators. The mean fitness of cultural outputs was higher than in non-self-regulating societies, and changes in diversity were rapider and more pronounced. We discuss limitations and possible social implications of our findings.
We outline the rationale and preliminary results of using the state context property (SCOP) formalism, originally developed as a generalization of quantum mechanics, to describe the contextual manner in which concepts are evoked, used and combined to generate meaning. The quantum formalism was developed to cope with problems arising in the description of (i) the measurement process, and (ii) the generation of new states with new properties when particles become entangled. Similar problems arising with concepts motivated the formal treatment introduced here. Concepts are viewed not as fixed representations, but entities existing in states of potentiality that require interaction with a context-a stimulus or another concept-to 'collapse' to an instantiated form (e.g. exemplar, prototype, or other possibly imaginary instance). The stimulus situation plays the role of the measurement in physics, acting as context that induces a change of the cognitive state from superposition state to collapsed state. The collapsed state is more likely to consist of a conjunction of concepts for associative than analytic thought because more stimulus or concept properties take part in the collapse. We provide two contextual measures of conceptual distance-one using collapse probabilities and the other weighted properties-and show how they can be applied to conjunctions using the pet fish problem.
A stream of conscious experience is extremely contextual; it is impacted by sensory stimuli, drives and emotions, and the web of associations that link, directly or indirectly, the subject of experience to other elements of the individual's worldview. The contextuality of one's conscious experience both enhances and constrains the contextuality of one's behavior. Since we cannot know first-hand the conscious experience of another, it is by way of behavioral contextuality that we make judgements about whether or not, and to what extent, a system is conscious. Thus we believe that a deep understanding of contextuality is vital to the study of consciousness. Methods have been developed for handling contextuality in the microworld of quantum particles. Our goal has been to investigate the extent to which these methods can be used to analyze contextuality in conscious experience. This work is the fledgling efforts of a recently-initiated interdisciplinary collaboration.
The quantum inspired State Context Property (SCOP) theory of concepts is unique amongst theories of concepts in offering a means of incorporating that for each concept in each different context there are an unlimited number of exemplars, or states, of varying degrees of typicality. Working with data from a study in which participants were asked to rate the typicality of exemplars of a concept for different contexts, and introducing an exemplar typicality threshold, we built a SCOP model of how states of a concept arise differently in associative versus analytic (or divergent and convergent) modes of thought. Introducing measures of state robustness and context relevance, we show that by varying the threshold, the relevance of different contexts changes, and seemingly atypical states can become typical. The formalism provides a pivotal step toward a formal explanation of creative thought proesses.
The speed and transformative power of human cultural evolution is evident from the change it has wrought on our planet. This chapter proposes a human computation program aimed at (1) distinguishing algorithmic from non-algorithmic components of cultural evolution, (2) computationally modeling the algorithmic components, and amassing human solutions to the non-algorithmic (generally, creative) components, and (3) combining them to develop human-machine hybrids with previously unforeseen computational power that can be used to solve real problems. Drawing on recent insights into the origins of evolutionary processes from biology and complexity theory, human minds are modeled as self-organizing, interacting, autopoietic networks that evolve through a Lamarckian (non-Darwinian) process of communal exchange. Existing computational models as well as directions for future research are discussed.
In a society, a proportion of the individuals can benefit from creativity without being creative themselves by copying the creators. This paper uses an agent-based model of cultural evolution to investigate how society is affected by different levels of individual creativity. We performed a time series analysis of the mean fitness of ideas across the artificial society varying both the percentage of creators, C, and how creative they are, p using two discounting methods. Both analyses revealed a valley in the adaptive landscape, indicating a tradeoff between C and p. The results suggest that excess creativity at the individual level can be detrimental at the level of the society because creators invest in unproven ideas at the expense of propagating proven ideas.
We tested the computational feasibility of the proposal that open-ended cultural evolution was made possible by two cognitive transitions: (1) onset of the capacity to chain thoughts together, followed by (2) onset of contextual focus (CF): the capacity to shift between a divergent mode of thought conducive to 'breaking out of a rut' and a convergent mode of thought conducive to minor modifications. These transitions were simulated in EVOC, an agent-based model of cultural evolution, in which the fitness of agents' actions increases as agents invent ideas for new actions, and imitate the fittest of their neighbors' actions. Both mean fitness and diversity of actions across the society increased with chaining, and even more so with CF, as hypothesized. CF was only effective when the fitness function changed, which supports its hypothesized role in generating and refining ideas.
In order to become aware of inconsistencies, one must first construe of the world in a way that reflects its consistencies. This paper begins with a tentative model for how a set of discrete memories transforms into an interconnected worldview wherein relationships between memories are forged by way of abstractions. Inconsistencies prompt the invention of new abstractions. In regions of the conceptual network where inconsistencies abound, a cognitive analog of simulated annealing is in order; there is a willingness to question previous assumptions--to 'loosen' conceptual relationships--so as to let new concepts thoroughly percolate through the worldview and exert the needed revolutionary effect. In so doing there is a risk of assimilating dangerous concepts. Repression arrests the process by which dangerous thoughts infiltrate the conceptual network, and deception blocks thoughts that have already been assimilated. These forms of self-initiated worldview inconsistency may evoke feelings of fragmentation at the level of the individual or the society.
Human creativity is a multifaceted phenomenon with cognitive, attitudinal, intrapersonal interpersonal, practical, socio-cultural, economic, and environmental aspects. It can be challenging to incorporate creativity in classrooms. Teachers tend to inhibit creativity by focusing on reproduction of knowledge, obedience and passivity in class, and correct responses, which are easier to evaluate than creative ones. Teaching in such a way as to discourage creative answers and approaches may lead to higher scores on standardized tests (with all the sociological, marketplace, and political consequences that entails). Teachers claim to value creativity, but to hold negative attitudes toward, and show little tolerance of, attributes associated with creativity, such as risk taking, impulsivity, and independence. When teachers do encourage creativity, it is often the case that neither teacher nor students knows what the expectations are. Moreover, students fear that they will be critically judged if they produce something in which they have invested at a personal level. Despite the potentially threatening aspects of encouraging creative classrooms, no other investment in education could be more important and rewarding. The phrase 'creative potential' is generally used to refer to how likely a given individual is to manifest creative works in the future, as assessed by scores on creativity tests. The concept of potentiality and its relationship to actuality and context has been studied in depth by physicists. This chapter explores how the physical conception of potentiality can shed light on the notion of potential as it applies in the classroom, and in particular, on how we conceive of and actualize students' creative potential. We then discuss methods that will help optimize the creative potential of students in less threatening ways.
This chapter begins with an investigation into experiences of depression, alienation, and self-abuse amongst the highly creative. After this journey to the dark side, it may be uplifting to see that Mother Nature may have a few tricks up her sleeve to minimize the extent to which we succumb to the negative aspects of creativity while still benefiting from its riches. Finally, we discuss another sobering aspect of creativity--the fact that many of our inventions are dangerous to ourselves, our planet, and the other living things we share it with--and discuss how a creation intimately reflects the structure of the worldview(s) of its creators. Although the discussion focuses primarily on creative writers, we believe that it relevant to creativity in other domains, particularly the arts, and to a lesser extent science, engineering, and business.