Everyone has a creative process. But where does that intuition to try something new come from? 聽
This Friday Paul Thagard, the 2013 Canada Council Killam Prize Winner for the Humanities, will visit AV俱乐部 to discuss what the brain just might be doing when its intellectual sparks are firing. His lecture into how the mind processes intuition takes place in the Scotiabank Auditorium of the Marion McCain Arts & Social Sciences Building this Friday at 4 p.m., with the cognition expert sharing his cutting-edge research into how the brain conveys creative intuition.
Sparking new ideas
Working from the premise that for an idea to be creative it must be new, valuable and surprising, Dr. Thagard鈥檚 interdisciplinary research explores how our brains help us interpret ideas in new ways.
鈥淚n fields like art, science and technology, people get hunches that turn out to be valuable,鈥� says Dr. Thagard, who is a professor of philosophy and director of the Cognitive Science program at the University of Waterloo. 鈥淲hat I鈥檓 looking at is how the brain manages to bring those hunches to our attention.鈥�
Dr. Thagard (left) is using three computational mechanisms 鈥� neural representation, recursive binding and interactive competition 鈥� to try to understand why our brains react in ways that we identify as creativity. Simply put: brain cells fire in patterns, combine ideas to make something new, and make us more conscious of some combinations than others. When we become conscious of new and surprising ideas, this is what we call creative intuition.
An interdisciplinary field
AV俱乐部 philosophy professor Darren Abramson is doing research he describes as complementary to that of Dr. Thagard. Both stress that cognitive science is an inherently interdisciplinary field.
鈥淭he premise of cognitive science is that the study of the mind will require more than a single discipline,鈥� Dr. Abramson explains. 鈥淔olks who do this kind of research often publish in areas like philosophy and computer science as well.鈥�
鈥淭here is lots of room in Cognitive Science for different methods,鈥� adds Dr. Thagard. 鈥淔or example, I work closely with psychologists who use computer modelling.鈥澛�
Making ideas accessible
It鈥檚 that interdisciplinary quality that makes Dr. Thagard鈥檚 research interesting from a variety of different perspectives, and he stresses that he strives to make his research as accessible as possible.
鈥淚t鈥檚 a general lecture for a broad audience,鈥� Thagard says. 鈥淚 use videos and other media to engage a broad range of interests.鈥�
Dr. Abramson adds that across every discipline, 鈥渢he fundamental goal is to understand ourselves and the world we live in.鈥� Dr. Thagard鈥檚 lecture, he says, is 鈥渁 unique opportunity for the AV俱乐部 community to engage with cutting edge research moving us towards that goal.鈥�
Dr. Thagard speaks at 4 p.m. Friday in the Scotiabank Auditorium, Marion McCain Building. His lecure is titled: 鈥淓ureka! How Creative Intuition Results from Three Brain Mechanisms.鈥�