How does the creative mind work in making art? It is commonly assumed that the cognitions, emotions, and perceptions key to creativity can be explained by events discoverable within the artist’s head. Hence, non-neural and extra-bodily elements are seen as merely peripheral factors, i.e., as sources of passive input to the inner neural/cognitive system or means by which internally specifiable mental activities occur. This internalist approach is misleading and simplistic: in artistic work, creativity hinges on intricate networks of bodily, material, and socio-cultural factors. Creative mentation should thus be investigated as a situated phenomenon, i.e., as fundamentally dependent on the environments where it occurs. Adopting this premise, the project rectifies the notion of the creative mind as solely or even primarily bound to what goes on in the artist’s head. It argues that isolating agents from the world entails the neglection of numerous key factors in creative mentation, which leads to problematically one-sided research outcomes.
Using theories and findings from several disciplines, and by subjecting these to philosophical scrutiny, the project will (i) articulate the essentially situated nature of creativity, (ii) investigate the factors and mechanisms involved in the networks underlying creative mentation, and (iii) analyze specific cases of artmaking from the proposed perspective. Fulfilling these aims will deliver a new conceptual framework which, compared to existing accounts, gives a much more truthful grasp of the creative mind. This is significant, for as long as the situatedness of creative mentation is overlooked, not only will our understanding of creativity fall short but our overall conception of what minds are and how they function will also remain misguided.
