Hints and Allegations (Hallelujah)

May 1st, 2006 Fred McVittie

This presentation will report on a trial looking at the functionality of ‘hints’ or clues in the solving of certain logical problems associated with creativity. It will be demonstrated that, in problems which require remote associations between widely different and non-obvious data sources to be forged in order for a solution to be found, the giving of a hint allows the solution to be found by a greater number of subjects than when no hint is provided, although the actual content of the hint is not necessarily significant.

Problems were given which did not respond well to deductive logical methods of solving, but rather needed a more lateral or intuitive response. An example of such a problem is as follows:

Mary and Marjory were born to the same mother and the same father on the same day of the same month of the same year, yet they are not twins. Explain.

Typically, subjects either solved the problem almost immediately, experiencing a ‘moment of illumination’, or did not solve it at all. When presented with a hint, however, many of the subjects who had previously been unable to solve the problem spontaneously came up with the solution, again experiencing the sudden flash of ‘illumination’, or even ‘enlightenment’.

A particularly interesting aspect of this research was that the actual hint itself did not need to relate to the problem at all, and a random set of prompt words, when offered as hints, had an equal level of success in prompting a successful solving of the problem. This phenomenon will be discussed and various hypotheses offered to account for this.

Posted in Creativity, Enlightenment, Illumination, Problem | No Comments »

Problem-finding and the Feeling of Meaning

December 6th, 2007 Fred McVittie

There is some evidence to suggest that there is a universal human need to engage in cognitive behaviour which exceeds the demands of the immediate situation. Rather than simply being limited to responding to the ‘problems’ posed by the environment, humans also engage in active ‘problem finding’, (what Newberg and D’Aquili refer to as the ‘cognitive imperative’). This excessive cognition, which undoubtedly conferred adaptive advantages upon our ancestors, most likely underpins such human traits as; worrying about what might happen at some unspecified point in the future, finding fault with situations and the behaviours of others, and more positively, inventing solutions to potential problems before they arise, and all forms of creativity. The reach or ambition of this tendency does not seem be confined to the realm of potential opportunities and threats to the physical body or the immediate community, but extends to the construction of problems which have no direct impact on the material body at all. These include such worrisome conundrums as ‘why is there something rather than nothing?, ‘What happens after you die?’, and ‘Why is there evil in the world?’. The fact that these and related problems underpin most religious and philosophical practices, and the fact that such practices are found in all cultures throughout all of human history, demonstrates the omnipresence of such superhuman problem-finding tendencies. An interesting facet of this is that possessing the solutions to such problems, if such solutions did exist, (which is unlikely), would confer no survival advantage on individual, group, or species, other than relief from the burden of the problem itself. Having the answer to the question of what happens after a person dies would have almost zero impact on the ability of that person to stay alive, which is, after all, the ultimate goal of adaptive evolution. Such knowledge, were it available, would however provide relief from worrying about the problem, presumably freeing up attentional resources for more pressing concerns. Beyond this circular purpose, the big problems appear to have no function whatsoever. This is not to say that they should not be asked of course; addressing, or at least operating in the presence of, such questions is hugely enjoyable and entertaining, and the feelings associated with their possible solution are some of the most profound and overwhelming available to human beings. It is such feelings that we associate with meaning and purpose, and our attachment to the significance of such felt knowledge is at the heart of the human condition. One might almost say that these feelings and pleasures are addictive, so determinedly do we hang onto their source, the apparent solution to the big problems.

Posted in Evolution, Feeling, Problem, Religion, Science | No Comments »

How Philosophy Captures the Mind

December 7th, 2007 Fred McVittie

It is said that a good question in science is one that is posed in such a way that the answer is easily found, whereas a good question in philosophy is one for which the answer is never found. Scientific questions, formalised in the conventions of the hypothesis, ideally constrain the field of inquiry to within clearly determined limits well-defined terms. The location of the answer to such a question, even if such answer be unexpected or disappointing, is tightly identified and focused upon. Philosophical questions on the other hand tend to focus less on the location or even the identification of possible answers than on the conceptual space opened up by the question. Good philosophical questions are ones which do not point to a specific answer/location but that extend the field of possible questions. This ability of questions in philosophy to capture the imagination and hold it in contemplation of the (possibly) unanswerable is one of the pleasures, if not consolations, of philosophy.

It seems likely that this feature of the ‘big questions’ to provoke extended contemplation, often by hundred of scholars over many centuries, is related to the ‘cognitive imperative’ identified by Newberg and D’Aquili and others, in which the human mind/brain irresistibly seeks out problems and ambiguous stimuli. Further, there may be a relationship with the tendency in babies and small children to give preferential attention to events which are unusual or which contravene their innate understandings of how the world works.

Posted in Attention, Cognition, Knowledge, Philosophy, Problem | No Comments »