What to Believe About Intuitive Beliefs

What to believe about intuitive beliefs

Abstract

Contentious, apparently irresolvable questions surround contemporary philosophical

consideration of intuition, both in the sense of considered expert judgement and the more

general sense of hunches and gut feelings. These are; should we believe our intuitions? What

status do they carry, in terms of evidential or argumentative weight? Given that we cannot

describe where our intuitions come from, are they trustworthy?

The most common contemporary answers, largely from the schools of experimental

philosophy, are that they carry no weight, and are untrustworthy, or that they carry absolute

weight as the produce of considered professional judgements. Unfortunately, counterbalancing

these views are philosophers who see intuitions as the opposite; always trustworthy, of significant

evidential status, and acceptable as support for arguments.

This paper argues that these questions can be resolved by looking at intuition as creative and

pragmatic rather than epistemic; that is, as a cognitive capacity that prompts creative action

rather than produces valid epistemological claims.

Within philosophy, current debate centres around testing intuitions to see if they are universal

and/or accurate (Knobe, Nichols), arguing their weight as evidence (Sosa, Weinberg, Lao), and

seeing what parts of the brain are at work in the production of particular intuitions (Greene).

Keywords; intuition, creativity, phenomenology, rationality, epistemology, belief.

1. The phenomenological features of intuition are fallacious.

There is a set of metabeliefs about intuitions - that they are certain, holistic, evidential, a

priori, qualitatively similar, and irrational – which are seen outside the philosophical community

as true, simply because the feelings attached to their phenomenological presence are so strong.

In modern analytic philosophy, these features are either glossed over or simply defined out of

existence, and rightly so, since they cannot be true and have led philosophers astray in the past.

This writing-off, while sensible, is an insufficient response, since it has not removed debate

around the nature and status of intuition. What is needed is an explanation for the

phenomenological features of intuition that lead us astray. Sections 2 and 3 will describe the

nature of intuition, and sections 4-9 will deal with the metabeliefs individually.

2. Definitions of intuition.

2.1 Intuitions are often overextended.

Philosophical intuitions are often overextensions of more minimal cognitions. For example, we

have an innate intuition of space, which Hume (1975) saw (and Kant is often mistaken as seeing

(1996)) as Euclidean, which would necessitate that we could only conceive of space as Euclidean.

This is evidently not the case, since non-Euclidean geometries exist. The problem here is the

conflation of the a priori (foundational but changeable) with the innate (hardwired,

unchangeable), an example of which is the assumption that an a priori intuition of Euclidean

space is innate.

This overextension also includes the conflation of intuition and intuitions – that is, between

the cognitive function and its products. That which is true of a productive system does not have

to be true of its products, any more than what is true of a carpenter must be true of a cabinet, or

an artist of a painting. Something of the system must be within the product, but we should take

this something to be necessary but insufficient. Much of the muddle around intuition occurs as a

result of this assumption of sufficiency, such as confusing the feeling of certainty that as intuition

carries with certainty that the intuited proposition is true, a claim which can only be supported

by precise evidence, not vague feelings, however strong.

2.2 Intuition is operational.

Philosophers such as Plato (1983) and Spinoza (2000) present intuition as a metaphysical

messenger, revealing a higher truth of reality inaccessible by other means, much as with religious

knowledge. This is a tricky proposition, which begs a great variety of questions, such as how we

validate such knowledge. More usefully, Bergson (1946), suggests that intuition is a process, a

kind of creative problem-solving method. This approach has led to significant advances in our

understanding of this phenomenon, such as the results of insight research (Duch, 2007; Heinrich,

1995, 2005). If intuition is operational, related primarily not to conceptual problem solving (as the

insight research investigates, through the use of logical puzzles and the like) but to committing

physical action in the world, it is essentially involved with doing, or generating thoughts that can

be used as foundations for action. Conversely, if we assume that this is not the case, we find

ourselves in the well populated but problematic field of religious and metaphysical intuitions,

whose discussion often terminates in logical conundra that are of little use except as intellectual

exercises.

The claim that intuitions are action guiding requires some further unpacking. Epistemic

intuitions apply to no obvious actions, nor do they make any clear difference to one’s

engagement with the world. Discarding for a moment Peirce’s concern that any such cognition is

pragmatically irrelevant, the claim as concerns epistemic or nominatively purely cognitive

intuitions is that they still create a path for understanding; for further action in terms of thought

as an activity. Though this may sound odd, it is well within the scope of much contemporary

research; the increasing breakdown of mind/body duality, for example, relies upon this claim; that

thought is a species of action, rather than that all actions are a result of thought.

2.3 Creativity and intuition are kinds of problem solving, which necessitates restriction of the

solution space.

Although they are often painted as random stabs in the dark, neither the creative nor intuitive

processes are truly blind; given the infinite possible avenues from any given point, if they were

then we would only progress extremely slowly. The view of intuitions as expert judgements

whose mechanism is phenomenologically inaccessible, for example, supports this.

As with any problem-solving method, intuitions and creativity follow particular heuristic

mechanisms. Without this, hope of success diminishes to that allowed by brute-force calculation,

checking each logical possibility one by one – the reason why top-down AI systems failed so badly

[ref]. The process in operation here is one that is at the core of many problem-solving exercises.

First, one defines a problem space, screening off all those options that are obviously irrelevant to

the problem at hand. A solution space is then identified within the problem space. Once this has

been done, one is free to leap into that solution space, knowing that wheresoever one lands, it

can be adjusted towards what is probably the correct solution. In more clinical machine-learning

terms, one a solution space has been identified, the chance of a given low-energy state being

local rather than global is significantly reduced, decreasing towards zero with increases in the

accuracy of the heuristics employed. The leap itself can at this stage be almost random, since the

verification process employed from there will move the search towards the correct answer.

Deduction and hard analytic work are therefore required both before and after the leaps of

intuition. Joyce’s Ulysses may have been unlike anything that came before; but it is still a

thorough, methodical investigation of the ground it creates. In the same vein, artists rarely

commit to a large work without producing a blizzard of sketches and studies, which are just as

surely methodical investigations of the solution space. Though a given stage of this process may

appear irrational and illogical, at the beginning and end of each such stage we must once again

test our leaps through rational, deductive analysis. If this were not true, mathematicians would

not have spent centuries trying to prove Fermat’s last theorem, but would have happily accepted

that he had intuited a logical truth.

3. The correlation between intuition and creativity.

3.1 Operational intuition as a bridging concept between phenomenological aspects of intuition and

the creative process, as proposed by Wallas

The link between intuition and creativity has been investigated (Yukawa, 1974; Metcalf and

Wiebe 1987; Boden, 2003) as has the idea of intuition as a bridging concept (in relation to the

humanities (Hodgkinson et al, 2008)), but so far little work has been done on using such bridging

to explain aspects of intuition itself. If we see a bridge between the phenomenological aspects of

intuition and the creative process, the ostensibly illogical metabeliefs become part of a larger

logical scheme, in which intuition operates as a bridge between the stages of creativity, as is

outlined below in the table. This lists Wallas’ seminal model of the creative process (1926) and

those stages to which these metabeliefs correspond.

Table 1: Wallas’ four stages of the creative process, and how the phenomenological fallacies

of intuition fit into it.

Wallas’ original model also includes a fifth stage, that of intimation, which occurs between

Preparation Incubation Illumination Verification

A

priori

Qualita

tive

similarity

Non-

deduction Holism Evidence

Certa

inty

incubation and illumination. Most descriptions of the model do not mention this, seeing it as the

cusp between two stages rather than as a distinct stage. However, if we are seeing this model

through the light of intuition, then intimation correlates with the simplest and most frequently

felt aspect of intuition; that of hunches and gut feelings, where one intuits a cognition but cannot

express its basis or detail as any more than a vague feeling.

3.2 The differences between Wallas' and other models; why incubation is necessary; dual mode

processing.

Although there are several different models of creativity, Wallas’ model has yet to be bettered

in any substantial way. The differing models mostly replace the incubation period with ideation,

which extends and refines preparation – see Appendix 1 for a comparative summary. This could

be for a number of reasons, though it is most likely one of two. First, along with discarding a

consideration of these aspects of intuition, serious thinkers tend to avoid that which is hardily

resistant to analysis, taking as their mantra Wittgenstein’s claim that “What we cannot speak of

we must pass over in silence”; and incubation by its nature is opposed to analysis in the same way

as the subconscious in psychology, which can be read through its effects but not directly

encountered. Less charitably, much of this work has been done with an eye to creating

educational or business models of creativity; in both these cases, the existence of an

indeterminate incubation period, that cannot be logistically bracketed or normalised, is an

embarrassment in a world where quick rather than deep thinking is important, and where one

must be able to present certificates for completion of courses in creativity.

Wallas’ model, with its alternating deductive and inductive stages, is further substantiated by

work on dual mode processing, which suggests that deductive and inductive processes are

parallel and unipolar, rather than single and bipolar (Chaiken, 1999). We do not have a single

scale, running from induction to deduction; rather, there are two scales, only one of which is

accessible at any given moment. The reason for this exclusion is not clear, but it is largely agreed

upon as being the case. [ref? Example?]

There are various studies on the precise nature of dual-mode processing in psychology

(Epstein et al., 1994, 1996, 1999), which are themselves related to work around the role and

function of brain hemispheres and the corpus callosum (Hellige 1993, 2000; Hugdahl, 2002).

Insofar as it is relevant here, it can be summed up as follows. When one has a leap of insight, the

deductive processes that investigate it do not start from zero; rather, they are already running on

the same problem. The illumination that arrives rarely requires much work before it can be

applied to the problem, or the world at large; this alone tells us these process are not exclusive or

contradictory, since without this parallel processing, it would take substantially longer to justify or

apply an intuitive leap, since one ould have to start at the beginning in reasoning it out.

4.1 Metabelief: Complex a priori intuitions exist.

The process by which one arrives at an intuition seems to be innate; that is, all humans (apart

from those who are significantly cognitively disabled) seem to have the ability to intuit. However,

as the example of Euclidian space shows, this does not mean that any particular intuited belief is

innate; this claim forms much of the basis for the work of the experimental philosophers, who

take issue with the generally accepted philosophical claim that there is a class of universal

intuitions and beliefs.

As with Barrett’s Hyperactive Agent Detection Device (2004) or Dennett’s intentional stance

(1987), which allow us to see and propose invisible agents, the existence of some perceptions

that are foundational to our experience of the world leads us to the belief that the entire set of

beliefs around these perceptions is innate. These, however, are only provably minimal. I have

already discussed the example of Humean and Kantian intuitions of space which, at most, are

strong, but not absolute. Though there may be a truly inescapable intuition of space, it must be

minimal, suggesting that spaces exist, objects exist within them, and these objects can interact

with one another, for example, while being free of how these interactions work, thus allowing us

to conceive of non-Euclidean spaces. To emphasise this, I will briefly mention three other

apparently absolute, innate intuitions; time, the number scale, and murder.

Heidegger (1962) emphasised that our natural experience of time is relative and subjective,

not linear and objective; as we all know, an hour having fun is far shorter than ten minutes of

waiting for an exam result, and Einstein (1905) was not restricted to a belief in time as absolute

and objective. As to the number scale, there is some recent evidence that our intuitions here are

naturally logarithmic (Dehaene et al, 2008). This seems strange at first, until we consider the

frequency with which exponential curves exist in the world around us, in growth, decay,

movement, and so on. In western societies, we assume that the natural intuition of the number

scale is linear, because a linear number scale is taught to us from as early as is possible; how,

then, can we separate our core intuition from that which has been added to it by our upbringing,

and draw a line between our nature and nurture? It is far simpler to just assume that it is all part

of our intuition, and leave it at that. Finally, it is often claimed that humans have an intuition that

murder is wrong; yet in this case it is an extension of the belief that killing a moral agent (who

may be restricted to members of one’s family, or clan, or simply oneself) is wrong, rather than

killing any human being [ref; where did I get this?]. In all of these cases, as well as in the cases of

moral or religious intuitions, we mistakenly take the synthetic deductions or inferences of the

intuitions concerned as being psychologically primitive.

4.2 Why overextension of a priori intuitions is creative, and generally useful.

Despite these conceptual issues, there is a clear advantage to such overextension. If intuition

is a matter of action, rather than thought, then it is advantageous to be certain of more than one

can truly be sure of. Having no ground to stand on, one rarely moves boldly in any direction; yet

intuition and creativity consist of bold leaps, and so rely upon extending the ground as much as

possible. Certainly, this is problematic, since we take shaky premises as solid; but without that

assumed solidity, few of the great intuitive leaps could have been made. Indeed, the consequent

that the apparently intuitive and evidential ground is shaky has driven just as many great leaps;

consider the development of non-Euclidian geometries from centuries of trying to prove the

parallel postulate.

The purported existence of complex a priori intuitions also serves a purpose in the

construction of bias. As Wolpert shows (1996), some form of bias is essential to any machine

learning system. Without a bias providing a starting point, the only remaining option is sure but

glacially slow methodical analysis; brute force computation. Admittedly, if this bias is severely

misleading, then the final result will in all likelihood be false; however, if it is in roughly the right

area, then the bias can be corrected by feedback during processing. Wolpert’s work shows that

particulars of the bias are statistically insignificant, but having a bias is not. Not only must we have

solid ground to leap from, but we must also have an intimation of where we are leaping to.

Overextension thus gives us ground to leap from, and somewhere to leap to, at the cost of

accuracy; and, though accuracy is important, in many cases time pressures require that one acts

without perfect information, or without certainty as to the results of one’s actions. Accuracy is, of

course, essential for proper codification of process or knowledge; however, the process through

which one arrives at the propositions to be refined is one in which the production of propositions

takes precedence over their accuracy. This is true by definition, since a proposition must exist

before it is verified.

4.3 Overextension as a social good.

The overextension of intuitions is not simply creatively useful, but also socially so. Consider

the metabelief that humans innately believe murder to be wrong. Under further investigation, it

becomes obvious that this is true only if ‘murder’ is defined not as unjustifiably killing another

human being, but as the killing of a moral agent, justifiably or not. As such, intuitions about

murder are context-relative, since I could see any of a wide variety of groups as moral agents;

indeed, the history of ethics and human rights is one of increasing the size of this group, one

which is still in progress with the extension of human rights to great apes in Spain (Roberts, 2008).

The metabeliefs about murder must therefore be extensions of a much more minimal intuition. In

this case, overextension of the rule is distinctly more of a social advantage than precision, since it

increases the prohibition to the largest possible group of humans, thus fostering social cohesion.

This is extension of the set of ‘what everyone believes to be true’, which is too visibly socially

cohesive to require further particular examples.

5.1 Metabelief: Intuitions are qualitatively the same, regardless of their timeframe.

Much cognitive research considers quick-and-dirty hunches and feelings - ‘blink’ intuitions, to

steal a phrase from Gladwell [year]- to be qualitatively identical to all other intuitions. This allows

them to avoid a consideration of the far more complex philosophical intuition, or abstract expert

intuition, as in the case of artists or craftsmen. However, even if the same mechanism underlies

‘blink’ intuitions, considered, philosophical intuitions, and expert behaviour, this does not mean

that they can or should be analysed in the same manner; one would not claim, for example, that

everything about redwoods and mangroves can be understood by very careful study of daisies,

since they all use chlorophyll to process sunlight, and are plants. The very existence of emergent

functions (Broad, 2000) emphasises this point. The same function operating at different levels

requires different kinds of description and analysis, and while things may be true of both

expressions, the way in which they are true can be non-trivially different; in other words, a

substantial enough degree of difference amounts to an effective difference of kind.

5.2 How an assumption of qualitative similarity links preparation and incubation.

If intuitions are essentially action-guiding and creative, then this conflation is useful, for two

reasons. First, it discourages investigation of the particular quality and form of the intuition in

favour of acting upon it. Though this is poor analytic practice, leading to continued progress with

unproved assumptions, it is creatively positive, since it does lead to progress. In Wallas’ model,

this metabelief fits between preparation and incubation. The assumption of similarity makes a

larger set of intuitions available as part of the preparation, including those that would otherwise

be discarded as inappropriate. This in turn makes the incubation period more fertile. As will be

discussed shortly, it also fosters the feeling of holism, which facilitates the next stage transition,

between incubation and illumination.

6.1 Metabelief: Intuitions bear no relation to reason.

It is extremely unlikely that intuitions bear absolutely no relation to reason, for two prime

reasons.

a) The products of a deterministic system do not have themselves to be deterministic. If this were

the case, fuzzy computing could not exist, and probabilistic systems could not be constructed

using the strict rules of first order logic. The only alternative to a deterministic basis is an

irrational one, which by definition cannot produce coherent answers.

b) Reason is essential in the production of valid intuitions. Just as an artist does not create at

random (but rather within a space bounded by his beliefs about art) and a mathematician does

not theorise in the dark (but theorises to prove or disprove particular propositions) creative and

intuitive activity cannot, in fact, be alien to deduction, or they would be resistant to analysis or

use, and analysis is always required both before and after intuitions and creative leaps.

Therefore, there is no good reason to assume that intuition is a fundamentally irrational

process, other than that is seems to be; and a seeming-to-be is not an argument.

6.2 The balance between reason and irrationality in the creative process.

The creative process shifts between careful, logical deduction and flashes of insight and

illumination; indeed, in looking over the entirety of the scale, it is visibly a movement from

plodding, methodical preparation, an ascent into the unknown, inductive realms, a peak of

illumination, and a descent back down to finding evidence. For this to be possible, the deductive

and intuitive sides of the process must operate in parallel; but they must also be free to operate

without interference before it is necessary, for risk of harming the intuition (because of realising

how unstable its ground is) or the deduction (by including intuitive leaps within it). A belief that

intuition is irrational allows us to easily separate these stages, thus making the otherwise difficult

transition between the modes simpler, and preventing interference before it is useful.

7.1 Metabelief: Intuitions are holistic.

Our great intuitions, it seems, are holistic; this is the essence of epiphany, that psychological

event that seems to turn the world around it. We have all had the experience of learning

something new and feeling as if the whole world, and all the myriad objects within it, have

changed, though this cannot be true; no matter how moved I am by Nietzsche’s claim that god is

dead, gravity still exists, the ground will still support me when I walk upon it, and my realisation of

Nietzche has nothing to say in this regard. Operationally, in order for a cognition to actually be

holistic, it would have to affect one of the Kantian intuitions – that is, it would have to affect one’s

notion of time, space or causality in some way that affects behaviour (This also assumes that

Peirce is correct (1877) in stating that two beliefs identical in practice but not conception are

effectively the same belief). Very few intuitions do this, and even if they do, there are as many

problems bottom-up as top-down; even if I now see time as relative and subjective, I still believe

that if I am late according to my boss’ clock, I will get in trouble at work. The feeling of holism is

strong, but logically impossible.

7.2 Holism as a pump for illumination.

If I believe a pattern to apply only within a specific field, I will apply it only to that field; doing

otherwise, though an interesting conceptual exercise, will have no obvious benefit for me.

However, if I believe a pattern or theory I discover to be holistic, I will apply it far more broadly.

This operates as an intuition pump, further stimulating creative thought and refinement of the

intuited model or idea. In turn, this renders the process of illumination creative rather than

passive; that is, though it feels as if I am discovering expressions of a pattern I have discovered, I

am creating these expressions, and in the process refining and developing the intuition. In Wallas’

scheme, the feeling of holism extends the creative processes imagined to lie exclusively within

incubation into illumination and even into evidence, facilitating and buttressing them both.

8.1 Intuitions provide evidence.

Intuitions are often cited as evidential in philosophy as a starting point for investigation, proof

that a particular avenue is worthy of investigation, or simply proof of a proposition. This is

particularly the case in discussion of ethics and metaphysics, and has resulted in much of the

contemporary analysis of intuition; Sosa takes the stance that armchair intuitions are valuable as

evidential, and Nichols and Knobe take the opposite view, testing to see whether this is in fact the

case in folk psychology. [refs]

Since this is a hotly contested debate, I shall not involve myself in it too deeply here. Rather, I

shall simply state that it is not clear that it is important that intuitions are evidential. Even the

most anti-naturalist of philosophers must, at some point, attempt to correlate their intuitions

with data, even if that data is the product of thought experiments; and evidence must be

provided to support intuitions, even if that evidence is simply a logical proof.

Simply, while intuitions certainly provide guidance, they provide no evidence, and cannot do

so, since they lie outside the realms of acceptable evidence; that is, they consist of neither

physical evidence nor logically sound chains of deductive reason, and defy both verification and

falsification. Instead, they provide hypotheses which require evidence, but allow for evidence to

come from below (in deductive steps leading to the intuition) and above (in testing the intuition

against available data).

8.2 The necessity of believing one has stronger evidence than is the case.

Seen as a creative process, intuition is not intended to produce coherent, deductively valid

theories; rather, any intuitive theory is best described as being an explanatory and exploratory

frame, which further bounds the possible solution space while suggesting avenues of

investigation within that space. It is worth repeating here the claim that intuition is not designed

to give us evidence, but suggestion, and action. As part of a creative, active process, intuition is

required only to suggest actions pertaining to that intuition. Even at its most abstract, an intuited

theory is a structure to explore a problem; and it is a truism of philosophy that defining the

question and the nature of the answer are the central tasks of the research philosopher. The work

of the artist is little different, though in a orthogonal frame; an intuition should lead to ideas for

form, media, content, and other particular avenues of exploration.

Usefully, however, a belief that intuitions are evidential allows movement from Wallas’ final

stage to his first; if one has an illuminating intuition, which is backed partly by available evidence,

then the addition of apparent evidence allows one to move immediately to the preparation stage

of the next process, without having to hammer out all the details before moving on. Without this,

it would be easy to become stuck within the verification phase, and lose time that could be spent

fruitfully and progressively chasing what could, given the complexities surrounding the nature of

sufficient proof, be an unsolvable problem.

9.1 Metabelief: Intuitions are certain

While intuitions carry the impressions of certainty, this must be a seeming, not a being. The

only situations in which this could be true are a) where one’s intuitions are always correct, or b)

we were happy to be certain of things that we knew could well turn out to be false. Feeling

certain that (x) is the case, only to be embarrassed when (y) attains, is hardly a rare experience.

While this still happens in cases where we have true certainty – defined as certainty validated by

careful consideration of available evidence, not vague feelings – still happens, the difference is

enough to validate the claim that, however certain an intuition may feel, it is not certain in the

sense of being properly evidenced. How can an impression of certainty be true, if what it is

certain of is false? In a more traditional philosophical light, the certainty of intuitions is often a

true conclusion from false premisses; certain, since it is a true conclusion, but false, because the

premisses are false. Since intuitions are presented as simply the conclusions, any certainty must

be suspect.

9.2 Certainty provokes action; doubt provokes navel-gazing.

The certainty of an intuition provides impetus to carry it through, even if doing so will prove it

wrong; we have all had hunches that, though they seem to be unquestionably true, turn out to be

wrong. However, seeing intuitions as certain creates a further bridge between the beginning and

end of Wallas’ model. In being certain, an intuition counts as evidence for itself, and allows an

easier move forwards. Conversely, doubt provokes reflection, which becomes more critical as the

doubt becomes stronger. Aside from the relatively low practical value of navel-gazing, substantial

doubt is powerful enough to destroy a potentially useful structure before it has come into its

own, and is well known to be paralysing. This, of course, defeats the ends of any creative or

action-led system.

10 Summary.

If we see intuition as an operational process essentially linked to creativity, then the otherwise

puzzling phenomenological metabeliefs surrounding intuitions fit into Wallas’ well established

model of the creative process. This, provided with intuition being an essentially problem-solving

function (and so comparable to work in machine learning and computational problem solving

processes), leads to the following conclusions:

1. Overextensions of a priori intuitions is essential to preparation, and more generally to social

cohesion.

2. The assumption of qualitative similarity to intuitions strengthens the link between preparation

and incubation.

3. The system that produces intuition is essentially rational, but appears to be otherwise to

facilitate the swapping between perceptible and imperceptible stages of the creative process.

4. The belief that intuitions are holistic operates as an intuition pump.

5. The evidential appearance of intuition provides a link between the last and first stages of the

creative process.

6. The certainty that accompanies intuitions buttresses this link, as well as encouraging action

rather than reflection.

Appendix 1: models of creativity

Process of Creativity

Wallas

Psychic Creation Model

Barron

Creativity Model

Rossman

7-Step Model for Creative

Thinking

Osborn

The Creative Problem

Solving Model

Parnes et al.

Universal Traveller Model

Koberg/Bagnall

Process for Creation

Fritz

Preparation Conception

(in a prepared mind)

Observation of a need

Orientation

Objective finding

Accept the situation as a

challenge Conception

Analysis of need Preparation Fact finding

Analyze / discover the "world of the

problem"

Vision

Survey of all

available information

Analysis Problem finding Define main

issues and goals Current reality

Incubation Gestation Formulation of all

objective solutions

Ideation

Idea finding

Ideate

Take action

Critical analysis of

solutions Incubation

Adjust, learn,

evaluate, adjust

Illumination

Parturition (suffering to

be born, emergence to

light)

The birth of the new idea -- the

invention Synthesis Solution finding

Select/ choose among options

Building momentum

Implementation Completion

Verification

Bringing up the baby (further

period of development)

Experimentation, and the selection

of the final embodiment

Evaluation: judging the

resulting ideas

Acceptance finding

Evaluate (to review and plan

again)

Living with your

creation

Sources for Appendix 1:

Barron, F. (1988) Putting creativity to work. in Sternberg, RJ (ed.) The Nature of Creativity. (Cambridge, England:

Cambridge Univ. Press)

Fritz, R. (1991) Creating. (New York: Fawcett)

Gardner, H. (1994) Creating Minds. (New York: Basic Books)

Koberg, D. and Bagnall, J. (1981) The All New Universal Traveler: A Soft-Systems Guide To Creativity, Problem-Solving,

And The Process Of Reaching Goals. (Los Altos, CA: William Kaufmann, Inc)

Osborn, A. (1953) Applied Imagination. (New York: Charles Scribner)

Parnes, S.J. (1992) Sourcebook for Creative Problem Solving. (Buffalo: Creative Education Foundation Press)

Rossman, J. (1931) The Psychology of the Inventor. (Washington DC: Inventor's Publishing)

Wallas, G. (1926) The Art of Thought (New York: Harcourt Brace)

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