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Henze on logic, creativity andartDonald Brook a & Maxwell Wright aa Australian National UniversityPublished online: 18 Sep 2006.

To cite this article: Donald Brook & Maxwell Wright (1963) Henze on logic,creativity and art, Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 41:3, 378-385, DOI:10.1080/00048406312341371

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378 DONALD BROOK AND MAXWELL WRIGHT

of his "idealistic bias" (p. 247), Mischel-- in confusing sense I1 imagination with the ordinary language usage of make-believe--- radically misinterprets the theory of imagination presented in The Prit~ciples of Art.

The University of Pittsburgh.

HENZE ON LOGIC, C R E A T I V I T Y AND ART

By DONALD BROOK and MAXWELL WRIGHT

In his paper 'Logic, Creativity and Art" (AJP, Vol. 40, No. 1 : May, 1962, p. 24), Donald F. Henze essays the abolition of a cluster of perplexities to do wi th - -as hc puts i t - - ' "What goes on" when an artist creates a work of art" (p. 24). Since he pays little attention to what is actually said to go on, and less to how and why such putative events provoke philosophical perplexity, his thesis (which is nowhere quite made explicit) must either bc that nothing goes on, or that nothing perplexing goes on. There are signs of oscillation between these alternatives, and his paper must therefore be considered piecemeal rather than as a singlc fully integrated argument.

First, however, it will be convenient to endorse the (quite incidental) opinion with which he concludes, which seems to us certainly to be correct. After considering some works of bizarre origin, objets trouw~s, harmonograph drawings and so on, hc says ~ . . . it remains the case that . . . calling a work of art a created object need not depend on knowing that its coming into existence was either preceded or accompanied by a special sort of feeling, sensation, mood, or act' (p. 34). Why, indeed, would we ever call a work of art 'a created object'? Normally, one would suppose, in order to distinguish between it and natural objects such as rocks or flowers. The word 'artefact' is available, but fairly uncommon, and in one of its ordinary uses 'created' is quite simply synonymous with 'made" or 'wrought', as opposed to "occurring naturally'. Now it happens to be one of the rule-of- thumb criteria for the application of the term "work of art' that it should be restricted to "made' objects. Objets trouv~s are, of course, prima ]acie cxceptions to this, yet it is noteworthy that (i) we are reluctant to call (say) attractive pieces of driftwood works of art, and that (ii) we only do so when they have been mounted or exhibited in a special way or in a special context; and are much happier if something, however little, has been done to modify the object itself. Moreover, we are prone to think of such

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Discu SSION 3 79

things, even after conversion to the usage, as markedly atypical works of art. l-hey have joined the family by marrying above their station, and tend to be granted the patronymic with civility rather than cordiaIity. The point we wish to make, however, emerges from the following sequence of considerations:

I, It is not a necessary condition for calling something a work of art, that it should have been created (although most works of art are created, at least in the thin sense that they are made-things, or artefacts). This, of course, will not be the case if the inclusion of objets trouvds in the class of 'works of art' is denied.

2. Works of art which, as it happens, were made by someone (tautologously, by an 'art ist ' ) , need not have been made to the accompaniment of any special sort of feeling, mood, or act. They may, for example, have been made accidentally, by. spilling a pot of paint onto a floor which was later, upon a critic's insistence, sawn out, framed, and auctioned.

Thus far Henze would evidently go with us, but not, it seems, to the perfectly compatible proposition that: 3. Although the making of a work of art need not be preceded

or accompanied by any special sort of feeling, sensation, mood, or act, it nevertheless may be so preceded or accom- panied. And wha t - - somet imes - -goes on may provoke legiti- mate perplexity.

It is quite true, as Henze suggests, that we do not tell whether an artist is creative (in the full honorific sense) by probing him, but by examining his work. It is also true that the detection of praiseworthy human creative activity 'in' an object (assuming this to be possible) is neither a necessary nor even a sufficient condition for applying the term 'work of art' to that object. We might discern creativity in a fashionable hat, yet not wish to call it a work of art; and we might discern no creativity in, say, Duchamp's Ready-Made (1914) , yet have good reason to call it a work of art. The various confusing issues need to be separated with some care, and the first important step in that direction is surely to detach the problems of creativity from any specially intimate connection with works of art. We are not, after all, more curious about what "goes on" when an artist creates a work of art than we are about what "goes on" when anyone deliberately makes anything which we regard as both novel and valuable; and in particular when he does so in a way which is responsive throughout to the deliverances of his own critical judgment uptm the product in all its stages. It is what engineers would no doubt call a ' feedback' operation. It is also a purposive operation, and

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3~t ) DONALD BROOK AND M A X W E L L W R I G H I

since it is generative of valuable novelties there arises a natural curiosity as to whether its direction is determined by the 'push' of raw experimental activity--continuously modified in consequence of a critical judgment of the product at all s tages--or by the "pull' of thc novelty-to-be (but how can what does not exist exert an influence of any kind?).~ It is a net of problems quite detach- able from those of whether machines, monkeys, madmcn, or Martians, can make works of art. As a matter of fact they all (Martians pending) can and do.

It is not our ambition to refine the problems further, nor to retail solt, tions in this paper, but only to show that Henze has not succeeded in abolishing them wholesale. He begins with an account of the uses of the verb 'to create' which is undottbtedly faulty, and which fails to distinguish between the logic of 'to create' and that of 'to paint (write, sculpt, etc.) ' in the way that is promised. The discussion is introduced as follows:

An artist friend, Ernest, who is busy about his business, is asked what he is doing. He replies 'Painting (writing, etc.) ' . Hcnze subsequently reports to another friend, John, that Ernest is working on a painting (etc.) , and he asks us, his readers, whether it is just avoidance of pretentiousness that keeps Ernest from replying--and Hcnze from reporting--that he is 'creating'. Two arguments are then offered in support of the supposed distinction between "creating' and such particular artistic activities as painting, writing_,, and sculpting,. Thcy are, in outline:

I ( H ) . Both the present perfect 'I paint' and the present continuotts '1 am painting' may be used transitively or intransi- tively. 1 can say either "I am painting" or 'I am painting a picture'. But, by contrast, neither the present perfect '! create', nor the present continuous '1 am creating' has an intransitive use.

2 ( H ) . The present continuous 'i am writing a poem', or "Hc is writing a poem" is used to report a contemporary happening. The prescnt continuous '1 am creating a poem' is not used to report ~t contemporary happening.

We shall consider these arguments in turn, under thc headings I (RI and 2 (R) .

1For an outline of the contemporary state of the argument, in terms of creativity in art, see: PULl . . . . . Eliseo Vivas, 'Naturalism and Creativity', in Creation and Discovery

(New York: The Noonday Press, 1955), pp. 145-158. I'USI-] . . . . Vincent Tomas, 'Creativity in Art', Philosophical Review, Vol. 67.

1958, pp. 1-15. PULl. (with Carl R. Hausman, 'Mechanism or Teleology in the Creative reservations) Process', Journal o/ Philosophy, Vol. LVIII, No. 20. 1961. PUSH . . . . Vincent Tomas, 'A Note on Creation in Art'. Journal o/Philosoph.v.

Vol. L1X, No. 17, 1962.

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DISCUSSION 3~1

1 ( R ) . Henze says "In order to give "1 anl creating" a use we must add an object ' (p. 26) . Now certainly "I a m ' c r e a t i n g ' is v a g u e - - a n d p o m p o u s - - b u t we can give it a use without adding an object. It is, as a mat ter of fact, just the sort of thin~ that ¢,ur artist friend Babble exclaims when we interrupt his labours. 'Shh! ' he says, in his inimitable self-mocking solemn way (but perhaps he is really very serious?) 'I am creating' . And since he is a many-s ided man we creep away, not knowing whether to expect a poem or a picture in due course, but sat isf ied--within l imi t s - - tha t we know what kind of thing he is up to. In the third person: Babble 's wife is prone to say, when turning away callers, "He is creating' . (We are never quite sure whether she idolizes him innocently, or enjoys a little private i r o n y - - b u t this is irrelevant.) Similarly with the present perfect form: 'I create! ' is just the haughty thing that Babble says when they ask him in the dole queue what his trade is. And it would seem a very great deal less haughty and more mat ter-of-fact if Babble really had Leonardesque talents. Modesty, hardly less than grammar , im- poses sanctions upon what we can decently say; and others may speak more extravagant ly for us than we ought for ourselves. This may bc what lies behind Henze 's observat ion that the frequency of third-person use of "create' is higher than that of it'., first-person use. We recollect hearing Lord Attlee say '1 am no longer a politician; I am a statesman' , and reflecting that his error was neither logical nor syntactical.

It must be remembered that in claiming that "! create" and '1 am creating' are not used intransitively, Henze is contrasting 'creating" with 'writing', 'painting' , etc., taken as a homogeneous group. Now while it may be true that the verbs ' to paint ' and ' to sculpt ' attract cognate accusatives (we paint pictures, sculpt sculptures l this is by no means true of ' to write'. The considerations Henzc advances against the intransitive use of "1 c r e a t e ' and "1 am creating' apply equa l ly - - i f at all---against the intransitive use of "I write" and '1 am writing'. 'I am writing' is vague in the same way---albei t not quite to the same e x t e n t - - a s 'I am creating4". Henze says (pp. 26-27) ' I f a man tells you that he creates, the natural retort is "Create what?" '. Similarly with 'writes ' : does hc write love stories? articles for learned journals.'? insurance? Again, Henze says (p. 31 ) 'Notice the incompleteness of expressions like "'1 have created" , "'1 shall c r e a t e " ' . But notice, too, the incom- pleteness of '1 have written' , and '1 shall write'. The latter, of course, however incomplete, could be an exit line in a Hol lywood version of the life of Thomas Wolfe.

Finally (but not conclusively) it is true that the Concise Oxford Dict ionary gives us "CREATE, v.t.' (not v.t.&i.). But it

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382 DONALD BROOK AND MAXWELL WRIGHT

is a perfidious ally for Henze, since it gives equally ' P A I N T , v.t. ' (not v.t.&i.).

2 ( R ) . Henze allows the transitive use of '1 am creat ing ' as in 'I am creating a poem' , but says that it is not used to report a con tempora ry happening. H e offers two arguments in suppor t of this contention, which we will discuss under 2 ( H ) a and 2 ( H ) b .

2 ( H ) a . "Nor is "I am creat ing" used to report a contem- porary occurrence. One reason is . . . that it does not make sense to talk about creating without saying . . . what is being crea ted ' (p. 26) . But how does this explain why 'I am creating a poem ' is not used to report a con tempora ry occurrence, as ' I am painting a picture ' is used to repor t a con tempora ry occurrence? The argument is muddled here, but if the ' I am creating" at the beginning of the quotation above is 'I am c rea t ing - -pe r iod ' , then according to Henze it has no use and so it is vacuous to argue that it does not have the specific use of report ing a con tempora ry occurrence. If, on the o ther hand, it is ' l am creating . . . (as in 'I am creating a p o e m ' ) ' , then Henze cannot argue that it ( ' I am creat ing ' ) is not used to repor t a con tempora ry occurrence upon the ground that without its object ( ' a p o e m ' ) it has no use.

2 ( H ) b . The second a rgument asserts that a s ta tement like '1 am creating a poem ' is 'no t ordinari ly used to repor t what one is doing at the present momen t ' (p. 26, original italics), but is 'like talking about what one is cu r r en t ly - - th i s week, this month , this y e a r - - e n g a g e d in doing'. But this is to admit that ' I am creating a poem ' does have a use in describing a con tempora ry happening, and only to argue that it is more common ly used to report a current enterprise upon which I need not be presently engaged. But then Henze has hardly distinguished between ' I am creating' and 'I am painting (writing, e tc . ) ' , for it is equally true that s tatements like 'I am writing the history of China ' or 'I am compos ing my eighth symphony ' would be more commonly used to report upon a protracted undertaking than upon the actual here-and-now occurrence of composing or writing.

We have remarked that, according to Henze, ' l create ' and "i am creating' do not have a use without an object; they c a n n o t - - as 'I write ' and 'I am writing' c a n - - b e used intransitively. Nor, in his view, is the s ta tement ' I am creating a poem' ordinarily u s e d - - a s 'I am writing a p o e m ' is u s e d - - t o describe a contem- pora ry happening. Nevertheless, he argues, ' I am creating a poem ' and 'He is creating a poem ' have their own special uses, different from the use of ' I am (he is) writing a poem' . Statements about creating poems or statues or symphonies are used, he says, ( i) predictively (p. 26) and (ii) to do the negative job of ruling something out (p. 27) . Let us consider these suggestions.

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DISCUSSION 383

(i). Henze argues that when I say 'I am creating a poem' I imply that i expect to complete the poem which '! am writing'. In saying that I am writing a poem 1 do not (according to Henze) imply that I expect to completc it. This is--and we do not rely exclusively upon Babble for our authority--simply untrue. Ernest must have been pulling Henze's leg; for if we want to imply that we may not finish the work we are doing we say that we arc trying to write a poem. Both '1 am creating a poem' and 'I am writing a poem' imply that I will complete the poem. Or better, perhaps, they imply that I do not have any but the most secret doubts,

(ii). Henze says that 'He is creating a poem' is used to 'rule out . . , deliberate imitation and copying' (p. 27). In this use, "He is creating a poem' is equivalent to 'He is writing original poetry' and not to ~He is writing poetry'.

What is the distinction between 'He is writing original poetry" and 'He is writing poetry'? In the first place, 'He is writing original poetry' would be a very odd answer to John's question 'What is Ernest doing?' It might possibly be said of a reformed plagiarist, much as it might be said of a con-man turned pillar of society that he was writing cashable cheques. But to say of someone that he is writing cheques is ordinarily to assume that the cheques are not worthless. To say of Ernest that he is writing poetry is (ordinarily) to assume that he is writing his own poetry. We might say, of course, that Ernest writes orLginal poetry; but this is not to use 'original' in the same way, There is the sense in which all poetry is original (writing .original poetry just is writing poetry), and there is the sense in which some poems are more original than others. In the former sense original poetry is con- trasted with plagiarism, and in the latter with pastiche. That Henze has not distinguished these senses of "original' seems prob- able. He offers to make the same point, in terms of pictures, by considerin~ the adverbial expressions ' " t o write creatively", "to paint creatively", "to sculpt c r ea t i ve ly" . . , the adverb "creatively" simply performs a ruling out function: hc's not copying, he's not imitating'. Now once again there is a sense in which all writers, painters and sculptors create. From America we have the term "creative writer'; but it is used only to distinguish the authors of works of imagination (poets, playwrights and novelists) from historians and philosophers. In this sense of 'creative', William Faulkner and Louisa May Alcott are both creative writers; but there is also the honorific sense in which Faulkner would be said by most critics to be 'highly creative' or 'a creative genius' and Louisa May Alcott would not. In the first sense of 'original' (or ~creatively') to say that Ernest is writing original poetry ((~r is

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384 DONALD BROOK AND MAXWELL WRIGHT

writing creatively) is just to say that he is writing poetry. In the honorific sense of 'original' (or "creatively') we could not say that Ernest was writing original poetry (or that he was writing creatively) while he was actually writing, unless in terms of a snap critical judgment of the kind that is notoriously unreliable. in neither sense, then, can we say that Ernest is writing original poetry (or is writing creatively) so as to point to a state of affairs which would pass unremarked if we were to say merely 'Ernest is writing poetry'. It is true that young Ernest Jr. may be writing out The Ancient Mariner five times, as an imposition, but if so would we really, even carelessly, say 'He's writing poetry"? And if we did, should we be surprised to find ourselves misunderstood?

So far as the analysis of the uses of 'to create' is concerned, then, we must conclude, against Henze, that '1 create', '1 am creating', 'He creates', and 'He is creating' may be used intransi- tively (if often pretentiously to the unromantic ear) ; that '1 am creating a poem' has no special predictive use implying that 1 will succeed in creating a poem; that 'He is creating a poem" docs not in any special way rule out the possibility of copying or plagiarizing as compared with 'He is writing a poem'; and finally that 'He is creating a poem' cannot be used to assert that he is writing (highly) original poetry. There is no use for 'He is writing highly original poetry (at the moment) ' analogous to the use of "He has written highly original poetry' or even 'He writes highly original poctry'.

After his examination of the uses of 'create', Henze shifts his attention to the concept of creativity regarded as an inner or hidden process, and he enlists The Concept of Mind in his cause. That the pertinent perplexities have not already been dispelled by this admirable volume is tacitly conceded (else whv would Henze's labour of adaptation have been necessary?) and he begins by observing that 'Among the family of mental-conduct concepts which Ryle calls "intelligence" is the adjective "inventive" ' (p. 28 of Henze, referring to p. 25 of C. of M.) . '1 shall use', Henze says, 'the rough synonymity holding between "inventive" and "creative" as prima fllcie evidence that "creative" is a member of the same family'. The surface plausibility of this proposal is, however, altogether vitiated by his remark (p. 32) that ' . . . coupling "create" with "to originate" as does Professor V. Tomas 2

• . . leads to the dubious philosophical enterprise of searching (inwardly) for causes . . .' There is as much, or as little reason to couple 'create' with 'invent' as with 'originate'. This whole semantic region can be coupled in all kinds of interesting ways, but there is no coupling which is unavoidable, undeniable, and

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DISCUSSION 3 8 5

which leads inexorably to correct (as opposed to dubious) philo- sophical enterprises. Henze appears to be hypnotized by the oddities (and we hope we have shown that they are less odd than he thinks) of the one verb 'to create'. But the puzzles about creativity are not altogether, or even to any very great extent, puzzles generated by this verb. Creating, originating, inventing, devising, fabricating, e tc . - -mos t generally, perhaps, making--all interlock, in the dictionaries and in ordinary use. When we employ any of them in a particular context into which novelty, intention, and value judgment also intrude, we generate problems which cm~ scarcely be abolished with one blow, if only because they are too many and too various in origin. It is not the substitution of ~create' for 'paint ' in such locutions as 'painters paint pictures' that causes all the trouble (as Henze seems to suppose), but simply the fact that painters paint pictures. What we are in search of is a convincing account of what goes on when an artist deliberately and in the full possession and exercise of his critical faculties, tries to paint a good picture. He may be a sort of black box with nothing more alarming than dispositions (none of us want ghosts), and it may even be the case that in the end there is not very much more that we can say. But if, following Ryle, we are to make the hazardous leap to the hypothesis that men arc men, and if we are to try to understand in what this singularity consists, it seems not improbable that painting good pictures (on purpose) will have something to do with it. And writing original philosophy, too. What does 'go on' when we are trying to think of the mot ]uste? Nothing? But surely, even casting around at random is something, and we can usually do better than that!

Australian National University.

SENSATIONS, BRAIN-PROCESSES, AND COLOURS

By M. C. BRADLEY

J. J. C. Smart, developing a thesis of Place's, 1 has argued that sensations are identical with brain-processes, not in the sense that 'sensation' can be shown to have the same meaning as 'brain process', but in the sense that these terms in fact have the same denotation. ~ In what follows 1 propose two separate arguments against Smart 's thesis.

~'is Consciousness a Brain-process?" by U. T. Place. British Journal ¢J] Psychology, Vol. 47 (1956), pp. 44-50.

"Sensations and Brain-processes', by J. J. C. Smart. Phdosophi~'al Reri~'~,

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