by Danielle Kotrla, Philosophy

I was recently grading a stack of papers from an introduction to cognitive science course where students were tasked with explaining one of the arguments from the readings we’d done in the course. This is a relatively straightforward assignment: tell me a claim that is being made, what support the author brings in to make that claim, and, most importantly, how that support actually helps the argument hold water. It doesn’t seem wrong to call this assignment one that simply asks students to rehearse and recount arguments they’ve encountered previously. Yet, I distinctly remember making a comment on one student’s paper: “I admire how much of you, of your specific voice and way of thinking, comes through in this essay.”

Philosophy isn’t typically one of the disciplines where we think of the work being done (i.e. writing philosophy papers) as inherently creative—at least, not in the sense we might associate with work done in the visual arts or creative writing. I think it’s right to say that philosophy isn’t typically creative in this strong sense, and it’s not uncommon to hear scholars extoll the virtues of “bland” or “dry” philosophical styles of writing. This style, they believe, is what does the best job of communicating these abstract ideas, especially when what’s up for debate are the most fine-grained of details and distinctions. However, I think it’s wrong to use this fact as support for arguing that philosophy isn’t creative. In fact, I think philosophy can foster creativity and is actually at its best when we acknowledge just how much creativity is involved in constructing arguments and communicating those arguments effectively.

It’s worthwhile to spend a little time actually thinking about what “creativity” means in this context. At its most basic, we often think of linking the concepts of creativity and novelty, as in the case of presenting ideas that are new and, thus, unique and valuable. Along these lines, Margaret Boden introduces a useful distinction between what she calls “P-creativity” and “H-creativity” (as types of creativity) in her article “Creativity in a Nutshell.” H-creativity involves historical creativity where an idea is H-creative if it is, as far as we know, a brand new idea in the scope of human history; psychological creativity (or P-creativity), on the other hand, is creativity involved when someone comes up with an idea that is new to them.¹ Obviously, we often jump to H-creativity when referencing creative ideals, but I think this distinction is immensely helpful when thinking about how we can encourage our students to be creative in writing philosophy papers.

It may not be the case that undergraduate students come up with an idea that is H-creative at the end of one semester of an introductory course, but we can push them to be P-creative by focusing on the question of how they generated the connections between ideas that they did. If we’re asking students to do the sort of metacognitive work of explaining why a piece of evidence supports the claim that it does or to put old pieces together in new ways, it seems like we should acknowledge that often this work is done in a way that we want to label as creative because it can be surprising, inventive, and, most importantly, valuable.

Instead of focusing on the work of philosophy as only being the production of ideas, or even connections, we can emphasize that much of the value in writing philosophy papers is about the process of drawing those connections.

That being said, “You should be P-creative in your philosophy papers” isn’t the catchiest phrase to put on a bumper sticker, so what are other ways of framing this encouragement? I think part of this involves shifting the focus of where we emphasize that value adheres in the process of writing philosophy papers. Instead of focusing on the work of philosophy as only being the production of ideas, or even connections, we can emphasize that much of the value in writing philosophy papers is about the process of drawing those connections. This is often a process marked by difficulty, struggle, frustration, and many other negative features associated with writing papers. But, for example, we can emphasize to students that the value they gained from drafting this paper wasn’t just that they got from point A to point B, it’s that they learned how to identify an obstacle in the logic of the paper and pivot, to approach the situation in a new way, to still draw the same connections they might have wanted to from the start, but to have done so in a way that was surprising, even if it was only surprising to them. We should be explicit in telling students that this work is creative and difficult and often roundabout; we should push back against the notion that writing an efficient paper is writing the best paper. Risk-taking, exploring strange connections—these are the processes that often lead to the most interesting, thoughtful philosophy papers, and it’s valuable to realize the role that creativity plays in shaping them.

I think it’s important for those teaching writing in philosophy to foster creativity by pointing out to students that there are opportunities and places for them to be creative, to show their specific mind at work on the page, even if they’re working through an argument that’s historically been well-rehearsed. Furthermore, I’ve discussed this concept in the context of philosophy, but these ideas are certainly interdisciplinary. Regardless of discipline, it’s important to foster the development of students’ individual voices. Students often think of their ideas as sitting below those of the sources they’re in conversation with, and fostering creativity in this way helps students realize that they have something valuable to say, that they can join these conversations, too. 

1. Margaret Boden, “Creativity in a Nutshell,” Interalia Magazine, July 2016, https://www.interaliamag.org/articles/margaret-boden-creativity-in-a-nutshell/. ↩︎