Finding creative solutions in a group

There are times when we try find solution and thinking with a group is very helpful, and there are times when thinking on creative solution is better done alone. When is better to think alone, and when it is better to think with others ? To Answer that question, I'll suggest that we have to understand the mechanism of creativity of thinking alon and with a group. The understanding will help us develop methods to optimize creative thinking.

Creative thinking is based on human thinking. Although many years of research in reasoning, no final model for reasoning was devised. So to explain reason and creative thinking, We will use simplistic model that is based both neurobiology and philosophy of knowledge. This model lay in the domain of connectionism, and was developed on bio-epistemology, (Epistemology), and is called "mental-objects in a phenomenological cage".

According to this model, we use sensory input to get information from outside the brain into the brain. According to the neural mechanism of learning (LTP and STP), when ever two different inputs occur simultaneously, and this simultaneity repeat several times in a consecutive manner, somewhere along the neural networks the signals from this input will conjure and will create synaptic connection between two neurons.

Creation of sensory mental object

When several inputs arrive in close intervals, their signals run along the neural network and conjure somewhere along the neurons. The congruence is happening in a cluster of several neurons, and they become attached to each other by synaptic bonds. Without the the understanding that is coming from philosophical investigation, we assume that these inputs are inputs from real object. For example, an object we may call "apple" has specific smell, specific shape, specific feeling, specific taste and limited set of colors. All these inputs are reaching our brain in close temporal proximity, and we identify an apple. Yet due to our philosophical understanding that we have no direct connection with this "object", we can understand that what we perceive is not a real object but perceived object. To emphasis the understanding that this object is not real, I will call them mental objects. In the coming paragraphs I will show that there are object that we do not perceive from the senses, but from our imagination, and those I will call imaginary mental objects. The objects that are perceived from inputs from the senses will be called sensory mental object.

As sensory mental objects are aggregation of inputs from our senses, we can also use them to deduce and further inputs. For instance, if we smell an apple, the cluster of neurons that are connected to other sense will cause us to except to see an apple, to touch an apple, and if we see it, to eat it and get the taste of an apple. So mental objects are also a tool for predictions (or deduction in philosophy). We predict because the neuronal bond create induction. We believe that if a mental object has properties (or connection to specific inputs), then it will all ways occur. So if in the example given above, for some reason, all the apple we have seen until today were green, and we see today a red apple, we are baffled (or in a philosophical jargon, our induction were refuted).

The refutation of our inductions will cause us to two main logical reactions. One is to check if there was something wrong with our observation, and if we will think that our observation was reliable, we will suggest modification to our mental objects. If think our observation is reliable, we will follow and conjecture a new structure for our mental object. In the "red apple" we may say that apples can be both green and red. We may say that there are apple which are green and some new object that is red, and has all the other properties of apples. We may add some imaginary objects, which we have not observed by our senses, which can explain this divergent from prediction. For instance we may conjecture that someone has painted the green apple in red color. These unobserved objects that can "save" our misprediction are called imaginary mental objects (MOi).

We may use imaginary mental objects whenever our predictions fail, and this tendency was called by Popper auxiliary theories .