The phenomenon of creativity and advanced forms of experience

The previous chapters concentrated on neural perspectives of concrete semantics such as seeing, acting, memorizing, and meaningful understanding. But in general the frameworks discussed were automatic processes in perception–action hierarchies. Their initiation might be caused by a conscious intention but their detailed execution does not involve or even require conscious control and intentional direction. Even grammatically correct speech acts organized in Broca’s and Wernicke’s areas have been characterized as automatic neural processes. The previous chapter has explained the surprising fact that, though automatic, the organization of vision requires a much more complicated system of cooperating brain components. They are most appropriately explained by the procedures of saccadic eye-movements when they organize identifications of objects and situations.

But not all organizations of vision and speech are automatic. The organization is essentially different in creative acts of human vision and thinking, and also in concrete feeling of self, other self and social cooperation. The present chapter will study these phenomenological aspects and neurocognitive organizations that are involved. Given the phenomenal complexity I will not begin with neurocognitive models but rather with phenomenological considerations of vision and visual imaging. The reason is that the status of different stages of complexity is best understood by explaining the steps leading from the simplest acts of concrete vision over standard visual identification of the objects of the environment to experienced studies of works of art. The subsequent sections will show that creativity in understanding of visual art may be given a key role since it has some similarity with other ranges of creativity, as for instance science.