Counterfactual Imagination as a Mental Tool for Innovation

Monika Chylińska

Abstract


In the article I demonstrate some of the possible ways by which counterfactual imagination can lead people to innovation and the creation of novel and valuable solutions. I start with adopting the broad definition of counterfactuals, by which counterfactual imagination is understood as the ability to imagine alternative states of affairs which can relate to the past, present or future. I explain how counterfactual imagination differs from other sorts of imaginative and creative thoughts, pointing out that counterfactual types of thinking always rely on facts and involve a change in some features of the actual world, leaving other such features unaltered. I also show that the concept of counterfactual imagination can be useful when we aim to describe the very earliest manifestations of imaginative capacities in children, which can be seen in their make-believe games. All the mentioned characteristics of counterfactual imagination are further used to examine how what if and would be sorts of thinking and imagining might influence people’s creative performance. I conclude with the suggestion that—if guided properly—counterfactual imagination could be a truly valuable mental tool for innovation. This demonstration is partly influenced by Ruth Byrne’s multi-faceted analysis of counterfactual imagination, mainly from her book, The Rational Imagination: How People Create Alternatives to Reality.

Keywords


constraints; counterfactual imagination; creativity; innovation; possibilities

Full Text:

PDF

References


Amsel, E., & Smalley, J. D. (2000). Beyond really and truly. In P. Mitchell & K. J. Riggs (Eds.), Children's reasoning and the mind (pp. 121–147). Hove, UK: Psychology Press.

Beck, S. R., & Riggs, K. J. (2014). Developing thoughts about what might have been. Children Development Perspectives, 8(3), 175–179.

Boden, M. (2004). The creative mind: Myths and mechanisms (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Routledge.

Bretherton, I. (1989). Pretense: The form and function of make-believe play. Developmental Review, 9(4), 383–401. doi:10.1016/0273-2297(89)90036-1

Byrne, R. M. J. (1996). Towards a model theory of imaginary thinking. In J. Oakhill & A. Garnham (Eds.), Mental modells in cognitive science: Essays in honour of Phil Johnson-Laird (pp. 155–174). Hove, UK: Erlbaum, Taylor and Francis.

Byrne, R. M. J. (1997). Cognitive processes in counterfactual thinking about what might have been. In D. Medin (Ed.), The Psychology of learning and motivation: Advances in research and theory: Voume 37 (pp. 105–154), vol. 37, San Diego, CA: Academic Press.

Byrne, R. M. J. (2005). The rational imagination: how people create alternatives to reality. The Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, Cambridge.

Byrne, R. M. J. (2016). Counterfactual thought. Annual Review of Psychology, 67, 135–157. doi:10.1146/annurev-psych-122414-033249

De Smedt, J. (2011). Common minds, uncommons thoughts. A philosophical anthropolical investigation of uniquely human creative behavior, with an emphasis on artistic ability, religious

reflection, and scientific study (Doctoral dissertation). Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium.

Edgington, D. (2011). Causation first: Why causation is prior to counterfactuals. In C. Hoerl, T. McCormack, & S. R. Beck (Eds.), Understanding caunterfactuals, understanding causation: Issues in psychology and philosophy (pp. 230–241). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

Fein, G. G. (1981). Pretend play in childhood: An integrative review. Child Development, 52(4), 1095–1118. doi:doi.org/10.2307/1129497

Gopnik, A. (2009). The philosophical baby: What children’s minds tell us about truth, love, and the meaning of life. New York, NY: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux.

Gut, A., & Wilczewski, M. (2016). The role of language in the emergence of mature belief reasoning and social cognition. In M. Hinton (Ed.), Linguistics and philosophy of language (pp. 209–238), Frankfurt am Main, Germany: Peter Lang.

Harris, P. L. (2000). The work of the imagination. Oxford, UK: Blackwell. Hoerl, C., McCormack, T., & Beck S. R.(2011). Introduction: Understanding counterfactuals and causation. In C. Hoerl, T. McCormack, & S. R. Beck (Eds.), Understanding caunterfactuals, understanding causation: Issues in psychology and philosophy (pp. 1–15). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

Kahneman, D., & Miller, D. (1986). Norm theory: Comparing reality to its alternatives. Psychological Review, 93, 136–153.

Kahneman, D., & Varey, C. A. (1990). Propensities and counterfactuals: The loser that almost won. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 59, 1101–1110.

Kant, I. (2000). Critique of the power of judgment. (P. Guyer & E. Matthews, Trans.). Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press. (Original work published 1781)

Kronfeldner, M. (2009). Creativity naturalized. The Philosophical Quarterly, 59(237), 577–592.

Leslie, A. M. (1987). Pretence and representation: The origins of “theory of mind.” Psychological Review, 94(4), 412–426. doi:10.1037/0033-295X.94.4.412

Leslie, A. M. (1994). Pretending and believing: issues in the theory of ToMM. Cognition, 50(1–3), 211-238. doi:10.1016/0010-0277(94)90029-9

Lewis, D. (1973). Counterfactuals. Oxford, UK: Blackwell.

Lillard, A. (2001). Pretend play as twin earth: A social-cognitive analysis. Developmental Review, 21, 495–531.

Markman, K. D., Lindberg M. J., Kray L. J., & Galinsky A. D.(2007). Implications of counterfactual structure for creative generation and analytical problem solving. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 33(3), 312–324.

Nichols, S., & Stich, S. (2000). A cognitive theory of pretence. Cognition, 74(2), 115–147. doi:10.1016/S0010-0277(99)00070-0

Perner, J. (1991). Understanding the representational mind. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Roese, N. J. (1994). The functional basis of counterfactul thinking. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 66(5), 805–818.

Roese, N. J. (1997). Counterfactual thinking. Psychological Bulletin, 121(1), 133–148.

Seelau, E. P., Seelau, S. M., Wells, G. L., & Windschitl, P. D. (1995). Counterfactual constraints. In N. J. Roese & J. M. Olson (Eds.), What might have been: The social psychology of counterfactual thinking (pp. 57–79). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Stein, M. I. (1953). Creativity and culture. The Journal of Psychology, 36(2), 311–322. doi:10.1080/00223980.1953.9712897

Suddendorf, T. (2013). The gap: The science of what separates us from other animals. New York, NY: Basic Books.

Ward, T. B. (1994). Structured imagination: The role of category structure in exemplar generation. Cognitive Psychology, 27, 1–40.

Ward, T. B., Smith S. M., & Finke R. A. (1999). Creative Cognition. In R. J. Sternberg (Ed.), Handbook of creativity (pp. 189–212). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Weisberg, D. S. (2015). Pretend play. WIREs Cognitive Science, 6(3), 249–261. doi:10.1002/wcs.1341

Weisberg, D. S. (2016). Imagination and child development. In A. Kind (Ed.), The Routledge handbook of philosophy of imagination (pp. 300–313). New York, NY: Routledge.

Weisberg, D. S., & Gopnik, A. (2013). Pretense, counterfactuals, and bayesian causal models: Why what is not real really matters. Cognitive Science, 37(7), 1368–1381. doi:10.1111/cogs.12069

Whittier, J. G. (1898). The works of John Greenleaf Whittier (Vol. 1). New York: Houghton, Mifflin.

Woodward, J. (2011). Psychological studies of causual and counterfactual reasoning. In C. Hoerl, T. McCormack, & S. R. Beck (Eds.), Understanding caunterfactuals, understanding causation: Issues in psychology and philosophy (pp. 16–53). Oxford, UK,Oxford University Press.


Refbacks

  • There are currently no refbacks.


Copyright (c) 2018 Monika Chylińska