Introduction: Routine Problem Solving versus Nonroutine

Creative Problem Solving

Imagine being a dentist in the early part of the nineteenth century. Now,

imagine going to the dentist to have a tooth pulled in the early part of the

nineteenth century. In those days, pulling teeth was a painful experience

for the patient, as there were no known anesthetics in use at the time. The

kinds of things a dentist used to help ease the patient’s pain before a tooth

extraction might have included having the patient suck on a medicinal

herb that produces a numbing effect in the mouth, placing ice upon the

gums, getting the patient to drink alcohol before the procedure, or any

combination thereof. Such were the methods that Dr. Horace Wells likely

used to solve the problem of pain associated with tooth extractions while

working as a dentist in Hartford, Connecticut, circa 1844. These methods

probably were nothing new, and we can imagine that dentists had been

using these remedies for some time so as to alleviate or prevent the pain

associated with tooth extraction.

One evening in 1844, Dr. Wells attended an amusing public demonstration

of the effects of inhaling a gas called nitrous oxide with his friend,

Samuel Cooley. Cooley volunteered to go up on stage to inhale the gas,

and he proceeded to do things like sing, laugh, and fi ght with other volunteers

who had inhaled the gas. As a result of the high jinks, Cooley

received a deep cut in his leg before coming back to his seat next to Dr.

Wells. Someone noticed a pool of blood under Cooley’s seat, and it was

discovered that Cooley had cut his leg; however, Cooley seemed to be

unaffected by and was unaware of the wound. Upon witnessing this event,

a light went on in Dr. Wells’ head: “What if this laughing gas could be

used during tooth extraction to ease a patient’s pain?” The problem of pain

associated with tooth extraction fi nally might be solved! In fact, over the

next several years Dr. Wells proceeded to use nitrous oxide and was successful

at painlessly extracting teeth from his patients, and the seeds of

modern anesthesia were sown (Roberts, 1989).

Humans are resourceful animals. We can imagine Dr. Wells prescribing

the various remedies with which he was familiar—the medicinal herb, the

ice, the alcohol—in the attempt to ease a patient’s pain during tooth

extraction. In such a case, we would have an instance of what Mayer (1995)

has called routine problem solving, whereby a person recognizes many possible

solutions to a problem given that the problem was solved through

one of those solutions in the past. People constantly perform routine

problem solving activities that are concrete and basic to their survival,

equipping them with a variety of ways to “skin” the proverbial cat, as well

as enabling them to adapt to situations and reuse information in similar

environments.

However, humans also can engage in activities that are more abstract

and creative, such as invent tools based upon mental blueprints, synthesize

concepts that, at fi rst glance, seemed wholly disparate or unrelated, and

devise novel solutions to problems. When Dr. Wells decided to use nitrous

oxide with his patients, he pursued a wholly new way to solve the problem

of pain. This was an instance of what Mayer (1995) has called nonroutine

creative problem solving, which involves fi nding a solution to a problem that

has not been solved previously. The introduction of nitrous oxide in order

to extract teeth painlessly would be an example of nonroutine creative

problem solving because Dr. Wells did not possess a way to solve the

problem already, and he had not pursued such a route in the past.

Not only do people make insightful connections like that of Dr. Wells

but they take advantage of serendipitous opportunities, invent products,

manufacture space shuttles, successfully negotiate environments, hypothesize,

thrive, fl ourish, and dominate the planet by coming up with wholly

novel solutions to problems—primarily through the use of their visual

systems. How is this possible? In this book, I give an evolutionary account

of the human ability to solve nonroutine, vision-related problems creatively

in their environments. I argue that, by the introduction of the

Upper Paleolithic toolmaking industry near the close of the Pleistocene

epoch, our hominin species evolved a conscious creative problem solving

capacity I call scenario visualization that enabled individuals to fashion the

tools and other products necessary to outlive other hominin species and

populate the planet. Scenario visualization is a conscious activity whereby

visual images are selected, integrated, and then transformed and projected

into visual scenarios for the purposes of solving problems in the environments

one inhabits. The evidence for scenario visualization is found in the

kinds of complex tools our hominin ancestors invented in order to survive

in the ever-changing environments of the Pleistocene world. In this book,

Routine Problem Solving versus Nonroutine Creative Problem Solving 3

I also argue that this conscious capacity shares an analogous affi nity with

neurobiological processes of selectivity and integration in the visual system,

namely, processes that enable animals to select relevant information from

environmental stimuli and to organize this information in a coherent way

for the animal. Further, I show that similar processes of selectivity and

integration can be found in the activities of organisms in general. Because

the brain is an evolved organ, a complete explanation of these processes

and capacities must appeal to general biological and evolutionary principles.

The evolution of these processes in our hominin past, I argue, helps

account for the modern-day conscious ability of humans to utilize visual

information so as to solve vision-related, nonroutine problems creatively

in the environments they inhabit.

Principally, I am a philosopher of mind and biology, and, insofar as this

is the case, I am concerned with two basic questions concerning human

nature, namely, What are humans, in essence, that distinguishes them

from the rest of reality? and How did we get this way? The hypothesis of

scenario visualization—as one form of conscious activity—and its emergence

in an evolutionary history are my small attempts to answer these

fundamentally philosophical questions. Of course, I will not answer these

questions completely. However, I will offer my hypothetical “piece to the

puzzle” that only could have come about as a result of interdisciplinary

dialogue and research. I believe that philosophy must work closely with

other disciplines in fi guring out the answers to the aforementioned questions,

as well as any basic philosophical question (also see Arp, 2008d;

Watson & Arp, 2008). When all is said and done, I support Churchland’s

(1993) claim that cognitive science should not be autonomous with respect

to neuroscience, psychology, and the other empirical sciences. I endorse

Fodor’s (1998) observation that archeology and the biological sciences are

good places to uncover the nature of the mind. I concur with Pinker (1994,

p. 15), echoing Chomsky, that if research in artifi cial intelligence is to

effectively study the mind, then it needs “constant integration across

disciplinary lines.” Further, I agree with Donald (1997, p. 356) that the

“problem of cognitive evolution demands the widest possible range of

information, (from) neurolinguistics, anthropology, paleontology, neuroanatomy,

and especially cognitive psychology.”

The ideas and arguments in this book are laid out in fi ve chapters. The

ultimate goal of my project is to explain how humans evolved a specifi

c kind of conscious, vision-related, creative problem solving ability I

call scenario visualization (also see Arp, 2005a, 2005b, 2006a, 2007a,

2008c). However, since conscious creative problem solving is a psychophysiological phenomenon that is causally dependent upon the workings

of the brain and nervous system in the human organism, in the fi rst chapter

I give a general philosophical account of organisms and use this account

to explain facts regarding the functioning of the organism’s subsystems

and processes. I do this in order to offer a philosophy of biology that is

comprehensive enough to account for the levels of biological phenomena

that are relevant to my project, and the upshot is to lay the groundwork

for showing that there is an analogous continuity of operation in the biological

world, ranging from the activities of organelles in a cell to the

complex workings of neural networks in a brain from which conscious

abilities emerge (also Arp, 2005b).

I give further elucidation to Mayr’s (1996, p. 103) description of organisms

as “hierarchically organized systems that operate on the basis of historically

acquired programs of information,” as well as ratify Plotkin’s

(1997, p. 1) claim that biological phenomena “only make complete sense

[italics mine] in light of evolutionary theory.” I establish that an organism

is a hierarchically organized living system made up of components that

are engaged in processes constituting coordinated subsystems, with the

product of these processes and subsystems being a particularized homeostasis

relative to their operations that contributes to the overall generalized

homeostasis of the organism. Besides being organized in such a way as to

produce homeostasis in the organism, the processes in which the components

of the organism are engaged possess certain properties. These properties

include abilities to exchange data internally, selectively convert data

to information, integrate that information, and process information from

environments (also Arp, 2008a).

Having established these properties in the fi rst chapter, in the second

chapter I put forward what I call the homeostatic organization view (HOV)

of organisms, whereby the components of organisms are organized to

function so as to maintain the homeostasis of the organism at the various

levels in the hierarchy (Arp, 2008a). Because of HOV, starting with the

organelles that make up a cell and continuing up the hierarchy of systems

and processes in an organism, we can maintain that there are clear instances

of emergent biological phenomena. Using HOV, I endorse a form of what

is known as nomological emergence in the metaphysical realm. Since the

endorsement of a set of entities in the metaphysical realm requires an

adequate description of those entities, I argue that it may be useful for a

researcher to think like an as-if realist when describing the traits and processes

of organisms (also see Arp, 2005c, 2005d). Whereas I use HOV to

give credence to a version of nomological emergence in the metaphysical

Routine Problem Solving versus Nonroutine Creative Problem Solving 5

realm, I use as-if realism to give credence to a corresponding form of representational

emergence in the epistemological realm. The end result is a

better understanding of the epistemological views that underpin my metaphysical

views in philosophy of science and philosophy of biology.

In the fi nal section of the second chapter, having argued for HOV and

as-if realism, I compare Cummins’ (1975, 2002) organizational view of

functions with the Griffi ths (1992, 1993, 1996)/Godfrey-Smith (1993,

1994, 1996) modern history view of functions. In fact, it is essential to my

project that I explain and defend a description of functions because my

hypothesis concerning scenario visualization depends upon certain functional

mechanisms of the mind having evolved to solve specifi c problems

encountered in various Pleistocene environments (also Arp, 2006b).

Whereas Cummins argues that a trait functions so as to contribute to the

general organization of some organism’s present structure, Griffi ths and

Godfrey-Smith argue that a trait functions because of its fi tness with

respect to the organism’s recent evolutionary history. I show how these

accounts can complement and be made compatible with one another.

Given that structure, organization, operational fl exibility, function, and

evolutionary history are all factors to be considered in an organism’s

makeup, we should expect that the traits of an organism function the way

they do because such traits presently contribute to the overall organization

of the organism (Cummins) as well as having been selected for in the

organism’s species’ recent ancestry (Griffi ths/Godfrey-Smith).

Building upon the work of the fi rst two chapters, in the third chapter I

show how the subsystems and processes associated with vision in mammals

comprise a hierarchically organized system exhibiting similar, analogous

kinds of properties of information exchange, selectivity, and integration

found in all organisms (also Arp, 2005b, 2008a). My analysis of the brain

is restricted to the primary processes and mechanisms associated with the

mammalian visual system for three reasons. First, there is a lot of empirical

evidence supporting the mammalian visual system’s structure and layout.

Second, the visual system is present in many kinds of vertebrate species

thought to be homologous to human beings. And third, the visual system

plays a central role in the evolutionary account I give of the progression

from noncognitive visual processing to conscious cognitive visual processing

in terms of scenario visualization. As I go on to demonstrate, visual

processing is an important factor—if not the most important factor—in the

evolution of conscious creative problem solving capacities in humans.

In the third chapter, I also distinguish four levels of visual processing in

animals. The fi rst is a noncognitive visual processing that takes place at

the lowest level of the visual processing hierarchy associated with the eye

and its neural projections to the lateral geniculate nucleus and primary

visual cortex. The second is a cognitive or psychological visual processing

that occurs at a higher level in the visual hierarchy associated with the

what and where unimodal areas of the brain. The third is a cognitive visual

processing that occurs at an even higher level in the visual hierarchy

whereby visual unimodal areas are integrated in the visual unimodal association

area of the brain. The fourth is a conscious cognitive visual processing

that occurs at the highest level of the visual hierarchy whereby the

visual association areas are integrated with other sensory modalities, the

limbic areas, and frontal areas of the brain (also Arp, 2005a, 2007b).

By the end of the third chapter, I show that the visual systems of

mammals, in general, function so as to produce visual cognition. Visual

cognition is the phenomenal representation of some object in the mammal’s

visual fi eld that is the result of the integration of modular visual

information received from that object in association with iconic memory,

attention, and the synchronous fi ring of neurons in the areas of the brain

relevant to the processing of the visual percept. Special attention is paid

to visual modularity and visual integration. Visual modularity refers to the

fact that the visual system is made up of distinctly functioning and

interacting modules or areas having evolved to respond to certain features

of an object in typical environments. Visual integration refers to a

neurobiological set of processes that bind together the relevant information

gleaned from visual modules/areas into a coherent cognitive

representation of some object, enabling an animal to negotiate typical

environments.

In the fourth chapter, after speaking about the general evolutionary

principles of genetic variability and natural selection, I trace the evolution

of the visual system from organisms that developed a light/dark sensitivity

area to humans who are capable of the complex activities involved in

conscious cognitive visual processing, including scenario visualization. I

do this utilizing the anatomical evidence from fossils and living species

thought to be homologous to ancient species. I also use archeological

evidence from ancient toolmaking techniques, since I believe that the

evolution of tool-types parallels the evolution from noncognitive visual

processing, through cognitive visual processing, to conscious cognitive

visual processing. The variety and complexity of tools discovered and

dated by archeologists offer us compelling evidence that the brain and

visual system have evolved with the passage of time (also Arp, 2006a,

2008c).

Routine Problem Solving versus Nonroutine Creative Problem Solving 7

I suggest that advanced forms of toolmaking require scenario visualization,

a conscious activity whereby visual images are selected, integrated,

and then transformed and projected into visual scenarios for the purposes

of solving problems in the environments one inhabits (also see Arp, 2005a,

2005b, 2006a, 2007a, 2008c). As a conscious process, scenario visualization

is distinct from the cognitive processes of simply forming a visual image

or recalling a visual image from memory; these activities can be performed

by nonhuman primates, mammals, and certain other animals. Scenario

visualization requires a mind that is more active in the utilization of visual

images through the processes of selectivity, integration, and projection

into future scenarios. It is not the having of visual images that is important;

it is what the mind does in terms of actively selecting and integrating visual

information for the purposes of solving some problem relative to some

environment that really matters.

In this project, I am concerned mostly with the progression from cognitive

visual processing to conscious cognitive visual processing, the relationship

of these processes to one another, and, ultimately, how conscious

cognitive visual processing—in terms of scenario visualization—evolved

from cognitive visual processing. There is a huge amount of literature

devoted to questions about the existence of psychological phenomena and

whether psychological phenomena supervene upon or emerge from neurobiological

phenomena (for starters, see Chalmers, 1996; Heil, 2004a,

2004b; Arp, 2007b, 2008d). Working out the problems associated with

these issues constitutes solving several so-called mind–body problems. Now,

no one has been able to give a satisfactory account of how it is that psychological

states—particularly conscious psychological states—arise from,

as well as interact with, the gray matter of the brain. Although I will not

be able to completely solve the mind–body problem of how it is that conscious

experience can emerge from and interact with the gray matter of

the brain, my hypothesis concerning scenario visualization is an attempt

to explain one aspect of our consciousness and the reason for its emergence

in our species.

In order to fortify my hypothesis concerning scenario visualization and

tell a concrete evolutionary story of the emergence of scenario visualization,

I trace the evolution of the javelin from its meager beginnings as a

stick through our Homo habilis →Homo ergaster →Homo heidelbergensis →

Homo sapiens lineage. Given that modern humans evolved from early

hominins, I further fortify the emergence of scenario visualization by presenting

the psychological evidence that this kind of activity occurs in our

species when trying to solve certain problems, as well as by presenting the neurobiological evidence showing that our brains are wired so that this

kind of psychological activity can occur in the fi rst place (also Arp, 2006a,

2008c).

We are the only kind of species that can scenario visualize, and what I

suggest by the end of the fourth chapter is threefold. First, modern-day

humans have the unique ability to actively select and integrate visual

images from mental modules so as to transform and project those images

in visual scenarios for the purposes of negotiating environments—this is

scenario visualization.

Second, scenario visualization emerged as a natural consequence of our

evolutionary history, which includes the development of a complex

nervous system—through genetic variability and natural selection—in

association with environmental pressures that occasioned the evolution of

such a capacity. If an advanced form of toolmaking acts as a mark of conscious

behavior, then what I suggest is that visual processing must be a

signifi cant way in which this consciousness emerged on the evolutionary

scene. Considering that our early hominin ancestors not only had to select

certain materials that were appropriate to solve some problem but also

engaged in a number of mental steps that resulted in the construction of

a variety of tool types, it becomes apparent that a fairly advanced form of

cognitive activity had to occur. My suggestion is that such a process exhibits

conscious mental activities associated with scenario visualization, since

one must be able to segregate relevant visual information from irrelevant

information, integrate those pieces of visual information into coherently

organized mental pictures, and transform and project those pictures into

various scenarios so as to construct tools that are adequate to solve problems

in environments.

Third, our capacity to scenario visualize is a central feature of conscious

behavior, an idea that comports well with Sternberg’s (2001) notion of

consciousness’s entailing the setting up of future goals, Carruthers’ (2002)

idea that humans are the only kinds of beings able to generate, and then

reason with, novel suppositions or imaginary scenarios, and Crick & Koch’s

(1999, p. 324) claim that “conscious seeing” requires the brain’s ability to

“form a conscious representation of the visual scene that it then can use

for many different actions or thoughts.”

In the fi fth chapter, I further explicate the notions of routine problem

solving and nonroutine creative problem solving, and I show how scenario

visualization fi ts into the evolutionary psychologist’s schematization of the

mind to form a more complete picture of how it is that humans evolved

the ability to solve vision-related, nonroutine problems creatively (also see

Routine Problem Solving versus Nonroutine Creative Problem Solving 9

Arp, 2005a, 2006a, 2007a, 2008c). Routine problem solving entails a mental

activity that is stereotyped and wholly lacking in innovation because there

are simply perceptual associative connections being made by the mind of

an animal. Images in perception or memory are associated with one another

and/or with some environmental stimuli so as to learn some behavior or

produce some desired result. If that result is not achieved, an alternate

route is pursued in a routine trial-and-error fashion.

Unlike routine problem solving—which deals with associative connections

within familiar perspectives—nonroutine creative problem solving

entails an innovative ability to make connections between wholly unrelated

perspectives or ideas. Koestler (1964) referred to this quality of the

creative mind as a bissociation of matrices. In bissociation, humans put

together ideas, memories, representations, stimuli, and the like in wholly

new and unfamiliar ways. Thus, when we ask how it is that humans can

be creative, part of what we are asking is how they bissociate, namely, take

some idea found “way over here in the left fi eld of the mind” and make

some coherent connection with some other idea found “way over here in

the right fi eld of the mind,” to put it crudely. Humans seem to be the only

species that can engage in this kind of mental activity, principally with

the usage of visual images.

I then build upon the ideas and arguments put forward by Mithen (1996,

1999, 2001) and other evolutionary psychologists that creative problem

solving is possible because the mind is made up of a suite of encapsulated

modules that evolved in our Pleistocene hominin past to deal with specifi c

problems in erratic environments. According to Mithen, creative problem

solving occurs because humans have evolved the mechanism of cognitive

fl uidity, a capacity for information to fl ow freely between and among

mental modules. Mithen’s idea of cognitive fl uidity is supposed to explain

our ability to bissociate because, on this view, the potential always is there

to make innovative, previously unrelated connections between ideas or

perceptions, given that the information within modules has the capacity

to be mixed together, or fl uidly intermingle.

While agreeing with the part of Mithen’s hypothesis regarding the fl exible

fl ow of information between and among modules, I transform his

account by arguing that human beings scenario visualize—they actively

select, integrate, transform, and project visual information from mental

modules into imagined scenarios—when they solve vision-related kinds of

problems creatively. It is not enough that this modular visual information

simply intermixes, as Mithen would have us believe, because then the

information would be chaotic, directionless, and lacking in integrated coherency. The visual information must be selected and integrated relevant

to a particular problem in an environment so that a solution becomes

coherent for the problem solver, and a particular course of action can be

pursued.

Finally, in the fi fth chapter, I bring the entire discussion of the book

around full circle, so to speak, by linking this conscious ability to select

and integrate information to brain processes of the visual system, as well

as other biological processes, that engage in similar selecting and integrating

tasks. My claim is that just as biological processes, in general, exhibit

selective and integrative functions, and just as visual integration performs

the function of selecting and integrating visual module areas, so too, a

certain form of consciousness emerged as a property of the brain to act as

a kind of metacognitive process that scenario visualizes, namely, selects

and integrates relevant visual information from psychological modules for

the purpose of solving vision-related, creative problems in environments

(also see Arp, 2005b, 2008a). In this way, the mental and neurobiological

processes of selectivity and integration are really analogous extensions of

similar general biological processes. The upshot of my hypothesis is a biologically

based account of vision-related, creative problem solving whereby

the most complex psychological phenomena and processes are explained

as emerging from neurobiological phenomena and processes, which, in

turn, are explained as emerging from general biological phenomena and

processes—all phenomena and processes being subject to evolutionary

principles.

Creative Problem Solving

Imagine being a dentist in the early part of the nineteenth century. Now,

imagine going to the dentist to have a tooth pulled in the early part of the

nineteenth century. In those days, pulling teeth was a painful experience

for the patient, as there were no known anesthetics in use at the time. The

kinds of things a dentist used to help ease the patient’s pain before a tooth

extraction might have included having the patient suck on a medicinal

herb that produces a numbing effect in the mouth, placing ice upon the

gums, getting the patient to drink alcohol before the procedure, or any

combination thereof. Such were the methods that Dr. Horace Wells likely

used to solve the problem of pain associated with tooth extractions while

working as a dentist in Hartford, Connecticut, circa 1844. These methods

probably were nothing new, and we can imagine that dentists had been

using these remedies for some time so as to alleviate or prevent the pain

associated with tooth extraction.

One evening in 1844, Dr. Wells attended an amusing public demonstration

of the effects of inhaling a gas called nitrous oxide with his friend,

Samuel Cooley. Cooley volunteered to go up on stage to inhale the gas,

and he proceeded to do things like sing, laugh, and fi ght with other volunteers

who had inhaled the gas. As a result of the high jinks, Cooley

received a deep cut in his leg before coming back to his seat next to Dr.

Wells. Someone noticed a pool of blood under Cooley’s seat, and it was

discovered that Cooley had cut his leg; however, Cooley seemed to be

unaffected by and was unaware of the wound. Upon witnessing this event,

a light went on in Dr. Wells’ head: “What if this laughing gas could be

used during tooth extraction to ease a patient’s pain?” The problem of pain

associated with tooth extraction fi nally might be solved! In fact, over the

next several years Dr. Wells proceeded to use nitrous oxide and was successful

at painlessly extracting teeth from his patients, and the seeds of

modern anesthesia were sown (Roberts, 1989).

Humans are resourceful animals. We can imagine Dr. Wells prescribing

the various remedies with which he was familiar—the medicinal herb, the

ice, the alcohol—in the attempt to ease a patient’s pain during tooth

extraction. In such a case, we would have an instance of what Mayer (1995)

has called routine problem solving, whereby a person recognizes many possible

solutions to a problem given that the problem was solved through

one of those solutions in the past. People constantly perform routine

problem solving activities that are concrete and basic to their survival,

equipping them with a variety of ways to “skin” the proverbial cat, as well

as enabling them to adapt to situations and reuse information in similar

environments.

However, humans also can engage in activities that are more abstract

and creative, such as invent tools based upon mental blueprints, synthesize

concepts that, at fi rst glance, seemed wholly disparate or unrelated, and

devise novel solutions to problems. When Dr. Wells decided to use nitrous

oxide with his patients, he pursued a wholly new way to solve the problem

of pain. This was an instance of what Mayer (1995) has called nonroutine

creative problem solving, which involves fi nding a solution to a problem that

has not been solved previously. The introduction of nitrous oxide in order

to extract teeth painlessly would be an example of nonroutine creative

problem solving because Dr. Wells did not possess a way to solve the

problem already, and he had not pursued such a route in the past.

Not only do people make insightful connections like that of Dr. Wells

but they take advantage of serendipitous opportunities, invent products,

manufacture space shuttles, successfully negotiate environments, hypothesize,

thrive, fl ourish, and dominate the planet by coming up with wholly

novel solutions to problems—primarily through the use of their visual

systems. How is this possible? In this book, I give an evolutionary account

of the human ability to solve nonroutine, vision-related problems creatively

in their environments. I argue that, by the introduction of the

Upper Paleolithic toolmaking industry near the close of the Pleistocene

epoch, our hominin species evolved a conscious creative problem solving

capacity I call scenario visualization that enabled individuals to fashion the

tools and other products necessary to outlive other hominin species and

populate the planet. Scenario visualization is a conscious activity whereby

visual images are selected, integrated, and then transformed and projected

into visual scenarios for the purposes of solving problems in the environments

one inhabits. The evidence for scenario visualization is found in the

kinds of complex tools our hominin ancestors invented in order to survive

in the ever-changing environments of the Pleistocene world. In this book,

Routine Problem Solving versus Nonroutine Creative Problem Solving 3

I also argue that this conscious capacity shares an analogous affi nity with

neurobiological processes of selectivity and integration in the visual system,

namely, processes that enable animals to select relevant information from

environmental stimuli and to organize this information in a coherent way

for the animal. Further, I show that similar processes of selectivity and

integration can be found in the activities of organisms in general. Because

the brain is an evolved organ, a complete explanation of these processes

and capacities must appeal to general biological and evolutionary principles.

The evolution of these processes in our hominin past, I argue, helps

account for the modern-day conscious ability of humans to utilize visual

information so as to solve vision-related, nonroutine problems creatively

in the environments they inhabit.

Principally, I am a philosopher of mind and biology, and, insofar as this

is the case, I am concerned with two basic questions concerning human

nature, namely, What are humans, in essence, that distinguishes them

from the rest of reality? and How did we get this way? The hypothesis of

scenario visualization—as one form of conscious activity—and its emergence

in an evolutionary history are my small attempts to answer these

fundamentally philosophical questions. Of course, I will not answer these

questions completely. However, I will offer my hypothetical “piece to the

puzzle” that only could have come about as a result of interdisciplinary

dialogue and research. I believe that philosophy must work closely with

other disciplines in fi guring out the answers to the aforementioned questions,

as well as any basic philosophical question (also see Arp, 2008d;

Watson & Arp, 2008). When all is said and done, I support Churchland’s

(1993) claim that cognitive science should not be autonomous with respect

to neuroscience, psychology, and the other empirical sciences. I endorse

Fodor’s (1998) observation that archeology and the biological sciences are

good places to uncover the nature of the mind. I concur with Pinker (1994,

p. 15), echoing Chomsky, that if research in artifi cial intelligence is to

effectively study the mind, then it needs “constant integration across

disciplinary lines.” Further, I agree with Donald (1997, p. 356) that the

“problem of cognitive evolution demands the widest possible range of

information, (from) neurolinguistics, anthropology, paleontology, neuroanatomy,

and especially cognitive psychology.”

The ideas and arguments in this book are laid out in fi ve chapters. The

ultimate goal of my project is to explain how humans evolved a specifi

c kind of conscious, vision-related, creative problem solving ability I

call scenario visualization (also see Arp, 2005a, 2005b, 2006a, 2007a,

2008c). However, since conscious creative problem solving is a psychophysiological phenomenon that is causally dependent upon the workings

of the brain and nervous system in the human organism, in the fi rst chapter

I give a general philosophical account of organisms and use this account

to explain facts regarding the functioning of the organism’s subsystems

and processes. I do this in order to offer a philosophy of biology that is

comprehensive enough to account for the levels of biological phenomena

that are relevant to my project, and the upshot is to lay the groundwork

for showing that there is an analogous continuity of operation in the biological

world, ranging from the activities of organelles in a cell to the

complex workings of neural networks in a brain from which conscious

abilities emerge (also Arp, 2005b).

I give further elucidation to Mayr’s (1996, p. 103) description of organisms

as “hierarchically organized systems that operate on the basis of historically

acquired programs of information,” as well as ratify Plotkin’s

(1997, p. 1) claim that biological phenomena “only make complete sense

[italics mine] in light of evolutionary theory.” I establish that an organism

is a hierarchically organized living system made up of components that

are engaged in processes constituting coordinated subsystems, with the

product of these processes and subsystems being a particularized homeostasis

relative to their operations that contributes to the overall generalized

homeostasis of the organism. Besides being organized in such a way as to

produce homeostasis in the organism, the processes in which the components

of the organism are engaged possess certain properties. These properties

include abilities to exchange data internally, selectively convert data

to information, integrate that information, and process information from

environments (also Arp, 2008a).

Having established these properties in the fi rst chapter, in the second

chapter I put forward what I call the homeostatic organization view (HOV)

of organisms, whereby the components of organisms are organized to

function so as to maintain the homeostasis of the organism at the various

levels in the hierarchy (Arp, 2008a). Because of HOV, starting with the

organelles that make up a cell and continuing up the hierarchy of systems

and processes in an organism, we can maintain that there are clear instances

of emergent biological phenomena. Using HOV, I endorse a form of what

is known as nomological emergence in the metaphysical realm. Since the

endorsement of a set of entities in the metaphysical realm requires an

adequate description of those entities, I argue that it may be useful for a

researcher to think like an as-if realist when describing the traits and processes

of organisms (also see Arp, 2005c, 2005d). Whereas I use HOV to

give credence to a version of nomological emergence in the metaphysical

Routine Problem Solving versus Nonroutine Creative Problem Solving 5

realm, I use as-if realism to give credence to a corresponding form of representational

emergence in the epistemological realm. The end result is a

better understanding of the epistemological views that underpin my metaphysical

views in philosophy of science and philosophy of biology.

In the fi nal section of the second chapter, having argued for HOV and

as-if realism, I compare Cummins’ (1975, 2002) organizational view of

functions with the Griffi ths (1992, 1993, 1996)/Godfrey-Smith (1993,

1994, 1996) modern history view of functions. In fact, it is essential to my

project that I explain and defend a description of functions because my

hypothesis concerning scenario visualization depends upon certain functional

mechanisms of the mind having evolved to solve specifi c problems

encountered in various Pleistocene environments (also Arp, 2006b).

Whereas Cummins argues that a trait functions so as to contribute to the

general organization of some organism’s present structure, Griffi ths and

Godfrey-Smith argue that a trait functions because of its fi tness with

respect to the organism’s recent evolutionary history. I show how these

accounts can complement and be made compatible with one another.

Given that structure, organization, operational fl exibility, function, and

evolutionary history are all factors to be considered in an organism’s

makeup, we should expect that the traits of an organism function the way

they do because such traits presently contribute to the overall organization

of the organism (Cummins) as well as having been selected for in the

organism’s species’ recent ancestry (Griffi ths/Godfrey-Smith).

Building upon the work of the fi rst two chapters, in the third chapter I

show how the subsystems and processes associated with vision in mammals

comprise a hierarchically organized system exhibiting similar, analogous

kinds of properties of information exchange, selectivity, and integration

found in all organisms (also Arp, 2005b, 2008a). My analysis of the brain

is restricted to the primary processes and mechanisms associated with the

mammalian visual system for three reasons. First, there is a lot of empirical

evidence supporting the mammalian visual system’s structure and layout.

Second, the visual system is present in many kinds of vertebrate species

thought to be homologous to human beings. And third, the visual system

plays a central role in the evolutionary account I give of the progression

from noncognitive visual processing to conscious cognitive visual processing

in terms of scenario visualization. As I go on to demonstrate, visual

processing is an important factor—if not the most important factor—in the

evolution of conscious creative problem solving capacities in humans.

In the third chapter, I also distinguish four levels of visual processing in

animals. The fi rst is a noncognitive visual processing that takes place at

the lowest level of the visual processing hierarchy associated with the eye

and its neural projections to the lateral geniculate nucleus and primary

visual cortex. The second is a cognitive or psychological visual processing

that occurs at a higher level in the visual hierarchy associated with the

what and where unimodal areas of the brain. The third is a cognitive visual

processing that occurs at an even higher level in the visual hierarchy

whereby visual unimodal areas are integrated in the visual unimodal association

area of the brain. The fourth is a conscious cognitive visual processing

that occurs at the highest level of the visual hierarchy whereby the

visual association areas are integrated with other sensory modalities, the

limbic areas, and frontal areas of the brain (also Arp, 2005a, 2007b).

By the end of the third chapter, I show that the visual systems of

mammals, in general, function so as to produce visual cognition. Visual

cognition is the phenomenal representation of some object in the mammal’s

visual fi eld that is the result of the integration of modular visual

information received from that object in association with iconic memory,

attention, and the synchronous fi ring of neurons in the areas of the brain

relevant to the processing of the visual percept. Special attention is paid

to visual modularity and visual integration. Visual modularity refers to the

fact that the visual system is made up of distinctly functioning and

interacting modules or areas having evolved to respond to certain features

of an object in typical environments. Visual integration refers to a

neurobiological set of processes that bind together the relevant information

gleaned from visual modules/areas into a coherent cognitive

representation of some object, enabling an animal to negotiate typical

environments.

In the fourth chapter, after speaking about the general evolutionary

principles of genetic variability and natural selection, I trace the evolution

of the visual system from organisms that developed a light/dark sensitivity

area to humans who are capable of the complex activities involved in

conscious cognitive visual processing, including scenario visualization. I

do this utilizing the anatomical evidence from fossils and living species

thought to be homologous to ancient species. I also use archeological

evidence from ancient toolmaking techniques, since I believe that the

evolution of tool-types parallels the evolution from noncognitive visual

processing, through cognitive visual processing, to conscious cognitive

visual processing. The variety and complexity of tools discovered and

dated by archeologists offer us compelling evidence that the brain and

visual system have evolved with the passage of time (also Arp, 2006a,

2008c).

Routine Problem Solving versus Nonroutine Creative Problem Solving 7

I suggest that advanced forms of toolmaking require scenario visualization,

a conscious activity whereby visual images are selected, integrated,

and then transformed and projected into visual scenarios for the purposes

of solving problems in the environments one inhabits (also see Arp, 2005a,

2005b, 2006a, 2007a, 2008c). As a conscious process, scenario visualization

is distinct from the cognitive processes of simply forming a visual image

or recalling a visual image from memory; these activities can be performed

by nonhuman primates, mammals, and certain other animals. Scenario

visualization requires a mind that is more active in the utilization of visual

images through the processes of selectivity, integration, and projection

into future scenarios. It is not the having of visual images that is important;

it is what the mind does in terms of actively selecting and integrating visual

information for the purposes of solving some problem relative to some

environment that really matters.

In this project, I am concerned mostly with the progression from cognitive

visual processing to conscious cognitive visual processing, the relationship

of these processes to one another, and, ultimately, how conscious

cognitive visual processing—in terms of scenario visualization—evolved

from cognitive visual processing. There is a huge amount of literature

devoted to questions about the existence of psychological phenomena and

whether psychological phenomena supervene upon or emerge from neurobiological

phenomena (for starters, see Chalmers, 1996; Heil, 2004a,

2004b; Arp, 2007b, 2008d). Working out the problems associated with

these issues constitutes solving several so-called mind–body problems. Now,

no one has been able to give a satisfactory account of how it is that psychological

states—particularly conscious psychological states—arise from,

as well as interact with, the gray matter of the brain. Although I will not

be able to completely solve the mind–body problem of how it is that conscious

experience can emerge from and interact with the gray matter of

the brain, my hypothesis concerning scenario visualization is an attempt

to explain one aspect of our consciousness and the reason for its emergence

in our species.

In order to fortify my hypothesis concerning scenario visualization and

tell a concrete evolutionary story of the emergence of scenario visualization,

I trace the evolution of the javelin from its meager beginnings as a

stick through our Homo habilis →Homo ergaster →Homo heidelbergensis →

Homo sapiens lineage. Given that modern humans evolved from early

hominins, I further fortify the emergence of scenario visualization by presenting

the psychological evidence that this kind of activity occurs in our

species when trying to solve certain problems, as well as by presenting the neurobiological evidence showing that our brains are wired so that this

kind of psychological activity can occur in the fi rst place (also Arp, 2006a,

2008c).

We are the only kind of species that can scenario visualize, and what I

suggest by the end of the fourth chapter is threefold. First, modern-day

humans have the unique ability to actively select and integrate visual

images from mental modules so as to transform and project those images

in visual scenarios for the purposes of negotiating environments—this is

scenario visualization.

Second, scenario visualization emerged as a natural consequence of our

evolutionary history, which includes the development of a complex

nervous system—through genetic variability and natural selection—in

association with environmental pressures that occasioned the evolution of

such a capacity. If an advanced form of toolmaking acts as a mark of conscious

behavior, then what I suggest is that visual processing must be a

signifi cant way in which this consciousness emerged on the evolutionary

scene. Considering that our early hominin ancestors not only had to select

certain materials that were appropriate to solve some problem but also

engaged in a number of mental steps that resulted in the construction of

a variety of tool types, it becomes apparent that a fairly advanced form of

cognitive activity had to occur. My suggestion is that such a process exhibits

conscious mental activities associated with scenario visualization, since

one must be able to segregate relevant visual information from irrelevant

information, integrate those pieces of visual information into coherently

organized mental pictures, and transform and project those pictures into

various scenarios so as to construct tools that are adequate to solve problems

in environments.

Third, our capacity to scenario visualize is a central feature of conscious

behavior, an idea that comports well with Sternberg’s (2001) notion of

consciousness’s entailing the setting up of future goals, Carruthers’ (2002)

idea that humans are the only kinds of beings able to generate, and then

reason with, novel suppositions or imaginary scenarios, and Crick & Koch’s

(1999, p. 324) claim that “conscious seeing” requires the brain’s ability to

“form a conscious representation of the visual scene that it then can use

for many different actions or thoughts.”

In the fi fth chapter, I further explicate the notions of routine problem

solving and nonroutine creative problem solving, and I show how scenario

visualization fi ts into the evolutionary psychologist’s schematization of the

mind to form a more complete picture of how it is that humans evolved

the ability to solve vision-related, nonroutine problems creatively (also see

Routine Problem Solving versus Nonroutine Creative Problem Solving 9

Arp, 2005a, 2006a, 2007a, 2008c). Routine problem solving entails a mental

activity that is stereotyped and wholly lacking in innovation because there

are simply perceptual associative connections being made by the mind of

an animal. Images in perception or memory are associated with one another

and/or with some environmental stimuli so as to learn some behavior or

produce some desired result. If that result is not achieved, an alternate

route is pursued in a routine trial-and-error fashion.

Unlike routine problem solving—which deals with associative connections

within familiar perspectives—nonroutine creative problem solving

entails an innovative ability to make connections between wholly unrelated

perspectives or ideas. Koestler (1964) referred to this quality of the

creative mind as a bissociation of matrices. In bissociation, humans put

together ideas, memories, representations, stimuli, and the like in wholly

new and unfamiliar ways. Thus, when we ask how it is that humans can

be creative, part of what we are asking is how they bissociate, namely, take

some idea found “way over here in the left fi eld of the mind” and make

some coherent connection with some other idea found “way over here in

the right fi eld of the mind,” to put it crudely. Humans seem to be the only

species that can engage in this kind of mental activity, principally with

the usage of visual images.

I then build upon the ideas and arguments put forward by Mithen (1996,

1999, 2001) and other evolutionary psychologists that creative problem

solving is possible because the mind is made up of a suite of encapsulated

modules that evolved in our Pleistocene hominin past to deal with specifi c

problems in erratic environments. According to Mithen, creative problem

solving occurs because humans have evolved the mechanism of cognitive

fl uidity, a capacity for information to fl ow freely between and among

mental modules. Mithen’s idea of cognitive fl uidity is supposed to explain

our ability to bissociate because, on this view, the potential always is there

to make innovative, previously unrelated connections between ideas or

perceptions, given that the information within modules has the capacity

to be mixed together, or fl uidly intermingle.

While agreeing with the part of Mithen’s hypothesis regarding the fl exible

fl ow of information between and among modules, I transform his

account by arguing that human beings scenario visualize—they actively

select, integrate, transform, and project visual information from mental

modules into imagined scenarios—when they solve vision-related kinds of

problems creatively. It is not enough that this modular visual information

simply intermixes, as Mithen would have us believe, because then the

information would be chaotic, directionless, and lacking in integrated coherency. The visual information must be selected and integrated relevant

to a particular problem in an environment so that a solution becomes

coherent for the problem solver, and a particular course of action can be

pursued.

Finally, in the fi fth chapter, I bring the entire discussion of the book

around full circle, so to speak, by linking this conscious ability to select

and integrate information to brain processes of the visual system, as well

as other biological processes, that engage in similar selecting and integrating

tasks. My claim is that just as biological processes, in general, exhibit

selective and integrative functions, and just as visual integration performs

the function of selecting and integrating visual module areas, so too, a

certain form of consciousness emerged as a property of the brain to act as

a kind of metacognitive process that scenario visualizes, namely, selects

and integrates relevant visual information from psychological modules for

the purpose of solving vision-related, creative problems in environments

(also see Arp, 2005b, 2008a). In this way, the mental and neurobiological

processes of selectivity and integration are really analogous extensions of

similar general biological processes. The upshot of my hypothesis is a biologically

based account of vision-related, creative problem solving whereby

the most complex psychological phenomena and processes are explained

as emerging from neurobiological phenomena and processes, which, in

turn, are explained as emerging from general biological phenomena and

processes—all phenomena and processes being subject to evolutionary

principles.