are_we_ever_orignal ari i am doing a project for philosphy on originality, and i was wondering what you all think. to create is defined as the process of bringing something into existence. something New. to have creativity is to have originality. but can we? do you believe that everything we create is merely a remolded idea or collaboration of ideas, improved, like the process of evolution? then we are not creating, cause nothing is new. or is each idea completely unique and therefore, new, therefore original? your opinions would be greatly appreciated, bisou bisou - ari 020924 ... nocturnal it seems almost impossible to truly create something. most of what we make is some form of a reflection of an image or idea put into our minds by some other source. we may stumble across something new and truly original by accident, but even in those cases, the "creation" is generally a previously existing object with a new twist. how could such a phenomenon possibly be true? human minds seem to have an extremely limited extent of possible knowledge. we're sort of a "monkey see monkey do" species. everything we know has been learned by observation or study. we lack the intellectual capacity for genuinely original concepts which have been neither given nor influenced by any outside source. I guess my reasoning is basically a lack of satisfactory evidence to the contrary. p.s. you may wish to go further but it's too late and I'm too tired to get into the metaphysical defense; i.e. phenomenal v. noumenal stuff, blah blah blah. kant's too annoying to deal with right now. 020924 ... just a question well...i guess you believe in god then. since we had to see god to create the concept. it's always new when a familiar pattern is misapplied to a different context. also, i feel patterns can be ascertained that do or do not exist in the natural world, which are meaningful only unto themselves. this is certainly new. it may not be new in the sense that it is rooted in the world around it, but certainly the leaps taken can be something close to quantum at times. the brain only needs a misfire to connect somethings which would seem unconnected in the actual world. our physicality combines nicely with our mentality to allow in something decidedly not new (a neural connection) something decidedly new. a concept. of course we use the tools we're familiar with. but emergent properties! i mean...like consciousness itself was probably an emergent property. i don't know...guess i'm tired too. 020925 ... Freak not in the things we do, but sometimes in the person we are. 020925 ... ari how do you mean "in the person we are"? 020925 ... Photophobe loves Paul Dempsy you're no the first to think that everything has been thought before 020925 ... nocturnal in response to just a question's opinion, it seems we differ on our conception of what is truly new. "it's always new when a familiar pattern is misapplied to a different context. also, i feel patterns can be ascertained that do or do not exist in the natural world, which are meaningful only unto themselves. this is certainly new." for the first part especially (s)he and I definitely differ. since the pattern is not new, the application thereof cannot be one which I would call original. as of yet unseen perhaps, but that brings me back to kant's noumenal thing and is in connection with the latter part of the above quote...I'm sure ari knows this, but for the sake of my argument I feel I had better explain...noumena are things-in-themselves specified negatively as unknown and beyond our experience, or positively as knowable in some absolute non-sensible way. following this definition, they could arguably be said to exist and therefore cannot be new. I'd continue but I have a philosophy discussion to attend and I'm still not dressed yet. 020925 ... just a moment i understand the idea that if something exists out there it isn't new, it is something we merely stumble across. but does anything really exist in potentia? no. it cannot by definition. it does not exist untill it does. thus it's new when it comes into existence. also, if we indeed live in a universe that's constantly expanding as they say it is, there's always something new to discover. even if rules have been ascertained, there's always some new cartography to engage in. all i mean to say, is that in art and other such practices, the exact combination of phenomena is often new. just because it was possible before doesn't mean it existed. the fact is, all that matters in life is combinations. otherwise one could claim there's been nothing new since atoms. but truly there have been new things, which came about due to emergent properties. for instance, if one takes the old ordinary molecules of hydrogen and two oxygens, there'd be no way of predicting that it'd form water in the coarse grained way we think of it, with all of its own physical properties. so i guess it's our lack of prediction power that allows old combinations to yield new perspectives. but just because they could've existed before doesn't mean they did, and so every new combination is in some way truly new. i guess, since we have no choice but to judge from the human subjective point of view, new to me means new. so if we think we're being original to some hypothetical god who's already seen all of the possibilities then no we probably aren't, but there's no reason to say things are like that anymore than to say things aren't. so while this argument's most essential or surface facet may not be new, the two people arguing it and what they bring and take from it is. we're allowed to shed, if we are lucky enough, or hard working enough, or lucky enough to be hard working, a new perspective on an old issue. 020925 ... just a footnote and i want to emphasize my point that since we only know the outside world through our minds, something i think kant himself was all gaga for, something simply does not exist unless we've thought it does. sure "gravity" existed in ancient greece. but did it exist in a meaningful way, when truly it is just our way of describing a phenomenon which could possibly be described in a more accurate way. we never can know if we're describing the world as accurately as possible, only if it's useful or not. the fact is though, a new theory is just that. yes, the idea may take as its source various other ideas or observations, but that does not mean that the idea itself does not posess emergent and new qualities, which can now be applied to other situations and perhaps yield new perspectives again. kind of like progress, backwards or forwards. after all, you can see an apple fall a million times, but not everyone formulated the force of gravity because of it. and just because kant said that because a thing could've been thought before it existed before doesn't mean i buy it. that's just an appeal to authority. the fact is, how do we know it could've been thought before? maybe circumstances weren't right for that new slight distinction. 020925 ... nocturnal seems we (just a question, moment, footnote and I) have argued two significant sides to this issue. by your definition of new, yes we can create new objects and ideas and we can be original. by my own understanding of new, we cannot. I hope this has been of some help to ari. 020925 ... just a lament it hasn't helped me at all :( 020925 ... reitoei behavior is rather unorginal and canned: you push a button here and the person does something. how orginal can our thoughts be when they are based on our "used" knowledge? is a new twist on an old foundation orginal? or are all our innovations random permutations of basic, hardwired survival instincts? are my questions orginal? i havent heard them before but i'm sure someone has asked them before 020925 ... devalis I forget which philosopher it was that said there's only 7 story-lines and every novel, every poem, every movie (well, there weren't movies when he was philosophising --is that a word?-- but you know what I mean) is just a take on one of those 7 story-lines. I think he even listed them. I'm so bad with details, but that means that every creative thing in the world is like 1/7 of everything else. That's never original, except for the first 7, right? There was also a discussion we were having in American History about being conformist. You're conformist, but then if you try not to be conformist, aren't you conforming to unconformity? So then whether or not you're conformist doesn't matter, because you're either conforming to society or you're rebelling, like everyone else who doesn't wanna conform to society. That's sad. I'd like to think I could be unique. 020925 ... just not again the questions may not be, but the unique set of circumstances they interact with are. okay...i just watched a movie about a brontosaurus being brought back to civilization. (the lost world 193?). if that wasn't a new idea, what is? okay so maybe it's not new when it came out again in jurassic park. but it had genetics and sam neill! and consciousness changes everything. like...sure...your decisions may be caused in some sense, but don't you ever surprise yourself? sure you do, and this is even knowing decisions are something we should think about and try to be free in. so in some sense your behavior is new even to you. new is always subjective. perhaps the big bang itself wasn't new to someone. new always implies an observer, or something old or set or expected for this to be new to. and original. of course. we're all made of atoms. combinations matter. didn't you read all of the above? all of the futility. this argument is so unoriginal. 020925 ... nocturnal I was thinking about you and this argument the other day. I can't remember exactly when or where it was, but someone was discussing...or maybe I read something that reminded me of what some philosopher...I can't remember which, said that everything we think/know/"create"/remember is nothing more than a reflection of something we learned before. we think it's new only because we can't remember having learned it for one reason or another; probably because we just shoved it in the back of our minds somewhere and never gave it a second thought, but it's nothing more than a memory. also, my dad reminded me of the idea that you never see the same stream twice. I'm sure you've heard or read this before. since the water is constantly moving, what we commonly consider the same body of water never really is. this is because water consists of water molecules, arguably infinite drops of water, and the current keeps them all moving in such a way that every time we return to a stream, we see different water molecules, or drops, so it can never be the same stream. I think it's relevant to the argument in that one must consider the details. you could be standing on the exact same spot on the bank of a stream that you were yesterday, or even one second ago, and you are looking at the exact same segment of the stream you were then, but can you then consider it the same stream, or would it be new since the water is different? alright, to be honest with you, I've had a few drinks tonight and this doesn't seem to have as much to do with this or to even make as much sense as I previously thought it did. I maintain the opinion that it's interesting nonetheless, so there. 021002 ... just thinking too hard no i agree. deja vu is what we have everytime we seek to describe the world. and i think we apply old patterns to new situations. when i say original, i only mean that we are constantly comparing old patterns to see similarities. there is an evolution. it is no different than saying opposable thumbs were not original. we see the world through the lens of our past. but in applying it to new details, we often learn surprising things in how it works or doesn't work. or we adjust our patterns. or we are reminded of another pattern which had previously not been used to describe this thing, but which had enough in common with it to draw out comparisons, and these comparisons themselves draw out our ideas of what comparisons inevitably are. new information happens. it's not holism, it's just that the sum of the parts is different than the parts alone. and i think thoughts go through mutations. there are seemingly "random" changes, parts of a pattern could be dropped. that is, a mechanical change could lead to a different significance on the level where context is given. hardware could change the software or something. that is, say a bit of a neural structure is changed slightly in a "idea." suddenly that idea has new significance on the level it's read. hence...originality! 021002 ... poetic onslaught for a while i had this thought that if you raise a pair of twins in the same room, with the same design, and you made the same thing happen to each person, that they would react the same way to any situation. i figured that everything we do is brought forth from a memory, either concious or subconcious. then i tried to be original and noticed how hard it was. its impossible to be original. you can see it in everything you do. we talk in cliches and react to situations in a predictable way. and i also decided that television should also be blamed for this. we are raised on it and believe we understand something when we see it and everyone wants to be like someone they've seen before. we dont know how to be original and its easier to be someone else. our thoughts are like a chain reaction, we just usually aren't aware of it. for example, you might wanna remember something so you turn a book over while thinking "i wanna remember that appointment, so when i see this turned over book, this will remind me". later that day you might be listening to a song and you hear a phrase that reminds you of something you heard on the radio on your way to school with your cousin who is a book worm and recomended "gone with the wind" which you read last month and....oh yea i got an appointment soon. anywayz, thats just an example. we all think like this therefore its impossible to be original. it just might seem original because we cant consiously connect these thoughts. try to talk for one day without using any cliches. you will start to notice how predictable everything is, like the things you say and the way you say it and with the tone and body movement. its all far from original. the only way to make any sort of originality is to mix memories and evolve thought through other memories. originality is nothing more than a new combination of thoughts. 021003 ... just rolling right along yeah. but it's still originality. of course, something can't come from nothing. what are our thoughts...the big bang or something? of course, that doesn't mean they aren't original. original is a subjective word. things can be original only to an observer. so if it's new to you, it's as new as it gets. of course there might be some god somewhere to whom nothing is original. but all of our memories, though static, are involved with an ever changing world, and we apply old memories to a new world and often see original combinations. our appraisals change or adapt when their shortcomings at describing the current situation are surmised. if there was no such thing as originality, how would one explain the advent of new words to a language or such? of course it is part of a chain reaction. but since it is unpredictable just where the reaction is going, it is trite to say that all of the components were there at the beginning of the reaction when there may be emergent qualities we were unaware of. that is, as explained earlier, if you add two hydrogen molecules and one oxygen molecule it behaves in ways unpredictable even if everything is known about those two gases separately. that is, the way those two interact is unique amongst all of each of their separate attributes. this could of course be based on certain factors, but still, it takes these factors in both for the new quality of water to emerge. the same can happen with thoughts and words. accidental combinations can create new words, misapplications, and even inevitable discoveries. and they're all original to those who discovered them. there is a difference between in potentia and actually existing. of course cliches are used, cliches are memories being applied (usually erroneously) to the present. in some sense, all words are cliches in that they have an approximated meaning and yet each time an exact use depending on the combination around them. and there is always a new combination. there is too much information in this world for repetitions to be anything but approximated. much like snowflakes, each constellation of meaning we make in phrases is different depending on how it's received, and all of the contigent factors influencing its use. some of these repeat in imprecise ways, and this is memory, but it is never exactly the same. the air of predictability is more or less our minds trying desperately to make it all predictable, to make no situation novel. but there's more information to be taken in than even our massive neural structures can handle. we are deluding ourselves if we do not think that each moment is novel, each moment is an emergency. and how we react can only be as original. in a wrestling match, a person may do the same moves. or moves that go by the same name, but the exact movement of the body is never duplicated. and variations in the world cause variations in the body. it's a mutual evolution. so words branch from other words and so on and so forth. 021003 ... silentbob i barely even read what anyone writes anymore 021003 ... freakizh you should try to write in paragraphs. maybe if i wide up the blathe column with a long character line it will be easier to read. let's see: aksdhasdjklhaskdjshadjksadlksjaskldhsladasjdkashdksjahdasjkdskadjh how 'bout that? 021004 ... pay not mind does that work? i mean after the fact? this is only a test of your theory. go and go and go and go paragraph word sentence yadda allajflkjec. some of the alphabet abcdeedcba. hooray for bigger blather columns maybe. 021004 ... nada nope 021004 ... Jeca When you think of it mathematically, with a person's average vocabulary of about 10,000 words, there are a LOT of combinations possible in a sentence. Here's something nobody's ever said before: Go ahead and eat the moon-- it's making the stars jealous and we don't want the sun involved. 021004 ... DannyH Originality can only ever be accidental. 021010 ... just meandering down an old path not in the sense that we can "will" "accidental" thinking. combinations made by our minds before we are conscious of them, combinations that we consciously set in motion in some way. of course if we controlled every aspect of a combination, it would not be original to us anymore, but it could still be original to someone else. but it seems to be ourselves we want some space from. and i think we already have enough, because this statement only raises further questions about will and consciousness's role in it that i have nothing original to say on. 021010 ... [.:..The SeeR ..:.] Some think that there are no new ideas... HOWEVER: There are an infinite amount of NEW COMBINATIONS of existing ideas. And the new combination could be considered a new idea. 021010 ... nocturnal new combinations aren't original. what is a sentential combination? the grouping together of words. what does a group consist of? words. old words combined with other old words doesn't make the "new" combination a genuinely unique thing. just cuz you use something old with something else that's old in a way in which they've never been used before, it's still just a rearrangement. it ain't new. it's just in a different position than those in which you've seen it before. don't confuse mixing with creating. but that's just my personal opinion. feel free to decide for yourself, just do so in an informed manner. thank you. 021010 ... DannyH I'm not sure I get you Noc. Surely words are ontologically transformed by their context. No word ever means exactly the same thing in two different places and context is a process rather than a state. Therefore words are in a constant state of flux. The same sentence in a different context is surely a new or original usage due to the different connotations it attracts. 021011 ... nocturnal new usage doesn't make the object being used new and just because a word doesn't mean the same thing, that doesn't make it a new word. a word is made of letters. words are merely representations of things and experiences we encounter in our lives. what they represent, for our purposes, is irrelevant. we use the same 26 letters to make different combinations ("words") and attach some meaning or meanings to them. perhaps the words "new" and "original" are getting confused here. if I decide that pethyventing is a word and come up with some definition for it, it could be said to be a new word. it is not original or truly unique, though. you've seen those letters before, but not in that order combined with each other in exactly that manner. the main issue in this argument is whether or not one considers the whole or its parts as having to be original. I happen to think that the parts have to be new. if the whole is what's at issue, it seems to me it can be little more than merely different rather than original. 021011 ... just this again because apparently this language has always been around, and has always had 26 letters. small changes over a lapse of time allow for emergent originality. not all 26 letters were added at once. 021011 ... nocturnal they, too, are just written symbols for linguistic sounds that we make. symbols ain't new. I guess evolution is what really denies originality. one thing morphs into another that's only slightly different, then that thing morphs, and so on and so forth. one slight change to a thing that previously existed is just that and nothing more; a change. it is not a creation. 021011 ... you are_we_ever_original 021011 ... just the same argument as before how is mutation not a creation? a slight change and a stark change are both changes reguardless. and i'll have you know that certain cultures are not capable of making certain vocal noises because their innate ability wasn't trained in that way, so obviously original things can be done with the basic building blocks of vocal noises. if your next argument is that nothing is original because all of the atoms have been the same since the big bang, just recirculating, then you're totally changing the definition of the word original and taking we out of it. original is only original to a observer. that is the only way it could ever possibly be. without an observer, there is no new discovery, because there is no discovery. there is only information. still, information itself acts in original ways depending on what other information it comes in contact with. and this is the root of our ability to be original. we can combine previously uncombined information. words are more than gutteral noises, and that's where the mistake is. languages could've went in a number of ways. and just because some new language is possible, doesn't mean it'd be less original to all of us if it were to evolve. slight changes or not, change is an original combination. if previously there had only been blue and red separate in the world, purple would still be an original configuration the moment it happened. because all things have qualities which change depending on what they interact with. concepts can be created. there wasn't a concept of heaven, untill it was imagined. if indeed there is no heaven as some argue, how could the concept of it be anything but original? that is an application one concept to another creates unforseen possibilities. either way, originality is our key component as a species. we recklessly combine information, both physical and mental. but to argue that a new word isn't really new since the letters which formed it are really old, and even they are just symbols based on a certain amount of base vocal capabilities is to deny that words have meaning seperate from their sounds. and i know your followup, but those meanings are just based on old meanings. the fact remains that language didn't always exist in the world, and a new combination, for all practical purposes is original. since original is a subjective and practical word, we are capable of originality. the fact remains, there are cars in the world. there weren't cars before. yes motion, yes physics, and fuel, and the geometric shape that would become wheel, but their combination is still original to us, hence the we. we are original, in that we create things we weren't previously aware of. also, a slight change in the physical makeup of the mind could signify a huge change conceptually thereby showing that though the physical change may be only a slight change, the resulting thought is a never hitherto thought of thought. that is, the "mutations" our mind can make represent original positions when their conceptual counterparts are taken into account. 021011 ... Dafremen see also: WHAT_IS_ART CLAPTRAP 021012 ... Jeca i agree with Same Arguement. besides that, we are ALL original-- a beautiful development of a complex molecular blueprint (DNA) that for most of us is unique. even for the exceptions, twins, each person is subject to such a dynamic and different set of experiences, how can any one of us hope to NOT be different from what we know around us at least once in a while? The problem is, it's not human nature to always express these differences or to act original, as an individual, no matter what the idealists say. Despite the uniqueness inherent to the very fabric of all of us, human nature is to CONFORM. Even blatherites. Well, maybe not Paste!. 021012 ... just kickin it well the whole point of logic, and the whole point of memory is to find patterns, to re experience situations in imprecise ways so that we may conquer them in a leisurely manner. unfortunately we sometimes see patterns where they are not. 021013 ... I just CANT take it ORIGINAL origInal!!!!!!! are_we_ever_original every day I hope this blathe will go away... but it doesn't 021013 ... nocturnal yeah, I agree...finally. I think I'm done arguing this point. you people think what you want and I will think what I want. I'm out. 021013 ... poetic onslaught ok before yall end this blath i just wanna.....blath. the first thing that came to my mind was to say "put my 2 cents in". of course that would just be another cliche. cliches are the first thing we think and many times people use cliches in a sentence that the cliche wouldnt even apply to, when u think of it logically. thats because we might remember using that cliche some other time in which u felt the same way u do now. when u have this feeling again those are the first words you think of. we're just usually not aware of this transition. i just started a new job a couple of weeks ago as a cashier, this is a good example. for every type of item a person buys i have to put in a different code. before the day was over i was already putting in the most used codes habitually. i didnt even have to think about it because my subconcious had already associated those items with those codes. every thought u think is just part of a chain reaction. so is language. words are evolved from other words or languages (most our derived from latin). they are just spelled and pronounced and that languages manner. i could go as far as to say that it started like the transition from english to ebonics. if you dont understand ebonics or slang then its like another language to you. but ebonics is obviously nothing more than a combination of words and phrases to make new ones. like different accents from north to south. its the same language, it just sound different. hell take the australians for instance. isnt that supposed to be english? someone said that its safe to say that we have the qualities for the action before the reaction that we're unaware of. if we're having a logical debate then you've said nothing to back up your theory. its just a theory. what im saying is that all our ways of living and thoughts are just intertwined memories (and habits brought forth from our actions)from.....as far as we know. lets go as far back to the caveman. they didnt have a language so they spoke with pictures. these pictures are things they see. so that evolved from sight, one of our 5 basic senses. we cant figure something out without knowing what we're trying to figure out. you cant make something out of nothing. if you know how to add, you can figure out how to subtract by reversing the method. keep playing with the numbers and you figure out the structure for multiplication and division. the main point here is that you cant make something out of nothing. there has to be something there first that you can modify. so originality, once again, is only an adjustment to something that was already there. if thats your difinition of original then i guess we can be original. but theres nothing more to originality than that. i just wanted to make sure i got my point across. 021013 ... just two cents it's an original adjustment though. if it had never been there before it's original. if you've never added two and two, then four is an original number. it's different if you square four then it is if you add two squared plus two squared. it has emergent properties. properties that may have never been expressed in the universe had there not been a combination. of course you can't get something from nothing, or at least we can't. but that doesn't mean what we get from something isn't original. none of us can create the world. it's been created. however, we can recreate it in a sense. we can reconfigure it in ways it may have never been configured in if not for our action. if you're going to follow your argument down to material determinism and say since all actions are caused, nothing is original of its self, i can only say that it depends on what the physical change signifies conceptually. also, just because something has a cause, does not stop it from being a hitherto nonexistant, and therefore original event. yes it's all made of the same stuff. as a matter of fact, in your arguments, nothing has been new since atoms, and who knows how long they've been here or how they got here. however, i'd say that how the atoms interact is important and often original. 021013 ... just five cents actually and another thing. if you play around with numbers long enough you can get all the structures etc. etc.? addition is learned by combining the numbers, subtraction by reversing the process. my question is, where did these abilities come from? were they always there? they must've been. our awareness of them must've been a slight adjustment i suppose? isn't the very fact that we can find the process of reversal, though in nature there is no true example of it, original? our minds themselves are original, how much more original could we be? in your sense of the word original, there is no satisfactory example of it in the entire world. it is a useless and discardable word. in which case, it is a starkly original word since there is no precedent for it at all in the world words are supposed to signify, since language, being unoriginal ,could only take its roots in the world. my point is this. an adjustment to an old thing makes a new thing. it's only in our memory that we see the old thing. what's actually there is a completely original thing. if it weren't for our often blinding ability to recognize a pattern or component parts, we would see only a completely original pinpoint of the universe's physical and conceptual existence in front of us. even though you can't step in the same river twice, we call it the same river. 021013 ... [.:..The SeeR ..:.] Well.. I didn't read all of that... I am sorry if someone already said this.. but: I thought about this over the weekend. Actually, I thought about this subject a lot since 1997 when I had a conversation about this with a girl the morning after a party one time... And I have come to a new conclusion! The people who think that "No thoughts are original" or "There are no new thoughts" (as that girl put it) are just trying to justify the fact that they aren't very creative. There are infinite possibilities in the universe, and thus... there are infinite NEW IDEAS! 021111 ... merbein No, I don't think so. As the poet said (in Ecclesiates), there is nothing new under the sun. 021111 ... Jeca not even you? 021111 ... girl_jane Energy can be neither created nor destroyed. It's simply reformed. Perhaps ideas are the same? 021222 ... Dawn of Death and Gore i love this, i love you and dream on 040323 ... pandora right, or so i believe i'm not new i'm bits and pieces of my parents, relatives, people who were around me, particles of society, how i was treated by people, any illness, art, sensation... all of these things that existed before me helped to create me right? and i create from what i see/learn blah, whatever right dave? 040323 ... oldephebe ah quite the perspicatious opining there girl_jane straight to the heart of it and what not ... 040323 ... oE perspicacious...rrriiiiiighghgt 040323 what's it to you? who go blather from