3.e) Creativity

To begin with, I believe that creativity is another of the qualities that is essential to the life of living beings. Keeping to the topic of human ability, it seems clear that all people are creative to a greater or lesser extent, just like with intelligence and beauty.

When the concept of creativity is used in reference to language, it is as an adjective that refers to a person who is particularly talented in comparison to the average of the rest of the population. A slightly creative person is definitely more creative than a very creative cat!

For me, a good definition of creativity is a subset of intelligence, meaning a group of basic relational or elemental functions with a high association of reliability; that is a particular subset of conditional intelligence. Strictly speaking, this last requirement is essential for intelligence; if the brain's functions responsible for creating logical relations often make mistakes, this would not be intelligence, but rather something else that I call intuition, but, if mistakes were almost always made, this would be called a lack of intelligence.

This subset is formed by those functions that make the creation, design, invention, imagination, etc. of new concepts or ideas easier.

The demand of high reliability for creativity appears paradoxical because it does not seem that the same justification of gravity of possible error that we used for intelligence can be applied in this instance.

Not only is an error not considered something serious in creative processes, but mistakes are also considered normal. Nonetheless, given that creativity requires various successive operations to be carried out in order to exist, if errors are made by elemental functions, it is not very likely that the final result will be good; we may find new creations due to chance but not creativity.

However, we should not lose sight of the fact that an absolute conceptual definition of creativity is not easy, as we have also previously cited, language is precisely characterized by the contrary of this. The possibility that one of the important causes behind creation is due to a defective function in sensorial perception is widely accepted in regards to certain important artistic creations.


On the other hand, if we think about the specific subset of the functions of creativity, we will realize that they deal with particularly complex functions of intelligence; that is, if we were talking about more packets of elemental functions in which all should operate with a high degree of reliability. Therefore, it is not so much that the complex function (creativity) does not generate errors, but rather that the elemental functions or parts (intelligence) do not generate them.

So, a more concrete definition of creativity would be formed by complex functions or packets of basic functions of intelligence that support the capacities of:

  • Carrying out extrapolations and estimations of the result, given the existing relations.

  • Understanding the limits of the parameters involved in the relations.

  • Detect the change in relation caused by a change in the parameters, otherwise said, qualitative implications for quantitative changes.

  • Simultaneous management of various dimensions.

  • Perform changes in scale or model variables, changing new parameters, and returning to the initial scale or model variable in the appropriate point of the corresponding changes of the original parameters. That is, the concepts related to the different types of applications defined in the relatively modern math of groups.

  • Functions related to advanced statistical thought such as distinction between an average value and a normal value, a different value and a rare value, and distinction between a particular case and general values.

  • Any others that respond to the stated concept.

Plausibly, to be creative in a specific subject, it is not necessary to have all the previous functions. Nonetheless, aside from some of the previous common functions, the following should also be present: both elemental capacities of intelligence associated to this subject and the specific capacities that do not form a part of intelligence, whether dealing with music, football, economics, etc.

Consequently, I think that intelligent people tend to be more creative, and this tendency is more apparent the more intelligent someone is. This tendency also exists the other way around (the less intelligent, the less creative), but, in my opinion, it is not as strong because of the particular intelligence associated and the specific capacities.

A person can be very intelligent and have a subset of creativity functions that are not very operative! A person can be very creative and not very intelligent if other important elemental functions fail!

From another point of view, we can see how colloquial language practically depicts these meanings perfectly. A genius is a person who is very intelligent and creative. Ok, but if we are referring to an intellectual genius, we understand that he/she is (or was) very creative, but if we are talking about a genius known for his/her creativity we understand that he/she probably is (or was) fairly intelligent, but we cannot be as sure as in the first case.

In the next point we will speak about the genetic structure of intelligence. Creativity, in regards to its hereditary nature, is a special example because it has two sides to it; one side, being or forming a part of intelligence, and the other dealing with the specific subject of creativity, such as, music for example.

Continuing with this example, we could say that while the VGI method is not applied to the genetic transmission of musical or specific ability and that the capacities associated to the genetic information received from both progenitors (union) will be expressed; in the transmission of musical creativity the rules of the stated method will be applied for the relational functions being part or a subset of intelligence, only showing the capacities derived from genetic information that is present simultaneously in the two sources of information received from the progenitors (intersection)