Journal of Cognitive Psychology

This special issue is devoted to the long-standing puzzle of whether creativity is computable. Authors are welcome to contribute articles describing their own answers to this puzzle. Their respective answers may depend on evidence from behavioural or neuroimaging experiments of phenomena related to creative cognition such as insight or idea generation in problem solving. Alternatively, manuscripts are welcome that draw upon theoretical views relating to creativity in various domains (e.g., the arts or sciences) or from computer programs in AI or modeling human imagination.

Most cognitive investigations appear to have taken for granted either that creativity is computable, or irrelevant if not uncomputable. Yet, contrasting answers go back to the originators of computability prior to the invention of computers. One of its key developers, the logician Kurt Gödel, argued that the human mind can do things beyond formal algorithms. More recently, Roger Penrose (Nobel Prize in Physics, 2020) used Gödel’s results to draw a similar conclusion. In contrast, another key developer of computability, Alan Turing, argued to the contrary that nothing that the mind can do is beyond computation. The opening article in the special issue makes clear these arguments, and what is at stake for computability, but reaches no definite answer to the question.

Manuscripts addressing the puzzle of whether creativity is computable can take the form of full (regular) articles, brief articles, or reviews. Please submit manuscripts via the Journal of Cognitive Psychology submission portal, making sure that the appropriate special issue title (i.e., “The Computability of the Cognitive Processes Underlying Creativity”) is selected from the drop-down menu during the process. Please feel free to check on the suitability of your planned article in advance of submission by sending a message to [email protected]. All accepted articles will be published online first and the anticipated publication date for the special issue is early 2025.

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