ABSTRACT

This chapter examines different notions associated with the expressions 'novelty', 'originality', 'priority', 'unprecedented', and 'innovative'. It discusses the axiological conditions and also discusses some arguments supporting strong conditions as well as counterexamples that challenge their alleged necessity. The chapter considers a value-neutral idea of creativity and proposes an instrumental success condition. It then examines some claims about relations between novelty and value as constituents of creativity. Although it is often stated that novelty is a necessary attribute of all creative items, it is not easy to say just what this entails. If creativity is a species of novelty having at least some measure of instrumental value, what is the relation between these two conceptual constituents of the explicated notion of creativity? To characterise creativity as novelty in devising effective means is not to deny its importance. In many happy cases, creative actions bring ample cognitive and other rewards.