Insight experiences are sudden, persuasive, and can accompany valuable new ideas in science and art. In this preregistered experiment, we aim to validate a novel visceral and continuous measure of insight problem solving and to test whether real-time and embodied feelings of insight can predict correct solutions. We report several findings. Consistent with recent work, we find a strong positive relationship between Aha moments and accuracy for problems that demand implicit processing. We also found that the intensity of the insight (...) experience further predicted the accuracy of solutions and participants naturally embodied the intensity of their insight experiences by squeezing the dynamometer more tightly. Intriguingly, this unintentional embodiment further predicted the accuracy of solutions. We suggest that the dynamometer complements previous measures by (1) simultaneously capturing both process and feeling in real-time, (2) highlights the value of measuring Aha moments on a continuum of intensity, and (3) firmly establishes that the impulsive feeling of Aha can carry information about the veracity of an idea. We discuss the findings in light of a recent theoretical account of how feelings of insight may act as a heuristic to select ideas from the stream of consciousness. (shrink)

If any single controlling principle can be derived from what R. P. Blackmur has called the most sustained, eloquent, and original piece of literary criticism in existence, Henry James's Prefaces, it is that criticism is a creative act. This principle seems both sufficiently important and ambiguous to warrant a close examination of its meaning and consequences. In what follows, then, I propose to examine a theory of criticism as creativity, referring not only to James's remarks but also, and in particular, (...) to an earlier and some ways more accessible version which we find in Robert Browning's work. Undoubtedly, in the great realm of speculation open to the critical theorist there are grander tasks which one could set oneself. Whether there are more difficult ones is another question. As it is, despite their peculiar particularity, both Browning and James are ambitious writers who refuse to be contained within narrow limits. Both demand an awareness of the context of critical theory, a sense of the problematical nature of criticism and the perplexities of the creative act. It is these latter considerations with which I propose to begin. (shrink)

An examination of Cassirer’s conception of symbolizing, which is born in his critique of Kant, will show that objectifying human experience without external absolutes is grounded in affect, not cognition. When there is no external absolute to guide objectifying, then the roots of objectifying begin with how we are affected by experience and led to reflect. Affect formulates how we become conscious of what there is and express this consciousness so as to objectify it. Affect thus has an indirect influence (...) on consciousness and objectifying. Cassirer expands the scope of the free play of the imagination, which Kant restricted to aesthetic judgments, to account for how order arises through any modality when a rule is not given. He anchors this generative source in human expression itself, and thereby prevents objectifying from sinking into relativism. Affect is thus shown to play a regulative role in consciousness when we objectify human experience without external absolutes. (shrink)