The concept of creativity is a central one in folk psychological explanation and has long been prominent in philosophical debates about the nature of art, genius, and the imagination. The scientific investigation of creativity in humans is also well established, and there has been increasing interest in the question of whether the concept can be rigorously applied to non-human animals. In this paper, I argue that such applications face serious challenges of both a conceptual and methodological character, reflecting deep controversies within both philosophy and psychology concerning how to define and apply the concept of creativity. After providing a brief review of some of the leading theories of creativity (Section 2) and discussing some of the strongest putative cases of creative intelligence in non-human animals (Section 3), I examine some of the more worrisome difficulties faced by attempts to use these theories to answer the question of whether animals are truly creative (Section 4). I conclude by examining how we might overcome them, and suggest that one approach worth taking seriously is to adopt what I term a Strong Rejectionist view of creativity, eschewing use of the term entirely in the scientific study of comparative cognition.

创造力的概念是民间心理解释中的核心概念，长期以来在关于艺术的本质，天才和想象力的哲学辩论中一直很突出。对人类创造力的科学研究也已建立起来，人们对这个概念是否可以严格地应用于非人类动物的问题越来越感兴趣。在本文中，我认为，此类应用程序在概念和方法论两方面都面临严峻挑战，反映出哲学和心理学领域关于如何定义和应用创造力概念的深刻争议。在简要回顾了一些领先的创造力理论（第2节）并讨论了非人类动物中最有力的创造性智力推论案例（第3节）之后，我研究了使用这些理论来回答动物是否真正具有创造力的问题所面临的一些更令人担忧的困难（第4节）。最后，我研究了如何克服它们，并建议一种值得认真对待的方法是采用我所说的强烈的排斥论者关于创造力的观点，避免在比较认知的科学研究中完全使用该术语。