Narrative Theory and the Sciences of Mind

Studies situated at the intersection between narrative theory and the sciences of mind share a common focus on mental capacities and dispositions that provide grounds for – or, conversely, are grounded in – narrative experiences. Two broad questions are therefore centrally relevant for this domain of inquiry: How do stories across media interlock with interpreters' mental capacities and dispositions, thus giving rise to narrative experiences? and How (to what extent, in what specific ways) does narrative scaffold efforts to make sense of experience itself? Analysts engaging with these questions have drawn on work in psychology, linguistics, the philosophy of mind, cognitive anthropology, and other fields as a source domain for concepts they seek to map onto the target domain of narrative studies. If research on narrative and mind is to become a bona fide interdiscipline, however, theorists need to move beyond one‐way borrowing and engage in genuine dialog and exchange, in part by establishing the relevance of traditions of narrative inquiry – the pertinence of ideas developed by scholars of story – for research on the scope and nature of intelligent activity. Using Ambrose Bierce's 1890 story “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” as an illustrative example, the present essay seeks to demonstrate how this kind of “transdisciplinary” approach to issues of narrative and mind can translate into practical strategies for engaging with specific stories. At the same time, the essay suggests that because the interrelations between narrative and mind cannot be exhaustively characterized by the arts and humanities, by the social sciences, or by the natural sciences taken alone, open, reciprocal exchanges across these fields of endeavor rather than unidirectional borrowing from a particular field that thereby becomes dominant are likely to promote the most productive interactions between narratology and the cognitive sciences.