Interdisciplinary Mind Modeling: Exploratory Cycles in Cognitive Science, Narrative Theory, and Fictional Creativity

This chapter proposes interdisciplinary mind modeling as a new framework for coupling the cognitive sciences, narrative theory, and fictional creativity through shared modeling practices. It argues that both scientists and fiction writers construct purposeful, selective, and simplified representations of the mind—models that serve exploratory rather than purely descriptive functions. Drawing on philosophy of science debates between the “fiction view of models” and the “modeling view of fiction,” the chapter advances the latter, contending that fictional narratives operate as autonomous cognitive models. Through examples from Beckett, Joyce, and Woolf, it shows how literary modeling of processes such as mind wandering and inner speech can both complement and challenge scientific accounts, generating what Bernini terms “exploratory cycles.” These cycles describe iterative loops in which conceptual, empirical, and fictional models inform and refine each other. The chapter also reinterprets structuralist narratology and cognitive literary theory as modeling traditions, linking creative and analytical modeling through shared epistemic drives. The conclusion outlines an ethos of co-modeling and operational empathy, calling for collaborative ecologies that sustain long-term interdisciplinary exchanges. As the theoretical and pragmatic manifesto of the Narrative and Cognition Lab, the chapter envisions mind research as a collective modeling enterprise across disciplinary boundaries.