science

A short guide to the 7-grade model of causal cognition

| Katarina Gyllenbäck

On request, the text provides a short guide to the 7- grade model of causal cognition that was mentioned in the series “Narrative bridging on testing an experience” (links to the series can be found at the end of the text), and where the framework for the model can be found in the publication: “Tracking the evolution of causal cognition in humans” (2017), written by Marlize Lombard, professor in Stone Age archaeology, and Peter Gärdenfors, professor in cognitive science at Lund´s University (see reference and link to the publication at the end).

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Part 2, Narrative bridging on testing an experience

| Katarina Gyllenbäck

I wonder if you remember the feeling that slowly came over you when you wrote what would become your last letter to Santa? If you have never written to Santa or, you are still writing, maybe you have the experience of buying a lottery ticket and is thus able to recognise the feeling of doubt when questioning your beliefs, intentions, and desires, as to why you are putting hopes into something you know won’t correspond to your desires? The feeling I´m trying to describe is the same I have every time I return to science in matters that concern the narrative, which is complicated, to say the least. So in January, I decided to settle the relationship, with the same confidence I had when writing my last letter to Santa I wrote my last words to science in my text “Are you a man or a mouse.”

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Are you a man or a mouse?

| Katarina Gyllenbäck

What differs our thinking from animals is that we can create meanings based on beliefs, desires, and dreams. What it means in practice is that we can have a dream about an adventure and start building a boat and create a meaning that motivates our actions. We can also stand on a carpet and pretend it´s a boat and share the experience with others by creating a meaning that makes others join in. But due to the conflicting currents between the church and science during the Enlightenment everything relating to our ability to imagine was put aside in order to study nature. In this way, our creation of meaning based on beliefs, desires, and dreams, together with stories that were seen as a carrier of fantasies and illusions, and where the narrative became the scapegoat to all creations that didn´t correspond to reality, bundled off away from science and labeled with the sign saying “disbelief”.

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Part 4, The need for retrieval of the consciousness

| Katarina Gyllenbäck

To end up fighting for children´s rights was an awakening since I had resided as a good dog within the bubble of entertainment believing that a meaningful experience was directed towards something positive and where my wheeling of the narrative vehicle differed from the opposite which could be seen in the absence of a reciprocally shared goal were expectations by a “we”, based on preconceptions, considered to know what was best for others. Continue reading →