Bridging consciousness to our narrative brain: evolutionary insights

Human consciousness is often considered a form of inner speech, and humans possess exceptional narrative abilities that extend beyond language. This paper argues that evolutionary changes in the brain's narrative hardware, along with behavioral changes that culturally complexified language, improved the ability to tell stories to others and to oneself. This enhancement of inner storytelling may have sophisticated human consciousness. The authors suggest that improving generative story production could favor the emergence of consciousness in other entities, including artificial intelligence.

Study at a glance

Abstract

Human consciousness is said to be largely a form of inner speech. At the same time, humans are endowed with outstanding narrative abilities, which go beyond our linguistic capacity, even if they become potentiated by language. In this paper, we argue that as we evolved more prosocial, selected changes in the hardware of our “narrative brain”, together with selected changes in our behavior that favored the complexification of language through a cultural mechanism, might have improved not only our ability to tell stories to others, but also to ourselves, thus enhancing our awareness and contributing to sophisticate human consciousness. Ultimately, improving the generative ability to produce complex stories might favor the emergence of consciousness in other entities, including artificial intelligence.