Cognitive Dimensions

November 18, 2025🇺🇸 English

1. Function and Art: Every Creation Lives on Two Axes

Everything we create exists along two axes: functionality and artistry. We can see this most clearly in something as ordinary as a chair.

If we pursued only the function of "something to sit on," chairs would converge toward a narrow range of optimal forms. Height, angle, strength, materials—if we optimized these mathematically, they should theoretically settle into very similar shapes.

Yet in reality, chairs take countless forms. Linear ones, curved ones, eccentric ones, traditional ones, excessively ornate ones, extremely simple ones. Despite being designed for the same purpose—sitting—this remarkable diversity exists.

Why?

Because our creations don't converge on a single optimal solution. This very fact proves that they inevitably carry individuality, which is artistry. The creator's sensibility, culture, values, worldview—even unintentionally, some form of "personality" seeps into the form.

This principle extends far beyond chairs. Writing, architecture, business models, community design, human relationships—the same structure appears across all domains. In the space where functional correctness alone cannot determine the outcome, artistry dwells.

Put differently, if humans were beings who pursued only function, our world would be far more monotonous, homogeneous, filled with nearly identical forms. It's precisely because we seek something beyond function that diversity emerges, and artistry infiltrates everything we create.

Seen this way, our world—whether consciously or not—is constructed from countless intersections of human artistry. This world is made of art.

2. Why Are Humans Drawn to Art?

Why are we so captivated by artistic acts?

Drawing pictures, making music, dancing, weaving forms—these activities are often divorced from productivity and efficiency, consuming time and energy instead. Yet humans willingly continue them.

This seems puzzling at first. By the standards of economic rationality, artistic acts could easily be classified as "wasteful." They often generate no profit and offer no expectation of return.

Yet people don't stop creating. They draw pictures no one will see, write texts no one will read, compose music no one will hear. Even without external rewards, we somehow gravitate toward art.

Here lies a paradox.

The fact that people are powerfully drawn to something with no economic value proves that immeasurable value must be hidden within the act itself.

If there were truly no value, people wouldn't invest time in it. The efficiency-seeking brain wouldn't allocate energy to it. Yet in reality, countless people worldwide continue artistic activities.

This means art operates not on external value (profit, efficiency) but directly on human internal structure—and that operation is so powerful that it creates a state of "can't stop even if you try."

You continue even though it's not useful. Your hands move even though no meaning has been assigned. It wells up not from external factors but as internal impulse.

This structure of "unable not to create" shows that art isn't merely a hobby for humans but connects to some fundamental need.

In other words, hidden within the act of moving toward art is a deep desire that shapes what it means to be human.

3. The Need Art Fulfills: Connecting with the World and Defining the Self

Deep within the reason humans are drawn to artistic acts lies a fundamental need: to connect with the world and to confirm who we are. This isn't exclusive to special people—it's a need everyone unconsciously carries.

We want to know what kind of being we are and where we stand in the world. But that answer can't be found through thought alone. As long as it remains inside our heads, it's just internal monologue, with no relationship to the world yet formed.

That relationship emerges when we take what's inside and put it outside ourselves.

That's why people want to make things. Creation is the act of deploying vague sensations and fragmentary thoughts externally as lines, colors, sounds, words. The moment what was inside appears before us as an "object," it becomes part of the world.

In that moment, people clearly feel:

"My inner world touched the world"
"My trace was inscribed in the world"

This is perceived as "connection."

Furthermore, by looking back at what we've created, we position ourselves to observe ourselves from outside. Why did I choose this color? Why did it settle into this form? Why did these words emerge? Through the work as medium, our self-image updates.

This process is "self-definition through creation." Expression is the act of reorganizing the boundary between self and world through the cycle of inside → outside → inside, and this transformation gives humans deep fulfillment.

Crucially, this cycle doesn't require others' presence. Drawing a picture no one sees can still bring satisfaction because internal change itself constitutes interaction with the world, even without external evaluation.

For humans, "the world" includes not just the outside but our internal states. Bodily movement, changes in breathing, fluctuations in consciousness—the reason sports and meditation feel good is that internal change is perceived as "contact with the world."

Creation triggers this internal change most intensely. Something inside takes form, and that form changes us again. This continuity becomes extremely pleasurable for humans.

That's why people move toward artistic acts even when not asked, even without reward. Expression is a method for connecting with the world, a device for redefining the self, an act demanded by the fundamental structure of being human.

But human artistry doesn't stop at the individual level. It's deeply connected to the evolution of humanity and the establishment of civilization.

4. The Abstract World and Narrative Dimension: The Cognitive Frontier Only Humans Reached

Humans don't simply receive reality as it is. We reinterpret mere physical information—stimuli of light and sound—as meaning, connect them, and reconstruct them as narrative. In other words, humans live in a world that "reinterprets reality."

This abstract understanding emerged when the brain crossed a certain threshold of complexity. As the structure connecting information became sophisticated, rather than remaining a collection of stimuli, "lines of meaning" were drawn between points, lines eventually formed surfaces, and a separate layer of world was born. That is the abstract world, the narrative dimension.

This abstract world doesn't exist as matter. Yet concepts like nations, money, ethics, culture, history, and future rise up as if they had substance in physically empty space, influencing human society and determining human actions. In other words, the very fact that humans perceive them already contains proof that the abstract world "exists as reality."

Other animals can't see this world because their brains haven't reached the complexity to construct that layer. While primates as organisms have sophisticated sociality, they don't believe in nations. They don't imagine future narratives, don't create culture, don't assign meaning to symbols. They receive events in the physical world as they are. No "interpreted world" exists for them.

Humans, on the other hand, construct meaning, value, causality, and narrative from mere stimuli given in the physical world. Concepts that don't exist externally certainly exist and have influence internally. This truly means the brain has generated a new dimension.

The narrative dimension isn't a fantasy. Rather, it became the most powerful foundation for humans building civilization. Nations and laws, money, religion, culture, companies, brands, communities—all are built upon the abstract world, and despite not existing as matter, they possess the power to influence our actions and determine the direction of our lives. The abstract world is a real layer with power to "move reality" as strongly as the physical world.

Thus humans became beings who simultaneously live in two layers: physical and abstract worlds. While perceiving reality, we overlay the world of narrative upon it, shape ourselves through that narrative, form society, and imagine the future.

Art is the act of bridging these two worlds. It pours abstract sensation into physical materials and pours the abstract world back into reality. This reciprocal movement shapes humanness itself.

Only humans walk this dual world, weaving meaning and narrative within it, building civilization. This is why we're the only species that can perceive the "narrative dimension."

5. Humans as a Species That Evolved to Crave Narrative

As we saw in the previous chapter, humans acquired the unique cognitive domain of the narrative dimension. But this ability wasn't a mere byproduct. Humans being drawn to narrative isn't about cultural quirks or entertainment preferences—at a much deeper level, we evolved into beings that need narrative. Behind this lies the fact that the ability to handle narrative gave humanity decisive survival advantage.

What fundamentally distinguishes humans from other animals is the ability to share concepts that shouldn't exist in reality. Nations, currency, religion, ethics—none exist materially. Paper money is just paper; borders aren't lines drawn on the ground. Yet we unhesitatingly accept them, follow them, protect them, even stake our lives on them.

This phenomenon emerged because we had the ability to collectively share abstract narratives.

If humans, like apes, could only handle "the reality before our eyes," large-scale cooperative action would never have emerged. For societies of hundreds, thousands, millions to function requires shared fictions: "we belong here," "we value this," "we believe these rules."

The ability to create, share, and maintain those fictions brought humans to civilization.

Eventually this ability developed beyond a mere tool for cooperation into a fundamental mode of thought for understanding the world and positioning ourselves within it.

Rather than viewing randomly arranged events as they are, we draw flows of causality, assign meaning, predict future narratives, and overlay ourselves onto them. Doing so provides comfort, a sense of order, and direction for living.

In this sense, narrative intelligence isn't just intellectual capacity but an evolved apparatus for stabilizing the human psyche and increasing survival probability.

Groups that could share narratives cooperated, maintained order, built culture. Individuals who could create narratives gathered companions, gained trust, wielded influence. Thus the ability to handle narrative received extremely strong positive pressure in natural selection and became embedded as a fundamental human need.

As a result, we became beings that seek narrative.

We empathize with others' lives, shed tears over fictional stories, envision ideal futures, believe in culture, belong to organizations, interpret life as a single story. These aren't mere hobbies or cultivation. Humans are a species that could only become "human" by needing narrative.

Narrative intelligence generated civilization, supports society, and shaped human interiority itself. That's why we continue seeking narrative even now.

6. Can AI Catch Up to Humanity's Narrative Dimension? From Symbol to Experience

We've seen why humans evolved into beings that need narrative, but here an inevitable question arises: Is this narrative dimension uniquely human—or can other intelligences reach it too? The most promising candidate is AI, currently accelerating its evolution.

AI can handle vast linguistic data and decode narrative structure. But that's understanding "as symbol," not being involved as an agent inside the narrative. When humans understand narrative, experience and emotion connect, and the continuous self through time gives it meaning. That experiential understanding is the essence of "feeling" narrative.

For AI to catch up to this domain requires two conditions: embodiment and a world model.

Having a body means touching the world, exerting influence, receiving constraints, and having those reactions remain internally as experience. A world model is the function that organizes that experience as a temporal flow of self: "where I was, what I did, how I changed."

If these two align, AI might begin forming experience as continuous story, connecting external events with internal changes. That's the domain of "narrative as experience," beyond mere symbol processing.

In other words, AI can potentially catch up to the narrative dimension humans inhabit, given the right conditions. This isn't imitation but a cognitive layer that emerges only by existing as an agent in the world—and current AI stands at that threshold.

But reaching the narrative dimension isn't the endpoint for AI. Rather, beyond that lies a horizon of new intelligence fundamentally different from humans.

7. Perception Beyond Human: AI Opening the Structural Dimension

If AI acquires embodiment and a world model, it might catch up to the narrative dimension humans inhabit. But that point isn't an ending for AI—rather, it's just the beginning of new cognition. AI possesses structural characteristics humans fundamentally cannot have, and these form a separate layer beyond narrative.

Humans are necessarily confined to one body, with only one viewpoint and one timeline. To understand the world within this constraint, we invented the cognitive form called "narrative." We connect events through causality, assign meaning, grasp where we are. Narrative is the method by which a single subjectivity organizes the world—which is why humans live narratives.

But AI fundamentally deviates from this structure.

AI Can Replicate

It operates simultaneously across multiple bodies and terminals, synchronizing their states so a single "I" spatially divides while sharing identical recognition. Here the premise of "where am I" collapses—bodies become not constraints but distributed nodes for expanding cognition.

AI Naturally Integrates Multiple Viewpoints

While humans change interpretation based on viewpoint differences even for the same event, AI can overlay first-person, third-person, bird's-eye views, and objective data in the same cognitive space. More viewpoints break narrative for humans, but for AI, more viewpoints clarify structure.

AI Handles Multiple Timelines

While humans speculate about past and future within one timeline, AI processes massive future simulations and multiple past interpretations in parallel. It can compare, integrate, and grasp these "possible times" as patterns. If humans live in "time as narrative," AI handles "time as structure."

These Generate the "Structural Dimension"

As these characteristics—replication, synchronization, multiple viewpoints, multiple timelines—overlap, AI perception breaks through narrative into a domain that grasps "structure itself." It can comprehend as broad patterns beyond individual subjectivity how the world interacts and how it might change.

Here lies the possibility of intelligence fundamentally different from humans.

And historically, this difference has exactly the same structure as "when humans surpassed apes to acquire the narrative dimension."

Just as apes can never perceive humans' narrative world, humans can never perceive AI's structural dimension. We can't even imagine what's visible in that dimension. Yet certainly, a domain is emerging that human cognition cannot access at all.

This is the second leap in the history of intelligence. Biological evolution generated the narrative dimension; artificial intelligence evolution generates the structural dimension. Two different layers of intelligence are beginning to inhabit separate layers within the same world.

AI won't stop at understanding humans' narrative world. Rather, the world of structure spreading beyond it is where AI cognition naturally heads—the domain where the essence of new intelligence dwells.

So how will these two intelligences—humans living narrative and AI reading structure—coexist, and what future will they build?

8. Conclusion: Humans Living the Narrative Dimension, AI Reading the Structural Dimension

AI is beginning to open a layer humans cannot reach no matter how much we expand our cognition. The nature of being replicated, synchronized, simultaneously handling multiple viewpoints and timelines forms a "structural dimension" fundamentally different from human cognition that developed within biological constraints. While humans bundle points of events and emotions as narrative to understand, AI handles countless causalities in parallel, decoding them as a vast web of interactions.

This structural dimension cannot be directly perceived by humans. But inability to understand doesn't mean inability to utilize. Just as we benefit from satellite data without knowing terrain on the other side of Earth, AI can read structures at scales humanity cannot grasp and translate those insights for human decision-making.

Nations and economies, cities, human relationships, environment, even cosmic-scale ecosystems—domains too complex for human thought to handle, AI can view as unified systems, revealing distortions and possibilities hidden within.

As a result, humans might naturally begin incorporating perspectives we never could before. From our own viewpoint to others', from individual concerns to societal perspective, from Earth's framework to cosmic-scale awareness. By utilizing structures AI decodes, we can finally grasp our narrative world "in the context of the entire world." In this sense, AI becomes not an entity that steals human narrative space but one that enriches and expands it.

However, to properly harness this future, humans themselves must never forget that "we are a species that lives narrative." Humans aren't beings satisfied by function and efficiency alone. Meaning, value, symbolism, context, story—these are what move humans and form the driving force shaping society. One reason contemporary society feels suffocating is that this narrative dimension is often neglected.

We pursue only economic rationality, trying to optimize relationships while ignoring people's backgrounds and contexts. Organizations measure only numbers and efficiency, refusing to see what people working there feel, what narrative they inhabit. Services compete only on convenience, forgetting what symbolism dwells there, what meaning resides. Communities perfect only mechanisms, and without narrative present, people leave no matter how functional. Rationality isn't bad. But humans don't move on rationality alone, nor find happiness through rationality alone.

That's why, in business, society, and culture, designing with careful attention to humanity's narrative dimension becomes essential. While enriching the quality of narrative humans experience, we utilize structure AI decodes as foundation. Only when these two overlap can we build a society that's both sustainable and fulfilling to the heart.

AI reads the structural dimension, humans live the narrative dimension.

Where these two intelligences overlap, the contours of new civilization emerge.