"Is Consciousness a Story We Tell Ourselves?" is a symposium planned as part of the AI and Simulated Behaviour Convention in the University of Sussex on 1 / 2 of July 2026. Consciousness may arise from, or be structured by, our ability to access and reason about internal representations through the internal use of language. The half-day symposium will address the question: "Is consciousness a story we tell ourselves?" by examining the relationship between consciousness, inner speech in humans and chain-of-thought reasoning in machines. Along with two panel discussion we will have a set of short contributed oral presentations; the deadline for these is 31 March with all decisions made by 15 April. See: https://astorywetell.github.io/ for details. We are still finalizing the panels for the panel discussions are there are still a couple of slots available if anyone would like to contact directly. All the best Con ______________________________ Conor Houghton SEMT, Bristol University. Michael Ventris Building, Woodland Road BS8 1UB, Bristol conorhoughton.github.io pronouns: he / him