Metacognition refers to the vast area of thinking about thinking. It is exemplified in all the cognitive activities through which one is trying to appreciate in retrospect a cognitive achievement (“Did I forget something?” “Was what I said coherent?”), or to predict whether one will be able to accomplish some cognitive goal (learn a new material, retrieve a proper name or make efficient plans for reaching a goal in an uncertain environment). Metacognition occurs when one must control and monitor one’s own cognitive states, typically to evaluate whether what one believes is true, or plausible, and decide where to invest one’s mental (in particular, attentional) resources. The norms that are involved in metacognitive control can be captured under the general term of cognitive adequacy. By that term is meant the set of normative conditions that a mental event must generally fulfill in order to secure a specific mental goal (remembering, reasoning, learning, concentrating etc.). These conditions are 1) normative because they express conditions of correction that were implictly acquired in mental actions of the same type; b) predictive because, on the basis of current dispositions, they allow to expect a certain outcome. Comparison between a) and b) is what causes and justifies the decision to act or not (depending on the normative conditions and the observed dispositions).
This seminar will study the various forms of cognitive adequacy that metacognitive intervention allows to control and monitor. It will also examine the forms of experience and of reasoning that make it possible. Another area of discussion will concern ontological and epistemological problems raised by the very existence of metacognitive feelings (such as the feeling of knowing the answer to some question, even before giving it). One will ask whether such feelings are more akin to emotions, judgments, cognitive impressions, or mere sensations devoid of intrinsic intentionality. One will also raise the question of their epistemic status. Are epistemic feelings sophisticated forms of cognitive illusion, or are they reliable enough to warrant judgments about one’s own mental states and processes? On the assumption that they are reliable (at least in some contexts), what is their relationship to the first-order mental states (for instance, memories) whose existence they reveal to their subject, perhaps along some properties? For instance, when one has the real name of Mark Twain “on the tip of one’s tongue”, is one directly conscious of a first-order memory carrying the relevant piece of information (Rosenthal, 2005)? Answers to these questions have important consequences on the adequate philosophical account of consciousness. In particular, one will ask whether the existence of epistemic feelings is a threat to the claim that we can be directly conscious only of the intentional contents of one’s mental states (Tye, 2000), or to the weaker claim that one can be conscious of the mode of one’s states only after their contents have been made explicit (Dienes & Perner, 1999).
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