Does metacognition, i.e. the capacity to form epistemic self-evaluations about one's current cognitive performance, derive from a mindreading capacity, or does it rely, at least in part, on sui generis informational processes? In The Philosophy of Metacognition Joëlle Proust provides a powerful defense of the second position. Drawing on discussions of empirical evidence from comparative, developmental, and experimental psychology, as well as from neuroscience, and on conceptual analyses, she purports to show that, in contrast with analytic metacognition, procedural metacognition does not need to involve metarepresentations. Procedural metacognition seems to be available to some non-humans (some primates and rodents). Proust further claims that metacognition is essentially related to mental agency, i.e. cognitive control and monitoring. "Self-probing" is equivalent to a self-addressed question about the feasibility of a mental action ('Am I able to remember this word?'). "Post-evaluating" is a way of asking oneself whether a given mental action has been successfully completed "'Is this word the one I was looking for?"). Neither question need be articulated conceptually for a feeling of knowing or of being right to be generated, or to drive epistemic control. Various issues raised by the contrast of a procedural, experience-based metacognition, with an analytic, concept-based metacognition are explored, such as whether each is expressed in a different representational format, their sensitivity to different epistemic norms, and the existence of a variety of types of epistemic acceptance.

The Philosophy of Metacognition: Mental Agency and Self-Awareness

Politics & Social Sciences

Proust, Joëlle

Philosophy

Oxford University Press

Metacognition refers to the awareness an individual has of their own mental processes (also referred to as ' thinking about thinking'). In the past thirty years metacognition research has become a rapidly growing field of interdisciplinary research within the cognitive sciences. Just recently, there have been major changes in this field, stimulated by the controversial issues of metacognition in nonhuman animals and in early infancy. Consequently the question what defines a metacognitive process has become a matter of debate: how should one distinguish between simple minds that are not yet capable of any metacognitive processing, and minds with a more advanced architecture that exhibit such a capacity? Do nonhuman animals process the ability to monitor their own mental actions? If metacognition is unique to humans, then at what stage in development does it occur, and how can we distinguish between cognitive and metacognitive processes? The Foundations of Metacognition brings together leading cognitive scientists to consider these questions. It explores them from three different perspectives: from an evolutionary point of view the authors ask whether there is sufficient evidence that some non-human primates or other animals monitor their mental states and thereby exhibit a form of metacognition. From a developmental perspective the authors ask when children start to monitor, evaluate und control their own minds. And from a philosophical point of view the main issue is how to draw the line between cognitive and metacognitive processes, and how to integrate the different functions in which metacognition is involved into a single coherent picture of the mind. The foundations of metacognition - whatever they will turn out to be - have to be as complex as this pattern of connections we discover in its effects. Bringing together researchers from across the cognitive sciences, the book is valuable for philosophers of mind, developmental and comparative psychologists, and neuroscientists.

Foundations of Metacognition

Science & Math

Perner, Josef

Beran, Michael J.

Brandl, Johannes

Behavioral Sciences

Questions of Form was first published in 1989. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.In Questions on Form, Joelle Proust traces the concept of the analytic proposition from Kant's development of the notion down to its place in the work of Rudolf Carnap, a founder of logical empiricism and a key figure in contemporary analytic philosophy. Using a method known in France as topique comparative,she provides a rigorous exposition of analyticity, situating it within four major philosophical systems—those of Kant, Bolzano, Frege, and Carnap—and clearly delineating its development from one system to the next.Proust takes as her point of departure Kant's distinction between analytic and synthetic judgments. Though she makes clear that Kant drew on Locke, Hume, and Leibniz, she argues that his notion of analyticity was innovative, not simply an elaboration of something already found in their work. She shows that the analytic proposition unexpectedly (given its modest status in Kant) came to play an important part in efforts to convert problems considered "transcendental" into questions of belonging to formal logic.Ultimately, her comparison of their systems reveals that the concept of the analytic, however specific its rile in each, remains linked to a foundationalist strategy—in effect, to the transcendentalist questions Kant used when he reinterpreted the findings of his empiricist predecessors. Hence, this book's provocative claim: today's so-called logical empiricism owes much more to Kant's notion of science than to Hume's.

Questions of Form: Logic and the Analytic Proposition from Kant to Carnap

Univ of Minnesota Pr

Questions of Form was first published in 1989. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.
In Questions on Form, Joelle Proust traces the concept of the analytic proposition from Kant's development of the notion down to its place in the work of Rudolf Carnap, a founder of logical empiricism and a key figure in contemporary analytic philosophy. Using a method known in France as topique comparative,she provides a rigorous exposition of analyticity, situating it within four major philosophical systems—those of Kant, Bolzano, Frege, and Carnap—and clearly delineating its development from one system to the next.
Proust takes as her point of departure Kant's distinction between analytic and synthetic judgments. Though she makes clear that Kant drew on Locke, Hume, and Leibniz, she argues that his notion of analyticity was innovative, not simply an elaboration of something already found in their work. She shows that the analytic proposition unexpectedly (given its modest status in Kant) came to play an important part in efforts to convert problems considered "transcendental" into questions of belonging to formal logic.
Ultimately, her comparison of their systems reveals that the concept of the analytic, however specific its rile in each, remains linked to a foundationalist strategy—in effect, to the transcendentalist questions Kant used when he reinterpreted the findings of his empiricist predecessors. Hence, this book's provocative claim: today's so-called logical empiricism owes much more to Kant's notion of science than to Hume's.

Questions of Form (Minnesota Archive Editions)

University of Minnesota Press

Comment l'esprit vient aux bêtes: Essai sur la représentation

Literature & Fiction

Essays & Correspondence

Gallimard]

Questions de forme: Logique et proposition analytique de Kant à Carnap (Essais) (French Edition)

FAYARD

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