Metacognition and metarepresentation

is a self-directed theory of mind a precondition for metacognition?

Joëlle Proust

pp. 271-295

in: Radu Bogdan (ed), Self-ascriptions of mental states, Synthese 159 (2), 2007.

Abstract

Metacognition is often defined as thinking about thinking. It is exemplified in all the activities through which one tries to predict and evaluate one’s own mental dispositions, states and properties for their cognitive adequacy. This article discusses the view that metacognition has metarepresentational structure. Properties such as causal contiguity, epistemic transparency and procedural reflexivity are present in metacognition but missing in metarepresentation, while open-ended recursivity and inferential promiscuity only occur in metarepresentation. It is concluded that, although metarepresentations can redescribe metacognitive contents, metacognition and metarepresentation are functionally distinct.