Advertisement

Synthese

pp 1–24 | Cite as

A new perspective on the relationship between metacognition and social cognition: metacognitive concepts as socio-cognitive tools

  • Tadeusz W. ZawidzkiEmail author
Folk Psychology: Pluralistic Approaches
First Online:
  • 63 Downloads
Part of the following topical collections:
  1. Folk Psychology: Pluralistic Approaches

Abstract

I defend an alternative to the two traditional accounts of the relationship between metacognition and social cognition: metacognition as primary versus social cognition as primary. These accounts have complementary explanatory vices and virtues. They also share a natural assumption: that interpretation in terms of mental states is “spectatorial”, aiming exclusively for an objective description of the mental facts about self and others. I argue that if one rejects this assumption in favor of the view that interpretation in terms of mental states also plays important regulative roles with respect to minds and behavior, a new and superior conception of the relationship between metacognition and social cognition comes into view. On this conception, person-level metacognitive concepts are socio-cognitive tools that shape us into better cognitive agents and more predictable cognitive objects, thereby enhancing our abilities at social coordination. Mastery of these metacognitive concepts relies on subpersonal, non-conceptual, procedural metacognition. This reconceptualization of the relationship between metacognition and social cognition combines the complementary explanatory virtues of the two traditional conceptions, while avoiding their complementary explanatory vices.

Keywords

Social cognition Metacognition Metacognitive concepts Procedural metacognition Mental state attribution Folk psychology as regulative Socio-cognitive tools 
This is a preview of subscription content, log in to check access.

Notes

Acknowledgements

I thank Richard Moore for extremely helpful, extensive comments on an earlier draft.

References

  1. Andrews, K. (2008). It’s in your nature: A pluralistic folk psychology. Synthese,165, 13–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  2. Barrett, L. (2012). Emotions are real. Emotion,12, 413–429.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  3. Barrett, L. (2017). How emotions are made. New York: Houghton, Mifflin, Harcourt.Google Scholar
  4. Brandom, R. (1994). Making it explicit. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
  5. Butterfill, S., & Apperly, I. (2013). How to construct a minimal theory of mind. Mind and Language,28, 606–637.  https://doi.org/10.1111/mila.12036.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  6. Carruthers, P. (1996). Simulation and self-knowledge: A defence of the theory-theory. In P. Carruthers & P. Smith (Eds.), Theories of theories of mind. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  7. Carruthers, P. (2009). How we know our own minds: The relationship between mindreading and metacognition. Behavioral and Brain Sciences,32, 121–182.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  8. Carruthers, P. (2011). The opacity of mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
  9. Couchman, J., et al. (2009). Metacognition is prior. Behavioral and Brain Sciences,32, 142.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  10. Davidson, D. (1984). Inquiries into truth and interpretation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
  11. Dennett, D. (1987). The intentional stance. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
  12. Dennett, D. (2014). Intuition pumps and other tools for thinking. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.Google Scholar
  13. Descartes, R. (1641/1993). Meditations on first philosophy. Indianapolis: Hackett.Google Scholar
  14. Evans, G. (1982). The varieties of reference. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
  15. Gauker, C. (2003). Words without meaning. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
  16. Geurts, B. (2019). Communication as commitment sharing: Speech acts, implicatures, common ground. Theoretical Linguistics,45, 1–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  17. Goldman, A. (1989). Interpretation psychologized. Mind and Language,4, 161–185.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  18. Goldman, A. (2006). Simulating minds: The philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience of mindreading. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  19. Golombok & Fivush. (1994). Gender development. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
  20. Gopnik, A., & Astington, J. (1988). Children’s understanding of representational change and its relation to the understanding of false belief and the appearance-reality distinction. Child Development,59, 26–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  21. Gopnik, A., & Meltzoff, A. (1996). Words, thoughts, and theories. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
  22. Gordon, R. (1986). Folk psychology as simulation. Mind and Language,1, 158–171.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  23. Grice, H. P. (1975). Logic and conversation. In P. Cole & J. Morgan (Eds.), Syntax and semantics 3: Speech acts (41–58).Google Scholar
  24. Hacking, I. (1995). The looping effects of human kinds. In D. Sperber, D. Premack, & A. J. Premack (Eds.), Symposia of the Fyssen foundation. Causal cognition: A multidisciplinary debate (pp. 351–394). New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
  25. Hacking, I. (1998). Mad travelers. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press.Google Scholar
  26. Haslanger, S. (2012). Resisting reality: Social construction and social critique. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  27. Hume, D. (1739/1978). A treatise of human nature. P. H. Nidditch (Ed.), 2nd Ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
  28. Hutto, D. (2008). Folk psychological narratives. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
  29. Klucharev, V., Hytönen, K., Rijpkema, M., Smidts, A., & Fernández, G. (2009). Reinforcement learning signal predicts social conformity. Neuron,61, 140–151.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  30. Kornell, N., Son, L., & Terrace, H. (2007). Transfer of metacognitive skills and hint seeking in monkeys. Psychological Science,18, 64–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  31. Langland-Hassan, P. (2014). Unwitting self-awareness? Philosophy and Phenomenological Research,89, 719–726.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  32. Lewis, D. (1969). Convention. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
  33. Lillard, A. (1998). Ethnopsychologies: Cultural variations in theories of mind. Psychological Bulletin,123, 3–32.  https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.123.1.3.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  34. Maibom, H. (2007). Social systems. Philosophical Psychology,20, 557–578.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  35. Malle, B., Knobe, J., & Nelson, S. (2007). Actor-observer asymmetries in explanations of behavior: New answers to an old question. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology,93, 491–514.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  36. Mameli, M. (2001). Mindreading, mindshaping, and evolution. Biology and Philosophy,16, 597–628.Google Scholar
  37. McGeer, V. (1996). Is ‘self-knowledge’ an empirical problem? Renegotiating the space of philosophical explanation. Journal of Philosophy,93, 483–515.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  38. McGeer, V. (2001). Psycho-practice, psycho-theory and the contrastive case of autism. Journal of Consciousness Studies,8, 109–132.Google Scholar
  39. McGeer, V. (2007). The regulative dimension of folk psychology. In D. Hutto & M. Ratcliffe (Eds.), Folk psychology reassessed. Dordrecht: Springer.Google Scholar
  40. McGeer, V. (2015). Mind-making practices: The social infrastructure of self-knowing agency and responsibility. Philosophical Explorations,18, 259–281.  https://doi.org/10.1080/13869795.2015.1032331.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  41. Moore, R. (2017). Gricean communication and cognitive development. The Philosophical Quarterly,67, 303–326.  https://doi.org/10.1093/pq/pqw049.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  42. Moore, R. (2018). Gricean communication, language development, and animal minds. Philosophy Compass.  https://doi.org/10.1111/phc3.12550.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  43. Morton, A. (2003). The importance of being understood. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
  44. Nichols, S., & Stich, S. (2003). Mindreading. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  45. Nietzsche, F. (1881/1997). Daybreak: Thoughts on the prejudices of morality(2nd ed.). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy.Google Scholar
  46. Nix, S., Perez-Felkner, L., & Thomas, K. (2015). Perceived mathematical ability under challenge: A longitudinal perspective on sex segregation among STEM degree fields. Frontiers in Psychology.  https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00530.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  47. Proust, J. (2013). The philosophy of metacognition. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  48. Russell, B. (1948/2009). Human knowledge: Its scope and limits. London: Routledge Classics.Google Scholar
  49. Scott-Phillips, T. (2015). Speaking our minds: Why human communication is different, and how language evolved to make it special. London: Palgrave.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  50. Searle, J. (1979). Expression and meaning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  51. Sellars, W. (1956). Empiricism and the philosophy of mind. Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science,1, 253–329.Google Scholar
  52. Skyrms, B. (2004). The stag hunt and the evolution of social structure. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
  53. Sperber, D., & Wilson, D. (2002). Pragmatics, modularity, and mind-reading. Mind and Language,17, 3–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  54. Sterelny, K. (2012). The evolved apprentice. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  55. Vinden, P. (1999). Children’s understanding of mind and emotion: A multi-culture study. Cognition and Emotion,13, 19–48.  https://doi.org/10.1080/026999399379357.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  56. Weiskopf, D. (2005). Mental mirroring as the origin of attributions. Mind and Language,20, 495–520.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  57. Wellman, H. (1990). The child’s theory of mind. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
  58. Zawidzki, T. (2008). The function of folk psychology: Mind reading or mind shaping? Philosophical Explorations,11(3), 193–210.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  59. Zawidzki, T. (2013). Mindshaping. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Copyright information

© Springer Nature B.V. 2019

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.Department of PhilosophyGeorge Washington UniversityWashingtonUSA

Personalised recommendations

Cite article

Buy options