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14Reality testing and metacognitionPhilosophical Psychology. forthcoming.Reality testing is the process by which we distinguish our own perceptual states from imagination or episodic memory. I argue that reality testing is a metacognitive process. Since reality testing is also accomplished by creatures who lack mental state concepts, it follows that reality testing is a nonconceptual metacognitive process. I also provide prima facie evidence that reality testing is a necessary condition for prototypical cognitive states like belief. It follows that metacognition is p…Read more
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57Epistemic feelings, metacognition, and the Lima problemSynthese 199 (3-4): 6803-6825. 2021.Epistemic feelings like tip-of-the-tongue experiences, feelings of knowing, and feelings of confidence tell us when a memory can be recalled and when a judgment was correct. Thus, they appear to be a form of metacognition, but a curious one: they tell us about content we cannot access, and the information is supplied by a feeling. Evaluativism is the claim that epistemic feelings are components of a distinct, primitive metacognitive mechanism that operates on its own set of inputs. These inputs …Read more
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95Higher-Order Theories of Consciousness are Empirically FalseJournal of Consciousness Studies 27 (11-12): 30-54. 2020.Higher-order theories of consciousness come in many varieties, but all adopt the 'transitivity principle' as a central, explanatory premise. The transitivity principle states that a mental state of a subject is conscious if and only if the subject is aware of it. This higher-order awareness is realized in different ways in different forms of higher-order theory. I argue that empirical studies of metacognition have falsified the transitivity principle by showing that there can be awareness of a m…Read more
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Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Mind |
Philosophy of Cognitive Science |