Meta & Consciousness

Thinking about thinking; awareness and understanding of one's own thought processes.

The connection between metacognitive abilities and psychological disorders (e.g., beliefs, mental health issues).

Organized patterns of beliefs that influence how we think and act.

The idea that metacognitive processes rely on separate mechanisms from those involved in basic cognition, and are more complex.

Research using brain scanning techniques (like fMRI) to investigate the neural basis of metacognition.

Research looking at how damage to specific brain areas affects metacognitive abilities.

A 2500-word assignment on the relationship between metacognition and psychological traits like beliefs and psychopathology.

Two 2500-word assignments investigating if metacognition is a separate process.

The subjective experience of something, like the feeling of redness or the sensation of pain.

A model that explains how our brain creates the feeling of being sure or unsure about something.

A specific neurocomputational process that generates all types of subjective experiences.

Direct, sensory experiences like seeing red or feeling pain.

Reflective experiences about our own awareness or confidence.

The idea that all subjective experiences are generated by the same neurocomputational process.

The idea that different types of subjective experiences (type-1 and type-2) are generated by distinct neurocomputational processes.

The brain structures and processes involved in creating subjective experiences.

A scientific paradigm where natural phenomena are explained by the structure and interaction of physical objects in motion. The universe is viewed as a complex machine.

The belief that all physical cause and effect must involve direct contact between objects. This was a key principle of the Mechanical Philosophy.

Isaac Newton demonstrated that gravity, a fundamental force of nature, could not be explained by the Mechanical Philosophy's reliance on contact causation. He showed that objects attract each other from a distance.

The concept that forces can act on objects without direct contact. This challenged the core principle of the Mechanical Philosophy, as gravity cannot be explained by contact causation.

The Mechanical Philosophy's limitations became evident with the discovery of phenomena like gravity, quantum physics, and biological processes that cannot be explained solely by contact-based interactions.

Despite its limitations, the Mechanical Philosophy remains a fundamental framework in many fields of modern science, including neuroscience.

The difficulty in explaining consciousness from a strictly mechanical perspective, even though the Mechanical Philosophy still influences many scientific fields.

A question that arises due to the limitations of the Mechanical Philosophy – Is our human understanding inherently confined to mechanical explanations?

A measure of metacognitive efficiency, calculated as the difference between confidence in accuracy and actual accuracy.

The tendency to overestimate or underestimate one's accuracy on a task.

A situation where someone's metacognitive abilities are limited, resulting in poor judgment of their own performance.

Using subjective confidence as a way to gauge conscious awareness.

Michel's argument that even imperfect confidence-based measures can be useful for scientific inquiry.

A situation where metacognitive judgment doesn't match actual conscious awareness.

The idea that confidence-based measures can potentially reflect conscious experience.

Michel's idea that the accuracy of confidence-based measures should be evaluated individually for each specific situation.

Tests that assess how confident someone is in their answers, often used to study metacognition.

Michel argues that metacognitive efficiency can be used to study conscious versus unconscious perception of stimuli.

Many factors besides conscious awareness influence metacognitive efficiency, making it difficult to pinpoint its cause.

To make reliable conclusions about consciousness using metacognitive efficiency, experiments need careful, precise control.

Inefficiency might just mean information isn't accessible for reflection, not that it's completely unconscious.

To properly study consciousness using metacognitive efficiency, experiments must isolate the effects of conscious awareness from other influences.

It might suggest that information is unavailable for conscious reflection, not necessarily that it's completely processed unconsciously.

The part of our brain responsible for thinking about our own thoughts, including our awareness of sensory information.

The subjective experience of being aware of something, like seeing a color or feeling pain.

Sensory information that is processed by the brain but does not reach conscious awareness.

A measure of how well someone can assess their own accuracy in making judgments, based on their confidence levels.

The ability to respond to visual stimuli without consciously seeing them, often seen after damage to the visual cortex.

A task where participants bet on their decisions, revealing their confidence even if they don't consciously report seeing a stimulus.

Stimuli that are too weak to be consciously perceived but still affect the brain.

The ability to perform some visual tasks despite damage to the visual cortex, suggesting some processing still occurs.

A framework proposed by Megan Peters in 2022 to explain consciousness using metacognitive processes and subjective experience.

The study of metacognition provides insights into the complex problem of consciousness by examining how the brain generates self-awareness and confidence judgments.

Studies have shown that post-decision wagering correlates with conscious awareness.

Subliminal visual information can improve decision accuracy without affecting subjective confidence levels.

Confidence levels do not always reflect the actual accuracy of decisions, showing a possible dissociation between unconscious processing and conscious awareness.

Metacognition research could help bridge the gap between objective cognitive processes and subjective aspects of consciousness.

The task might not isolate conscious awareness from other decision-related factors, as the monetary incentive might introduce biases.

Findings might not generalize across different sensory modalities or types of unconscious information, since they were primarily focused on visual tasks.