Banishing “I” and “we” from accounts of metacognition

2009 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 148-149 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bryce Huebner ◽  
Daniel C. Dennett
Keyword(s):  
Mental States ◽  
Higher Order ◽  
First Person ◽  
Third Person ◽  
Person Model

AbstractCarruthers offers a promising model for how “we” know the propositional contents of “our” own minds. Unfortunately, in retaining talk of first-person access to mental states, his suggestions assume that a higher-order self is already “in the loop.” We invite Carruthers to eliminate the first-person from his model and to develop a more thoroughly third-person model of metacognition.

Seeming to Seem

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Rosenthal
Keyword(s):  
Mental States ◽  
Order Theory ◽  
Higher Order ◽  
Psychological State ◽  
Intentional Stance ◽  
First Person ◽  
Psychological States ◽  
Third Person ◽  
Higher Order Theory ◽  
The Third Person

Dennett’s account of consciousness starts from third-person considerations. I argue this is wise, since beginning with first-person access precludes accommodating the third-person access we have to others’ mental states. But Dennett’s first-person operationalism, which seeks to save the first person in third-person, operationalist terms, denies the occurrence of folk-psychological states that one doesn’t believe oneself to be in, and so the occurrence of folk-psychological states that aren’t conscious. This conflicts with Dennett’s intentional-stance approach to the mental, on which we discern others’ mental states independently of those states’ being conscious. We can avoid this conflict with a higher-order theory of consciousness, which saves the spirit of Dennett’s approach, but enables us to distinguish conscious folk-psychological states from nonconscious ones. The intentional stance by itself can’t do this, since it can’t discern a higher-order awareness of a psychological state. But we can supplement the intentional stance with the higher-order theoretical apparatus.

scholarly journals First-person Folk Psychology: Mindreading or Mindshaping?

2017 ◽  
pp. 170-183 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leon De Bruin
Keyword(s):  
Folk Psychology ◽  
Mental States ◽  
First Person ◽  
Behavior Prediction ◽  
The Core ◽  
Third Person

Proponents of mindshaping argue that third-person folk psychology (i.e., the ascription of mental states to others) is not primarily about "reading" mental states for the purpose of behavior prediction and explanation. Instead, they claim that third-person folk psychology is first and foremost a regulative practice -- one that "shapes" mental states in accordance with the norms of a shared folk psychological framework. This paper investigates to what extent the core assumptions behind the mindshaping hypothesis are compatible with an account of first-person folk psychology (i.e., the ascription of mental states to ourselves) that is based on the notion of "self-regulative agency."

First Person and Third Person Reasons and the Regress Problem

2020 ◽  
pp. 320-332
Author(s):  
Linda Trinkaus Zagzebski
Keyword(s):  
Mental States ◽  
First Person ◽  
Theoretical Reason ◽  
Regress Problem ◽  
Third Person

This chapter distinguishes two kinds of reasons for a belief. First person reasons are unique to the person who has them. They include other mental states than beliefs and they do not aggregate with theoretical reason. There are third person reasons that can be laid out on the table for all to consider. Foundationalism, coherentism, and infinitism are all views on the structure of third person (theoretical) reasons. But the chain of theoretical reasons bottoms out in a first person reason, epistemic self-trust, which is also the foundation of other first person reasons. The rationality of epistemic self-trust is a condition for the rationality of everything else.

Metacognition without introspection

2009 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 151-152
Author(s):  
Peter Langland-Hassan
Keyword(s):  
Mental States ◽  
First Person ◽  
Third Person ◽  
Cognitive Attitudes

AbstractWhile Carruthers denies that humans have introspective access to cognitive attitudes such as belief, he allows introspective access to perceptual and quasi-perceptual mental states. Yet, despite his own reservations, the basic architecture he describes for third-person mindreading can accommodate first-person mindreading without need to posit a distinct “introspective” mode of access to any of one's own mental states.

First-Person Experiments in Thinking

2018 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 189-205 ◽  
Author(s):  
Renatus Ziegler ◽  
Ulrich Weger
Keyword(s):  
Physiological Parameters ◽  
The Self ◽  
First Person ◽  
Psychological Phenomena ◽  
Third Person ◽  
Current Article ◽  
Thinking Process ◽  
Mental Contents

Abstract. In psychology, thinking is typically studied in terms of a range of behavioral or physiological parameters, focusing, for instance, on the mental contents or the neuronal correlates of the thinking process proper. In the current article, by contrast, we seek to complement this approach with an exploration into the experiential or inner dimensions of thinking. These are subtle and elusive and hence easily escape a mode of inquiry that focuses on externally measurable outcomes. We illustrate how a sufficiently trained introspective approach can become a radar for facets of thinking that have found hardly any recognition in the literature so far. We consider this an important complement to third-person research because these introspective observations not only allow for new insights into the nature of thinking proper but also cast other psychological phenomena in a new light, for instance, attention and the self. We outline and discuss our findings and also present a roadmap for the reader interested in studying these phenomena in detail.

Effects of Light-Hearted and Serious Entertainment on Enjoyment of the First and Third Person

2016 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 42-48 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthias Hofer
Keyword(s):  
Young People ◽  
Media Consumption ◽  
First Person ◽  
Online Experiment ◽  
Entertainment Media ◽  
Third Person Effect ◽  
The Third ◽  
Third Person ◽  
Perceived Enjoyment ◽  
The Third Person

Abstract. This was a study on the perceived enjoyment of different movie genres. In an online experiment, 176 students were randomly divided into two groups (n = 88) and asked to estimate how much they, their closest friends, and young people in general enjoyed either serious or light-hearted movies. These self–other differences in perceived enjoyment of serious or light-hearted movies were also assessed as a function of differing individual motivations underlying entertainment media consumption. The results showed a clear third-person effect for light-hearted movies and a first-person effect for serious movies. The third-person effect for light-hearted movies was moderated by level of hedonic motivation, as participants with high hedonic motivations did not perceive their own and others’ enjoyment of light-hearted films differently. However, eudaimonic motivations did not moderate first-person perceptions in the case of serious films.

Praxeology, Imperatives, and Shifts of View

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benj Hellie
Keyword(s):  
Practical Reason ◽  
First Person ◽  
Third Person ◽  
And Shifts ◽  
Practical Metaphysics ◽  
The Way

Recent neo-Anscombean work in praxeology (aka ‘philosophy of practical reason’), salutarily, shifts focus from an alienated ‘third-person’ viewpoint on practical reason to an embedded ‘first-person’ view: for example, the ‘naive rationalizations’ of Michael Thompson, of form ‘I am A-ing because I am B-ing’, take up the agent’s view, in the thick of action. Less salutary, in its premature abandonment of the first-person view, is an interpretation of these naive rationalizations as asserting explanatory links between facts about organically structured agentive processes in progress, followed closely by an inflationary project in ‘practical metaphysics’. If, instead, praxeologists chase first-personalism all the way down, both fact and explanation vanish (and with them, the possibility of metaphysics): what is characteristically practical is endorsement of nonpropositional imperatival content, chained together not explanatorily, but through limits on intelligibility. A connection to agentive behavior must somehow be reestablished—but this can (and can only) be done ‘transcendentally’.

scholarly journals When the World Breaks Down: A 3-Stage Existential Model of Nihilism in Schizophrenia

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-24
Author(s):  
Philipp Klar ◽  
Georg Northoff
Keyword(s):  
The Self ◽  
First Person ◽  
Second Stage ◽  
Existential Crisis ◽  
Third Stage ◽  
The World ◽  
Third Person ◽  
Pathological Development ◽  
Sense Of Reality ◽  
Intentional Structure

The existential crisis of nihilism in schizophrenia has been reported since the early days of psychiatry. Taking first-person accounts concerning nihilistic experiences of both the self and the world as vantage point, we aim to develop a dynamic existential model of the pathological development of existential nihilism. Since the phenomenology of such a crisis is intrinsically subjective, we especially take the immediate and pre-reflective first-person perspective’s (FPP) experience (instead of objectified symptoms and diagnoses) of schizophrenia into consideration. The hereby developed existential model consists of 3 conceptualized stages that are nested into each other, which defines what we mean by existential. At the same time, the model intrinsically converges with the phenomenological concept of the self-world structure notable inside our existential framework. Regarding the 3 individual stages, we suggest that the onset or first stage of nihilistic pathogenesis is reflected by phenomenological solipsism, that is, a general disruption of the FPP experience. Paradigmatically, this initial disruption contains the well-known crisis of common sense in schizophrenia. The following second stage of epistemological solipsism negatively affects all possible perspectives of experience, that is, the first-, second-, and third-person perspectives of subjectivity. Therefore, within the second stage, solipsism expands from a disruption of immediate and pre-reflective experience (first stage) to a disruption of reflective experience and principal knowledge (second stage), as mirrored in abnormal epistemological limitations of principal knowledge. Finally, the experience of the annihilation of healthy self-consciousness into the ultimate collapse of the individual’s existence defines the third stage. The schizophrenic individual consequently loses her/his vital experience since the intentional structure of consciousness including any sense of reality breaks down. Such a descriptive-interpretative existential model of nihilism in schizophrenia may ultimately serve as input for future psychopathological investigations of nihilism in general, including, for instance, its manifestation in depression.

Meeting of minds: Narratives as a tool to reduce prejudice toward stigmatized group members

2021 ◽  
pp. 136843022110127
Author(s):  
Nuri Kim ◽  
Cuimin Lim
Keyword(s):  
Social Presence ◽  
Perspective Taking ◽  
Intergroup Contact ◽  
First Person ◽  
Narrative Texts ◽  
Intergroup Anxiety ◽  
Narrative Perspective ◽  
Third Person ◽  
Perceived Social Presence ◽  
Group Members

This study investigates a mechanism of mediated intergroup contact effects that occurs through experiencing social presence of a stigmatized outgroup character. Conceiving narrative texts as a context for mediated intergroup contact, we experimentally test ( N = 505) the effects of narrative perspective (first vs. third person) and the photograph of the outgroup protagonist (present vs. absent) on perceived social presence of the outgroup character. We further test whether experiencing the outgroup protagonist as socially present affects intergroup outcomes (i.e., perspective-taking, intergroup anxiety, outgroup knowledge, and outgroup attitudes). Findings indicate that first-person narratives are more effective than third-person narratives in inducing social presence of the stigmatized outgroup character; photos, unexpectedly, did not have such an effect. Social presence, in turn, plays a key role in facilitating positive intergroup outcomes from reading online narrative texts. The implications of our findings are discussed.

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