EUROCORES-CNCC_IP3_Levels of self-awareness. From conscious experience to human selfconsciousness

Metacognition, i.e. thinking about thinking, covers the traditional realm of introspection; it refers to all kinds ofpredictive or retrodictive evaluation directed at one`s own mental states in planning or performing an action. New experimental paradigms have recently shown that some metacognitive capacities (those allowing probabilistic predictions concerning a future ability to perform a task) are not uniquely human, but may be found in monkeys, which implies that neither theory of mind, nor linguistic capacity, are preconditions for developing at least some forms of metacognition. Some doubts however have been voiced that these competences observed in other species might actually result from associative learning rather than from actual metacognitive judgments. Our CRP has three goals. 1) to examine critically the existence and nature of metacognitive abilities in non-human primates (rhesus monkeys and chimpanzees). New tasks will be devised to be uniquely consistent with metacognition. 2) to develop comparative knowledge of metacognitive processes, by exploring how similar these capacities are in non-human animals, human children and adults. One of the preconditions of such a comparison is to understand the specific contribution of linguistic responses, which in turn requires to better understand the implicit and explicit components of the metacognitive capacities. Adapted behavioral paradigms and brain response analysis will be used to distinguish them. We will also examine whether and how metacognition benefits from the mastery of mental concepts, using both behavioral evidence, brain imagery and conceptual analysis. 3) A third goal of our CRP is to develop a philosophical analysis of metacognition, in its formal structure, in ist representational format, and in its relations with conscious self-knowledge, based in part of the empirical findings within our CRP. Aims and objectives of the Individual project contribution to the CRP: a) - Aims & objectives The aims of this project are (i) to develop a philosophical theory that may serve as a conceptual framework for explaining the evolution of self- consciousness in animals and humans, (ii) to distinguish different levels of self-awareness that cognitive systems can reach depending on their representational capacities, (iii) to propose a new solution to the debate in philosophy of mind between first-order, higher-order, and self- representational theories of consciousness, and finally, (iv) to provide answers to three crucial questions that arise in this context: - Is self-awareness necessary and/or sufficient for conscious experience? - Are metacognitive representations necessary and/or sufficient for self-awareness? - Is competence in a theory of mind necessary and/or sufficient for human self-consciousness?