[Key point to stress there is just that
metacognitive feelings are not intentional states, they are not representations,
they have no content. [Or if they do have content, it’s not related to
the things we take them to be associated with, like familiarity or electricity.]
They are blank sensations. Compare the sensation associated
with an electrical shock. It’s not a perception of electricity.]
Metacognitive feelings
can be thought of as
sensations.
metacognitive feelings can be thought of as sensations in approximately
Reid’s sense.%
\footnote{
\citet{Reid:1785cj,Reid:1785nz}.
Even if you don’t believe that there are sensations in Reid’s sense,
thinking of metacognitive feelings as if they were sensations will
serve to illustrate their characteristic features.
The main points that follow are consistent with several different ways of
thinking about metacognitive feelings.
For instance, you might take the view that
what I am calling metacognitive feelings are
perceptual experiences of the body or of bodily reactions,
or that they involve some kind of cognitive phenomenology.
The essential claim is just that the metacognitive feelings associated with
the operations of object indexes are not constituted by states which involve
intentional relations to any of the things which are assigned an object index.
}
Sensations are
- monadic properties of perceptual experiences
- individuated by their normal causes
- (so they do not involve an intentional relation)
- which alter the overall phenomenal character of those experiences
- in ways not determined by the experiences’ contents.
Sensations are:
\begin{enumerate}
\item monadic properties of events, specifically perceptual experiences,
\item individuated by their normal causes% %{Tye, 1984 #1744@204}
---in the case of feelings of familiarity, its normal cause is ease of processing
\item which alter the overall phenomenal character of those experiences
\item in ways not determined by the experiences’ contents
(so two perceptual experiences can have the same content while one has a sensational property which the other lacks).
\end{enumerate}
Metacognitive feelings can be thought of as sensations in approximately Reid’s sense: they are
monadic properties of events, specifically perceptual experiences, which are individuated by
their normal causes and which alter the overall phenomenal character of those experiences in
ways not determined by the experiences’ contents (so two perceptual experiences can have the
same content but distinct sensational properties).
Metacognitive feelings are signs:
they can lead to beliefs via associations or further beliefs
(\citealp[Essay~II, Chap.~16, p.~228]{Reid:1785cj};
\citealp[Chap.~VI sect.~III, pp.~164–5]{Reid:1785nz}).
Sensations can trigger beliefs via associations.
An important consequence is that metacognitive feelings can lead to beliefs
only via associations or further beliefs.
They are signs which need to be interpreted by their subjects
(\citealp[Essay~II, Chap.~16, p.~228]{Reid:1785cj}
\citealp[Chap.~VI sect.~III, pp.~164–5]{Reid:1785nz}).
Let me explain.
As a scientist, you can pick out the feeling of familiarity as that
metacognitive feeling which is normally caused by the degree to which
certain processes are fluent.
But as the subject of who has that metacognitive feeling, you do not
necessarily know what its typical causes are.
This is something you have to work out in whatever ways you work out
the causes of any other type of event.
(Contrast metacognitive feelings with perceptual experiences.
Having
a perceptual experience of, say, a wire’s shape, involves standing
in an intentional relation to the wire’s shape; and the phenomenal
character of this perceptual experience is specified by this
intentional relation.%
\footnote{
Compare \citet[p.~380]{Martin:2002yx}:
‘I attend to what it is like for me to inspect the lavender bush through
perceptually attending to the bush itself.’
And \citet[p.~211]{byrne:2001_intentionalism}
‘subject can only discover the phenomenal character of her experience by
attending to the world ... as her experience represents it.’
}
Such perceptual experiences are often held to reveal the wire’s shape to the
subject and so lead directly to beliefs.%
\footnote{
Compare \citet[p.~222]{Johnston:1992zb}:
‘[j]ustified belief … is available simply on the basis of visual perception’;
\citet[p.~143–4]{Tye:1995oa}:
‘Phenomenal character “stands ready … to make a direct impact on beliefs’;
and
\citet[p.~291]{Smith:2001iz}:
‘[p]erceptual experiences are … intrinsically … belief-inducing.’
})
(By contrast, having a metacognitive feeling concerning familiarity or an
physical object’s path does not involve standing in any intentional relation
to these things.
The metacognitive feeling is individuated by its normal causes, rather
than by any intentional relation.
And a metacognitive feeling leads to belief, if at all, only indirectly.
For learning is required in order for the subject to come to a view on
what tends to cause the metacognitive feeling.)
metacognitive feelings have been quite widely neglected in philosophy and
developmental psychology.
They are a means by which cognitive processes enable perceivers to
acquire dispositions to form beliefs about objects’ properties which are
reliably true.
metacognitive feelings provide a low-cost but efficient bridge between
non-conscious cognitive processes and conscious reasoning.
