Metacognition is usually construed as a conscious, intentional process whereby people reflect upon their own mental activity. Here, we instead suggest that metacognition is but an instance of a larger class of representational re-description processes that we assume occur unconsciously and automatically. From this perspective, the brain continuously and unconsciously learns to anticipate the...
Subjective measures of awareness rest on the assumption that conscious knowledge is knowledge that participants know they possess. Post-Decision Wagering (PDW), recently proposed as a new measure of awareness, requires participants to place a high or a low wager on their decisions. Whereas advantageous wagering indicates awareness of the knowledge on which the decisions are based, cases in...
When one is conscious of something, one is also conscious that one is conscious. Higher-Order Thought Theory [Rosenthal, D. (1997). A theory of consciousness. In N. Block, O. Flanagan, & G. Güzeldere (Eds.), The nature of consciousness: Philosophical debates. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press] takes it that it is in virtue of the fact that one is conscious of being conscious, that one is conscious....