A new perspective on the relationship between metacognition and social cognition: metacognitive concepts as socio cognitive tools
I defend an alternative to the two traditional accounts of the relationship between metacognition and social cognition: metacognition as primary versus social cognition as primary. These accounts have complementary explanatory vices and virtues. They also share a natural assumption: that interpretation in terms of mental states is "spectatorial" aiming exclusively for an objective description of the mental facts about self and others. I argue that if one rejects this assumption in favor of the view that interpretation in terms of mental states also plays important regulative roles with respect to minds and behavior, a new and superior conception of the relationship between metacognition and social cognition comes into view. On this conception, person level metacognitive concepts are socio cognitive tools that shape us into better cognitive agents and more predictable cognitive objects, thereby enhancing our abilities at social coordination. Mastery of these metacognitive concepts relies on subpersonal, non conceptual, procedural metacognition. This reconceptualization of the relationship between metacognition and social cognition combines the complementary explanatory virtues of the two traditional conceptions, while avoiding their complementary explanatory vices.
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