The MetCogCon Project has investigated the thoughts and feelings that accompany the use of concepts. Concepts lie at the heart of the extraordinary power of the human mind. They are the building blocks of thought, the tools with which we think. Like physical tools, they can be more or less dependable, more or less fit for purpose: e.g. for most people AMPHIBIAN feels like a better concept than SHRUB. We have an intuitive sense of how dependable a concept is, which is crucial when we decide whether to rely on the concept. It can underpin our decision to reject some concepts (e.g. INNATE) and embrace others in our theorising (e.g. VALIDITY). Similarly in everyday thinking, when concepts are selected for reasoning and induction, and when different cognitive processes compete for control of action, the metacognition that accompanies the concepts involved is likely to have a powerful effect. However, metacognition directed at concepts is still poorly understood. We lack even a clear theoretical framework to underpin research in this area.
Developing an account of people’s metacognitive understanding of their concepts tells us important things about concepts and about cognitive control; and allows us to solve some thorny philosophical problems. The Project is the first systematic investigation of the scope of metacognition as it applies to concepts. The Project combined the analytic methods developed by philosophers of mind and cognitive science with psychological model-building and experimental investigation.
