If one had a better assessment of animals' knowledge/representation/memory/experience would the concepts of metacognition and executive processes be necessary at all? Are those valid concepts?
My own answer would be 'no' on both counts: not necessary and not good. You get a full sense of this if you read the 3 main papers (References) associated with the "Human Ethology and Development" Project:
https://www.researchgate.net/project/Human-Ethology-and-Development
Difficult to answer your question, Brad, without precise definitions of "metacognition" and "executive processes". I would say that quite possibly these words/concepts can be useful to a degree but are not necessary (ie we can always think using a different set of concepts not including these two). (NB I have an AI background). Maybe a another interesting question (or set of questions) is -- given some particular and precise definition of meta-cognition, under what conditions does an AI system (say) have to have/do meta-cognition to be effective in a particular task environment...?
Or have I got confused...?
Cheers
Jim
Dear James Doran:
Actually, I do not think there are good definitions of meta-cognition and executive processes; they appeared (historically) and appear now when the people trying to model cognition need something like this for their model (in good part, given the nature and constraints of the model); it has little to do with the actual behavior at hand. No particular clear, general behavior is behind the generation of the concept and it does not appear to be necessary in an account of behavior; it is quiet conceivable that just better assessment of the subject's knowledge, representation, memory, and experience could show the needed imagery or consciousness to yield the [(let's call it ->)] the further thinking [(
P.S. The 'needed imagery or consciousness' involved (in the last sentence of my last reply) would involve some sort of additional information-seeking (broadly conceived), including more use of perceptual processes or of memory - ALL ultimately based in present or past experience and development (including identified, or yet-to-be-identified species-typical perception/categorization -- all, too, at some time related to overt behavior). This, friends, is the ultimate empiricism of ethology (where there is much inductive work involved before one develops their hypothetical-deductive systems). Also, we can fully end the dualism of 'innate' and 'learned', with all significant behavior always very, very likely involving BOTH, AT THE SAME TIME (if we just get 'real' about things).
One "upshot" of what I am talking about here (in this present post), would be the total realization of an empiricist and scientist that there's nothing "abstract" in way often imagined - rather ALL skills are developed with/via key overt behavioral aspects. (Unfortunately, meta-cognition and executive processes involve a disconnect with the organism totally consistent with a view of a sort of truly arbitrary abstraction and a kind of abstraction which is fictional -- and, actually, the 'hypothesized' executive processes related to "information processing theories" necessitate such a view.)
Another quick P.S.: All explanatory perspectives must conform to the established limitations of working memory (and have conscious and deliberate development occur there, by its increments). Outside of the episodic memory context and other well established contexts/procedures, working memory basically is like short-term memory, limited to 7 + or - 2 "chunks". AND, in an important way: All that has to be done has to be done there; if too much is necessary and is new one can expect some innate guidance, which (in my view) can be as minimal as perceptual biases (conceived broadly and conforming to major necessary patterns 'seen').
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