Abstract
Cognitive science has concerned itself rather little with knowledge and even with our knowledge of the content of our own thoughts. The focus of inquiry is more often representation and the functional role thereof. But knowledge is more than representation, even representation that something is the case, for we can have a representation and not know that the representation is correct. This paper is concerned with knowledge and the special kind of knowledge that we have of the content of our own thoughts. I call the content of our own thoughts, lucid content, and shall offer an explication of it. My primary thesis is that metamental processing and evaluation convert mental representation into knowledge and mental activity into lucid content. My task is to explain how this can be so.
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Notes
I have developed the theory in detail in Theory of Knowledge, (Boulder: Westview Press, 1990), chapters 6, 7, and 8, and more briefly in “Metaknowledge,” Synthese 74, 1988.
Cf. Lynne Rudder Baker, Saving Belief, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1987.
Cf. Stephen P. Stitch, From Folk Psychology to Cognitive Science, MIT/Bradford Press, Cambridge, 1983, and Paul M. Churchland, “Eliminative Materialism and Propositional Attitudes,” Journal of Philosophy, 78(1981).
Ibid.
Cf. Paul M. Churchland, “Reduction, Qualia, and the Direct Introspection of Brain States,” Journal of Philosophy, 82 (1985).
Cf. John R. Searle, Intentionality: An Essay in Philosophy of Mind, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1983.
Cf. Jerry A. Fodor, Psychosemantics, MIT/Bradford Books, Cambridge, 1987, also, “Cognitive Science and the Twin-Earth Problem,” Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic, 23 (1982), 98–118.
Cf. Nelson Goodman, Languages of Art, Bobbs-Merrill Pub. Co, Indianapolis, 1968.
Cf. Jerry A. Fodor, The Language of Thought, Thomas Y. Crowell, New York, 1975.
Richard C. Jeffrey, The Logic of Decision, McGraw Hill, New York, 1965.
Cf. Keith Lehrer and Carl Wagner, Rational Consensus in Science and Society: A Philosophical and Mathematical Study, Reidel, Dordrecht, 1981.
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Lehrer, K. (1996). Skepticism, Lucid Content and the Metamental Loop. In: Clark, A., Ezquerro, J., Larrazabal, J.M. (eds) Philosophy and Cognitive Science: Categories, Consciousness, and Reasoning. Philosophical Studies Series, vol 69. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-8731-0_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-8731-0_4
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