Higher order thoughts in action: consciousness as an unconscious re-description process

Abstract

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 consequences of action or activity on itself, on the world and on other people through three predictive loops: an inner loop, a perception–action loop and a self–other (social cognition) loop, which together form a tangled hierarchy. We ask what kinds of mechanisms may subtend this form of enactive metacognition. We extend previous neural network simulations and compare the model with signal detection theory, highlighting that while the latter approach assumes that both type I (objective) and type II (subjective, metacognition-based) decisions tap into the same signal at different hierarchical levels, our approach is closer to dual-route models in which it is assumed that the re-descriptions made possible by the emergence of meta-representations occur independently and outside of the first-order causal chain. We close by reviewing relevant neurological evidence for the idea that awareness, self-awareness and social cognition involve the same mechanisms.