Joelle Proust, “The Philosophy of Metacognition: Mental Agency and Self-Awareness” (Oxford University Press, 2014)
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What is the central focus of Joelle Proust’s book on metacognition?
Hello and welcome to New Books in Philosophy, a podcast channel with the New Books Network. I'm Carrie Figdor, Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Iowa, and I'm co host of the channel along with Robert Talise, Professor of Philosophy at Vanderbilt University. Together we bring you conversations with philosophers about their new books across a wide range of areas of contemporary philosophical inquiry. Today's interview is with Joel Proust, Director of Research at the Ecole Normale Superieure in Paris. Her new book, The Philosophy of Metacognition, Mental Agency and Self Awareness. is just out from Oxford University Press. Metacognition is cognition about cognition, what we do when we assess our cognitive states, such as, for example, whether we remembered a phone number correctly.
In this erudite and comprehensive volume, Proust considers the nature of metacognition from a naturalistic perspective, drawing on recent psychological research as well as a range of philosophical Work and philosophy of mind and philosophy of action. She defends an evaluative or procedural account of metacognition over a meta representational account as the most general kind of metacognition available to at least some non human animals as well as humans, and she holds that the more familiar mind reading view is a distinct, more sophisticated capacity that humans also possess. Proust also defends an enjoyment. Intriguing view of mental agency and the epistemic norms that govern mental action, and she considers the implications of her positions for some cognitive disorders associated with schizophrenia.
Let's turn to the interview. Uh hello, Joel Proust. Are you with me? Hello, Carrie Fieder. I am with you. Hi, welcome to New Books and Philosophy. Thank you. Uh I'm very pleased to be talking about your uh new book, The Philosophy of Metacognition, uh Mental Agency and Self Awareness. Um and uh just to tell our listeners, uh Joel Proust is the director is a director of research at the E. Superieur in Paris, um and this is her her latest book out from Oxford University Press. Press. Um let me just start the interview if you could tell us a bit about how uh about your own sort of research career, um how you got into philosophy and into this uh topic.
Well I res I I initially uh studied history of logic and philosophy of logic. And then I had a stay in Berkeley, uh in the USA that uh really oriented my work towards philosophy of mind. It was the great time of the Sloan Foundation and the work in cognitive science and it was absolutely fascinating. And from then on I concentrated first on intentionality and I published a book in French on this, and then Philosophy of Action. uh both uh normal action and uh impairments of action. Which led me to mental action and from there to metacognition. So it's quite a direct link, I would say.
Okay. Um yeah, 'cause intentionality, you know, the theories of representational of representation and mental content, um and agency both come together very nicely, uh, in this book. Um one of the things that I I wanted to start with was actually the preface. Um So you remark um in the pref in the preface um uh regarding the naturalist methodology that you pursue. And this is this is a very contemporary issue, you know, sort of a pressing issue in the field of philosophy of mind, um, which has developed um you know, it it's probably become more pressing in recent years. years. Um and you contrast this sort of naturalistic more la naturalistic view with a more, you know, autonomous view of in philosophy of mind associated as you mentioned others do often with with John McDowell.
Um so could you say a little bit more about the naturalistic perspective that that you are pursuing in this book?
Well I think that uh you know quant's intuition that uh philosophy uh has to take a lot from science, especially when you are studying uh beliefs and so on. I think it went too far in uh You know in narrowing down the scope of philosophy to an extent that it would be virtually disappearing.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is the central focus of Joelle Proust’s book on metacognition?
0:06–8:57
2
How did Joelle Proust’s academic background lead her to study metacognition?
8:57–15:32
3
What is the naturalistic methodology Proust defends for studying metacognition?
15:32–22:35
4
How does Proust differentiate between procedural (evaluative) and meta‑representational accounts of metacognition?
22:35–30:36
5
What experimental evidence from animal studies supports the procedural view of metacognition?
30:36–39:23
6
How does Proust characterize mental agency and the epistemic norms governing mental actions?
39:23–45:53
7
What are the implications of Proust’s theory for understanding schizophrenia‑related cognitive disorders?
45:53–54:59
8
What future research directions does Proust propose for metacognitive diversity across cultures?
54:59–1:02:51
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