The Reflective Mind: An Integrated Philosophical Study of Metarepresentation and Reasoning

'The Reflective Mind' is an inter-disciplinary project investigating two unique reflective capacities of humans, namely to reason reflectively and to represent our own thoughts (or to metarepresent), by studying their interrelations and importance for human minds. Core members of the project team are four full-time researchers with expertise and research interest in philosophy, linguistics and aspects of psychology and cognitive science. The project is based at the Centre for the Study of Mind in Nature (CSMN), a RCN-funded centre of excellence at the University of Oslo. We collaborate closely in regular seminars and workshops not only within the team and CSMN, but also with the broader national and international research communities. To date the project has organized (in some instances in collaboration with our research partners overseas) 10 international conferences and workshops featuring 60 speakers. The four core members have also given a total of 63 talks in 7 cities in Norway and 14 countries abroad, and received much stimulating and feedback on our work. During the project period, we have published 2 books (1 edited, 1 co-authored monograph), 1 new translation of authored book and 19 book chapters or articles in international scholarly journals. One further edited book and 6 chapters/articles are forthcoming, 6 others are under review, and still others at earlier stages of development, to be published as our research progresses further. In other professional service to academic research and higher education, project members have been invited to referee for 33 leading international journals, publishers, research foundations and conferences, and Eline Gundersen served on the committee which reviews philosophy education at Swedish universities. In order to disseminate our research findings to a wider audience beyond scholars and researchers, we have engaged in the following activities. We contributed to the online edition of Store Norsk Leksikon and taught 4 postgraduate course at the University of Oslo. In April 2014, we held an inter-disciplinary workshop titled 'Metacognition: perspectives from philosophy and psychopathology', which engaged practitioners as well as philosophers. In addition, we held a well-attended public seminar at Litteraturhuset in November 2014.

Human beings are distinctive from most - perhaps all - other animals in having two reflective capacities. First, we think not only about our physical surroundings but also about thoughts themselves, i.e. we metarepresent. Secondly, we reason not only unc onsciously and automatically, but also consciously and critically, i.e. we engage in reflective reasoning. Both are essential to many things we do and indeed what we are. We propose to reach a deeper understanding of both metarepresentation and reasoning than hitherto achieved by investigating the complex interrelations between the two, and the importance of each for the other. Moreover, we will seek out lessons to be learnt from comparing how the two capacities are exercised across different domains of human life. Pursuing this novel, systematic and comparative approach, we will provide answers for the questions: (1) What accounts for the striking differences between the first-person and third-person perspectives in metarepresentation? Can these differ ences be understood in terms of different roles played by the perspectives in reasoning? (2) What is it for someone to act autonomously, on desires that are truly her own? We show that unraveling the intertwined contributions of metarepresentation and ref lective reasoning is necessary for reaching an answer. (3) How is communication possible, given the power and delicacy of the inferences involved? The ease and speed of successful interpretation of utterances provides an important challenge to the common idea that reasoning with metarepresentation is necessarily reflective. (4) Do metarepresentations merely track the mental states represented, or do metarepresentations in part make them what they are? Based at the CSMN in Oslo, the project will be assist ed locally by Profs. Jennifer Hornsby and Deirdre Wilson, established authorities in the areas, and nationally and internationally by partnerships with key institutions at the forefront of research.