The Cognitive Philosophy of Reflection

Philosophical Issues, 2019

Ernest Sosa has suggested that we distinguish between animal knowledge, on the one hand, and reflective knowledge, on the other. Animal knowledge is direct, immediate, and foundationally structured, while reflective knowledge involves a knower's higher-order awareness of her own mental states, and is structured by relations of coherence. Although Sosa's distinction is extremely appealing, it also faces serious problems. In particular, the sorts of processes that would be required for reflective knowledge, as Sosa understands it, are not processes that are instantiated in human cognition.

Reflective Practice, 2003

This paper presents some thoughts about the use of the word 'reflection' and the provocative statement that reflection seems not to be a spontaneous everyday activity in our professions or everyday life. The discussion focuses on the cognitive aspects of reflection. As reflection is regarded as a conscious activity the hypothesis of a conscious 'I' and an unconscious 'me' is discussed in the light of information theory and their suggested functions in understanding and grasping the world. It is suggested that as a consequence of short-term memory and our flashlight-like consciousness scanning our perceptive world, it is difficult to keep our consciousness focused on one thing for longer times. This is suggested to be of evolutionary survival value with the consequence that focused reflection needs active effort and energy, and thus is not a spontaneous activity. It is also suggested that the conscious 'I' and its capacity to reflect is of evolutionary and historic recent origin, arising in the dawn of modern society in association with the development of a free will. The reflective capacity is thus epigenetic and has to be learned and encouraged.

v. 44, NSPE2: Memory and reflection, 2021

I have argued that the Analects of Confucius presents us with a conception of reflection with two components, a retrospective component and a perspective component. The former component involves hindsight or careful examination of the past and as such draws on previous learning or memory and previously formed beliefs to avoid error. The latter component is foresight, or forward looking, and as such looks to existing beliefs and factors in order to achieve knowledge. In this paper, I raise the problem of forgetting and argue that most of contemporary theories of knowledge have to face the problem and deal with the challenge seriously. In order to solve the problem, I suggest a bi-level virtue epistemology which can provide us with the best outlook for the problem-solving. I will correlate two different cognitive capacities or processes of "memory" (and "forgetting") with the conception of reflection, and evaluate them under two different frameworks, a strict deontic framework (one that presupposes free and intentional determination) and a more loosely deontic framework (one that highlights functional and mechanical faculties). The purpose is to show that reflection as metacognition plays an important and active role and enjoys a better epistemic (normative) status in our human endeavors (cognitive or epistemic) than those of first-order (or animal) cognition, such as memory, can play.

Kriterion, 2022

This essay aims to motivate an epistemic non-individualistic conception of reflection. The proposal is non-individualistic because (a) it addresses more than individual metacognitive performance and (b) it refers to a situation in which two or more people are in dialogical disagreement about the same subject matter or target proposition; (c) their dispute is based on conversational space and they are entitled to expect one another to be engaged in attempts at truth, avoidance of error, and understanding. I call this proposal a Dialectical account of Reflection (DaR). According to (DaR), reflection is a conscious and intentional intellectual operation through which an individual becomes aware of the contents of disputed beliefs in a dialogical or interpersonal exchange, involving both her own beliefs and the beliefs of her interlocutors. In (DaR), reflection produces the epistemic good of avoiding epistemic vices and promoting epistemic moderation.

Cognitio, 2020

In contemporary analytic philosophy, while some epistemologists claim that reflection-understood as a critical self-examination of belief-is a necessary condition for the attribution of valuable epistemic states, others reject this claim and maintain that philosophers tend to overestimate the value of reflection in their reports of epistemological phenomena. In this essay, we present a brief overview of this debate and outline the elements that constitute disagreement between epistemologists. Our diagnosis is that, despite radical disagreement, these positions converge, because they deal with reflection from an individualistic point of view, defining it as an agent's private metacognitive performance of her own epistemic states. As well as being a reason for disagreement, this conception of reflection may be the reason that epistemologists misunderstand its place and value. Resumo: Na filosofia analítica contemporânea, enquanto alguns epistemólogos afirmam que a reflexão-entendida como autoexame crítico das crenças-é uma condição necessária para a atribuição de estados epistêmicos valiosos, outros rejeitam essa afirmação e sustentam que os filósofos tendem a superestimar o valor da reflexão em seus relatos de fenômenos epistemológicos. Neste ensaio, apresentamos um breve panorama desse debate e indicamos os elementos que constituem o desacordo entre epistemólogos. Nosso diagnóstico é que, a despeito do radical desacordo, essas posições convergem porque tratam a reflexão de um ponto de vista individualista, uma vez que a definem como uma performance metacognitiva privada de um agente sobre os próprios estados epistêmicos. Além de ser um motivo de desacordo, essa concepção de reflexão pode ser a razão de uma compreensão equivocada dos epistemólogos sobre o lugar e valor da reflexão.

In this paper, I will be arguing for a view of knowledge as a true belief that manifests a competent (epistemic) agency. Beyond a mere juxtaposition of performing skills, epistemic competent agency requires an integration of faculties at a personal level that is sufficient to evaluate the agent's epistemic risk in particular situations. I will propose that, in order to meet this requirement, agency must scale to a personal level where the agent's engagement in epistemic situations manifests a competent endorsement of her beliefs. This view can deal with the predicaments of Virtue Epistemology in a naturalistic atmosphere by changing the emphasis from representation to agency, and by considering knowledge as an expression of achievement. This interpretation faces two related problems: first, the issue of self-knowledge in agency, and second, the problem of the integration of competencies from the personal standpoint of a unified agent. In this paper, I will only be dealing with the second problem.

We argue that skilful reflection makes a positive epistemic contribution to epistemic standings. We begin by setting out the dialectical context of our discussion of skilful reflection. In particular the significance of reflection for Sosa's account of knowledge and the charges laid against philosophers' use of reflection by Kornblith. In order to advance our thesis while being responsive to the dialectic we develop an account of skilful reflection. We do so by hypothesising that reflection involves both Type 1 and Type 2 processes, while remaining neutral to the charge that reflection simpliciter doesn't make a positive epistemic contribution. Drawing on our dual process hypothesis of reflection, we then outline how reflection can be skilful. Having provided an account of skilful reflection and having made the case that skilful reflection can make a positive contribution to our epistemic standings, we make the case for a Confucian based account of skilful reflection as an epistemic virtue. On this account, a central feature of such a character trait is that reflection is informed by both retrospective and perspective considerations. We next briefly assess how skilful reflection can make an epistemic contribution in a number of different domains. We return to Sosa's account of knowledge and show the role that our account of reflection as an epistemic virtue can play. More specifically, we show how both our account of skilful reflection based on the dual process theory and the Confucian based account of the epistemic virtue of reflectiveness can significantly develop Sosa's account of knowledge.

Philosophical Studies, 2011

In his volume reflective knowledge, Ernest Sosa offers an account of knowledge, an argument against internalist foundationalism, and a solution to the problem of easy knowledge. This paper offers challenges to Sosa on each of those three things.

Theory & psychology, 2017

Reflection is a fuzzy concept. In this article we reveal the paradoxes involved in studying the nature of reflection. Whereas some scholars emphasize its discursive nature, we go further and underline its resemblance to the self-biased dialogue Socrates had with the slave in Plato's. The individual and internal nature of the reflection process creates difficulty for studying it validly and reliably. We focus on methodological issues and use Hans Linschoten's view of coupled systems to identify, analyze, and interpret empirical research on reflection. We argue that researchers and research participants can take on roles in several possible system couplings. Depending on who controls the manipulation of the stimulus, who controls the measuring instrument, who interprets the measurement and the response, different types of research questions can be answered. We conclude that reflection may be validly studied by combining different couplings of experimenter, manipulation, stimul...