Prospects of metacognition research for the development of natural and artificial intelligence

Abstract

Today the research on metacognitive processes is mostly conducted in practice-oriented scientific fields: psychology, pedagogy, and the development of artificial intelligence systems. But philosophy (in particular, epistemology) has the theoretical potential to explicate metacognition. Therefore, the aim of the study is to identify the philosophical and methodological foundations of metacognition, as well as promising areas of research and development of metacognitive strategies for the development of natural intelligence and artificial intelligence. Based on a philosophical and methodological analysis, the article provides a philosophical interpretation of the concept of metacognition and its elements: meta-knowledge, metacognitive experience, and metacognitive regulation. The article reveals the ontological and epistemological prerequisites for studying metacognitive processes and draws analogies with relevant topics in philosophy. The author clarifies the relationship between knowledge and information, cautions against reducing knowledge to data or information, and substantiates the relationship between meta-knowledge and wisdom as characteristics of the maturity of consciousness. The research revealed three aspects of the study of metacognition: reflexive, epistemological, and ontological. As a result, the author highlights the role of reflection in the formation of metacognition in natural intelligence, taking into account the peculiarities of personal epistemology development. Then the author asserts the formation of a metacognitive subject as an observer with metareflexion. At the same time, the role of implicit knowledge is substantiated on the basis of the 4E-approach in cognition (embodied, embedded, enacted, extended). This leads to the understanding of the integrity of the cognitive situation, in which both bodily experience and subjective experiences are important, as well as skills of self-organization and self-regulation being the part of the metacognitive triad. The study of the use of metacognitive strategies in the development of artificial intelligence revealed the possibilities and limitations of metacognition for artificial systems related to their "metacognitive myopia". The author makes the conclusion about a tendency of interdisciplinary research combining philosophy and theories of consciousness, personal epistemology and metacognition to transform the process of the "natural - artificial intelligence" system development, in which human intelligence plays a leading role, and artificial intelligence plays an auxiliary role. The article ends with the conclusion about the inevitable development of metacognition as an individual metacognitive competence and the relevance of the formation of a metacognitive strategic type of thinking. The author declares no conflicts of interests.