Tad Zawidzki
Tadeusz Wieslaw Zawidzki is associate professor and Chair of Philosophy at George Washington University. He received his BA in philosophy from the University of Ottawa, Canada, his MA in philosophy of cognitive science from the University of Sussex, UK, and his PhD from the Philosophy-Neuroscience-Psychology program at Washington University in St. Louis. He is the author or co-author of 26 articles and book chapters on the philosophy of cognitive science, and two monographs: Dennett (2007, Oneworld), and Mindshaping (2013, MIT Press). He is a founding member and co-director of George Washington University’s Mind-Brain Institute, administering itsmind/brain studies minor.
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Papers by Tad Zawidzki
I explore affinities and tensions between Culadasa’s model of meta-cognitive
skill, in his recent The Mind Illuminated, and theories of skill and metacognition
in contemporary philosophy of psychology. I find that, while there
are many assumptions that these different approaches share, for the most
part, contemporary philosophy of psychology has ignored the possibility that
meta-cognitive skills can be cultivated through practice, as Culadasa persuasively
argues. The one exception is Joëlle Proust’s recent The Philosophy of
Metacognition. This work defends a model of procedural meta-cognition with
some striking similarities to Culadasa’s notion of ‘meta-cognitive introspective
awareness’, which he views as an important step in the development of
śamatha. This is noteworthy, as they have clearly arrived at these notions
completely independently, drawing on strikingly different kinds of evidence
and argument. I conclude with some thoughts on distinctive puzzles that arise
for Culadasa’s conception of meta-cognitive skill.
I explore affinities and tensions between Culadasa’s model of meta-cognitive
skill, in his recent The Mind Illuminated, and theories of skill and metacognition
in contemporary philosophy of psychology. I find that, while there
are many assumptions that these different approaches share, for the most
part, contemporary philosophy of psychology has ignored the possibility that
meta-cognitive skills can be cultivated through practice, as Culadasa persuasively
argues. The one exception is Joëlle Proust’s recent The Philosophy of
Metacognition. This work defends a model of procedural meta-cognition with
some striking similarities to Culadasa’s notion of ‘meta-cognitive introspective
awareness’, which he views as an important step in the development of
śamatha. This is noteworthy, as they have clearly arrived at these notions
completely independently, drawing on strikingly different kinds of evidence
and argument. I conclude with some thoughts on distinctive puzzles that arise
for Culadasa’s conception of meta-cognitive skill.
self and others. I argue that if one rejects this assumption in favor of the view that interpretation in terms of mental states also plays important regulative roles with respect to minds and behavior, a new and superior conception of the relationship between metacognition and social cognition comes into view. On this conception, person-level metacognitive concepts are socio-cognitive tools that shape us into better cognitive agents and more predictable cognitive objects, thereby enhancing our abilities at social coordination. Mastery of these metacognitive concepts relies on subpersonal, non-conceptual, procedural metacognition. This reconceptualization of the relationship between metacognition and social cognition combines the complementary explanatory virtues of the two traditional conceptions, while avoiding their complementary explanatory vices.