Metareasoning: Thinking About Thinking

Experts report on the latest artificial intelligence research concerning reasoning about reasoning itself.

The capacity to think about our own thinking may lie at the heart of what it means to be both human and intelligent. Philosophers and cognitive scientists have investigated these matters for many years. Researchers in artificial intelligence have gone further, attempting to implement actual machines that mimic, simulate, and perhaps even replicate this capacity, called metareasoning. In this volume, leading authorities offer a variety of perspectives—drawn from philosophy, cognitive psychology, and computer science—on reasoning about the reasoning process.

The book offers a simple model of reasoning about reason as a framework for its discussions. Following this framework, the contributors consider metalevel control of computational activities, introspective monitoring, distributed metareasoning, and, putting all these aspects of metareasoning together, models of the self. Taken together, the chapters offer an integrated narrative on metareasoning themes from both artificial intelligence and cognitive science perspectives.

Michael T. Cox is Program Manager at DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency).