Metacognitive State

An agent's intrinsic SECOND-ORDER mental moment — a state whose subject is one of the agent's OWN first-order mental moments or claims (a belief about a belief, a confidence about a confidence, an awareness of a gap in one's knowledge). The reflexive sibling of gmeow:CognitiveState (the knowing mode) and gmeow:IntentionalMode (the conative mode), gathered under gmeow:MentalMoment (kernel) so an agent's whole mental life is queryable as one family (Principle 15). Inheres in exactly one agent. Its reflexivity edge is gmeow:metaTarget; its calibration rides gmeow:calibration.

Structure

Subclass of: gmeow:MentalMoment

Practical Pattern

Use gmeow:MetacognitiveState as a specialized kind of gmeow:MentalMoment. Add statement metadata or a standpoint when the assertion needs provenance, confidence, or vantage.

Example Snippets

These snippets are generated from canonical slice examples and trimmed to the Turtle blocks where this term appears.

Dunning Kruger

# SPDX-FileCopyrightText: 2026 Blackcat Informatics® Inc. <paudley@blackcatinformatics.ca>
# SPDX-License-Identifier: CC-BY-4.0
#
# Worked example — Dunning–Kruger as a MODELLED metacognitive miscalibration, the
# second-order companion to the cognition slice's dunning-kruger.ttl. Where that
# example records two coexisting first-order gmeow:KnowledgeProficiency claims at
# divergent depths (Principle 9), this one turns the reflexive lens on Sam's OWN
# self-assessment: a gmeow:MetacognitiveState whose gmeow:metaTarget is Sam's
# self-attributed mastery, carrying gmeow:calibration gmeow:overconfident. The
# numeric Brier-style gap rides gmeow:calibrationError — a SOLVER-LAYER annotation
# (Principle 12), invisible to the reasoner. The calibration is itself a
# vantage-indexed claim (Principle 9): the assessor judges Sam overconfident; GMEOW
# records the judgement, it does not adjudicate a global verdict.
@prefix gmeow: <https://blackcatinformatics.ca/gmeow/> .
@prefix ex:    <https://blackcatinformatics.ca/gmeow/examples/metacognition/> .
@prefix wd:    <http://www.wikidata.org/entity/> .

# --- Second-order: Sam's metacognitive state reflecting on that self-assessment.
#     metaTarget is the reflexivity edge onto Sam's own first-order proficiency
#     (the same-agent ownership is a SHACL concern, not an OWL axiom); calibration
#     reads the direction of the confidence/accuracy gap.
ex:samSelfRegard a gmeow:MetacognitiveState ;
    gmeow:metaTarget  ex:samQuantumSelf ;
    gmeow:calibration gmeow:overconfident .

Reflection Revision

# SPDX-FileCopyrightText: 2026 Blackcat Informatics® Inc. <paudley@blackcatinformatics.ca>
# SPDX-License-Identifier: CC-BY-4.0
#
# Worked example — REFLECTION defeating one's own inference, belief revision as
# SUPPRESSION (Principle 10). The metacognition layer over the inference slice's
# belief-revision pattern: Lillith inductively concluded "the server is down" from
# "the ping timed out". On REFLECTION (a gmeow:Event typed gmeow:eventTypeReflection,
# tied to the reflexive layer by a gmeow:MetacognitiveState whose gmeow:metaTarget
# is her OWN gmeow:InferenceCommitment) she surfaces an UNDERCUTTING defeater — a
# firewall rule blocked the ping, removing the warrant. Revision does NOT delete:
# the conclusion-claim is set gmeow:displayable false, the gmeow:InferenceTenure is
# closed, and the gmeow:InferenceCommitment is retained as audit. The defeater is
# installed via the inference slice's gmeow:hasDefeater (reused by reference); the
# reflection → revision link is a documented bridge, never an axiom.
@prefix gmeow: <https://blackcatinformatics.ca/gmeow/> .
@prefix ex:    <https://blackcatinformatics.ca/gmeow/examples/metacognition/> .
@prefix rdfs:  <http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#> .
@prefix xsd:   <http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#> .

# --- The reflection act: Lillith reviews her OWN reasoning (the metacognition
#     layer). The event carries the gmeow:eventTypeReflection value; a
#     gmeow:MetacognitiveState ties the review to the reflexive layer, its
#     gmeow:metaTarget pointing at her own inference commitment.
ex:lillithReview a gmeow:Event ;
    gmeow:eventType gmeow:eventTypeReflection .

Common Companion Terms

gmeow:MentalMoment

Usage Advice

Use when

Avoid when

How to use

Scope notes

Examples