Anything related to consciousness has been hard to accept in other species. But this reluctance is problematic: not because we know so much more about consciousness, but because we have growing evidence in other species for episodic memory, future planning, and delayed gratification. Either we abandon the idea that these capacities require consciousness, or we accept the possibility that animals may have it, too. The fourth spoke on this wheel is metacognition, which is literally cognition about cognition, also known as “thinking about thinking.” When the contestants in a game show are allowed
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