A Two-tiered View on Acceptance

Experimental studies in metacognition indicate that a variety of norms are used by humans and some non-human agents to control and monitor their cognitive performances, such as accuracy, comprehensiveness, intelligibility, coherence, relevance, or consensus. This diversity of epistemic norms motivates a revision of the concept of acceptance. First, there are different forms of acceptance, corresponding to the specific epistemic norm(s) that constitute(s) them. Furthermore, acceptances need to include a strategic component, from which the epistemic component is insulated, whose function is to adjust the epistemic output to expected utility. Experimental evidence suggests that this twotiered analysis of acceptance is empirically adequate. Relevance to AI is briefly discussed. Acceptance and its Norms Intelligent agency requires an ability to control and monitor one's cognitive states, e.g. retrieve memories, check one's perceptions or one's utterances. The aim of cognitive control is to acquire cognitively reliable properties, such as retrieving a correct answer. Intelligent agents in realistic settings, however, whether natural or artificial, need to track other epistemic norms beyond accuracy, such as the comprehensiveness of a list, the intelligibility of a text, the coherence of a story, the relevance of a remark, or the consensuality of a claim. Experimental studies in metacognition suggest that such norms are indeed used by human and some non-human agents to control and monitor their own cognitive performance (Goldsmith and Koriat, 2008, Couchman et al. 2010). Furthermore, the particular cognitive task in which performance is being monitored has been shown to dictate which epistemic norm is appropriate to a given context. The goal of this article is to sketch a theory of acceptance that takes advantage of these studies. Acceptances, in contrast with beliefs, are generally recognized as voluntar