Victor Lange

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Metacognitive control and skilled agency

 

I work on a PhD-project called ‘Metacognitive control and skilled agency’. The project is supervised by Thor Grünbaum and is a part of the larger research project ‘The functional role of perception of movements’ directed by Mark Schram Christensen at the Centre for Neuroscience, University of Copenhagen.

 

Clinical and performance psychologists increasingly stress the importance of metacognitive control. This control is important for both supporting mental health and securing optimal performance under stressful situations. My PhD-project investigates the nature of this control, with a particular focus upon its philosophical dimensions. This involves questions such as the following:

• What characterises and distinguishes metacognitive control from cognitive control?

 

• How does metacognitive control facilitate optimal performance states such as flow and clutch?

 

• Is metacognitive control a kind of skilled mental action?

 

• Do operations of metacognitive control, such as those undertaken in mindfulness and meditation, enable states of introspective awareness that are philosophically surprising?

 

In general, my research interests are in philosophical psychology and philosophy of mind. I have a particular interest in topics such as:

• Mindfulness and meditation
• Optimal performance states such as flow and clutch
• The nature of pain
• Psychedelics (especially psilocybin)

 

I have also done research in bioethics on genome engineering, moral bio-enhancement, and public decision-making on bio-technologies. 

 

I am a meditation instructor and editor at the platform Regnfang (www.regnfang.nu). Regnfang publishes podcasts on different topics relating to the human mind (involing perspectives from scientific reserach, poetry, music, and other domains).