Metacognition—the iterative self-monitoring of thought—is not purely internal, but rather emerges as a second-order semiotic dynamic, deeply entangled with material and semiotic scaffolds, (aligning with Petrilli & Ponzio’s [2025] claim that ‘thanks to metasemiosis the human animal not only operates immediately in semiosis.’) This work reviews the main models on metacognition, culminating in a possible take on metacognition as metasemiosis through Peirce’s active cognitive externalism. The discussion explores how external sign systems, including language and other semiotic artifacts, form the basis of a second-order semiotic process that reshapes cognitive architecture. Finally, this Peircean approach is situated in relation to Andy Clark’s extended cognition framework.
