The three levels of congition

    We ascertain that cognition is the functional basis of intelligent behaviour as it is exhibited by human beings. Admittedly, the biopsychologists still do not know all details of how human cognition works, but those essential cognitive functions in our brain, which enable the outstanding human capabilities we are so proud of, can yet be described to a quite satisfying extent.
    In science, cognition is a group of mental processes that includes attention, memory, producing and understanding language, solving problems, and making decisions. Cognition is studied in various disciplines such as psychology, philosophy, linguistics, science and computer science. The term's usage varies in different disciplines; for example in psychology and cognitive science, it usually refers to an information processing view of an individual's psychological functions. It is also used in a branch of social psychology called social cognition to explain attitudes, attribution, and groups dynamics.
    There are three level of cognition: The first level is cognition and then follows the metacognition and the highest level is epistemic cognition.
    You can see it in the following picture:

cognition process

    Cognition is observe,it's a low level Cognition.
    Low-level cognitive are those of the different kinds of basic information processing elements (neurons) and the structure and internal processing organisation of the neural networking in the human brain. These functions are the basic enablers of the functions of the higher levels.
    Then we turn to second levels - metacognition.Most people can reach the second level and it's hard to go further because epistemic cognition  needs more times and energy.

    Here is a kind of interesting description of three levels:

    The first stage: the mountain is the mountain, water is water. This is the understanding of the whole superficial general knowledge and things on the surface, on the external characteristics.

    Second stage: Mountain is non-mountain, water is non-water. With careful analysis, we can understanding the various parts of the various properties. Clear the characteristics and properties of the various parts of this things and things with it, it is part of the relationship between What are the similarities and differences. Because we focus on part of the things ,various attributes of things, so it is not the thing itself, in our eyes it is not the original thing. 

    Third stage: Mountain is still mountain, water is still water. Reason why a thing is that thing, because it has the experience back to the details of things and understanding the whole thing back to the attributes of the essence of things, and different from other things in essential attribute.  They are still that things. But this time people see things in a rich connotation, both as a whole and part, both external and internal.