Our brains have remarkable capacities: they can discover statistical regularities and use them to drive adaptive, goal-directed behavior; they can monitor themselves (know when they are doing a good job, know when they need to update their own models of the environment and of their own predictions and processes); and they can allow us to use this uncertainty monitoring to effectively update our internal models of the environment. Importantly, brains (at least my brain) are also consciously aware! How is this possible, and what is the relationship among these capacities? In this talk, I will discuss ongoing work tackling some early, initial steps at approaching these questions - not only by undertaking the empirical research itself, but also by designing philosophically and meta-science motivated quantitative research programs to best make meaningful progress.