Curiosity, belief and acquaintance
pp. 143-157
in: Abrol Fairweather (ed), Virtue epistemology naturalized, Berlin, Springer, 2014Abstract
The question of how curiosity and knowledge are related brings about a host of interesting philosophical issues, the most important of which relates to what curiosity is (I am inclined to think that curiosity based knowledge has more value than what might be called "accidental" knowledge. If so this should provide good reason for virtue epistemologists to address philosophical questions on curiosity). After all the classical "definition" equates curiosity with a desire to know. There is then the important comparative logical question: If knowledge is a propositional attitude, is curiosity so too? There are also issues concerning how curiosity relates not to knowledge, but rather its opposite, namely ignorance. What are the mental mechanisms we employ which allow us to become aware of our ignorance on a particular issue, and how does this motivate curiosity? Is awareness of ignorance a precondition for curiosity? I have dealt with these and other related issues in detail in recent work (See Inan, The philosophy of curiosity, Routledge, New York/London, 2012). Based on some of the ideas developed there, I now wish to elaborate on topics which should be relevant not just to virtue epistemology, but to epistemology in general, and especially to formal epistemology. These involve how curiosity relates to some of our basic epistemic attitudes that come short of knowledge. Among them two stand out as being the most relevant, that is belief and acquaintance. How does curiosity relate to the holding of a belief that is uncertain and how does it relate to having partial acquaintance with an object?