Abstract
The motivating virtue account claims that inquisitiveness or curiosity is the motivating epistemic virtue. In the case of self-knowledge, self-inquisitiveness, intrinsic and instrumental, is the motivating epistemic virtue that mobilizes other virtues, skills, and epistemic character virtues, needed to achieve such knowledge. Its proper object is substantial self-knowledge, knowledge of one’s dispositions and causal powers that has historically played a central role in philosophy, and is now, under various names, investigated by psychologists. It has been, until recently, comparatively neglected within analytical epistemology of self-knowledge. Self-inquisitiveness thus instantiates the general paradigm of curiosity-inquisitiveness that organizes and motivates other epistemic virtues (virtues-abilities and character virtues). And it is perhaps responsible for intrinsic value of self-knowledge.
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Notes
Thanks go to the reviewer for pressing me on this point.
For a discussion of Cassam see Miscevic (2017).
The objection was actually raised by one of the reviewers, and I thank him/her for this!
For a detailed analysis see Ball (2012), He raises the question “Why has curiosity come to stand for these rather different agendas?” (p.3) and develops a detailed answer practically throughout the book, but in particular in chapter Four.
Who calls herself “dr Sanity,” https://www.blogger.com/profile/05490927712024477670
See Miscevic (2016).
I am quoting these examples in order to point out that psychologists are as interested in self-attached CD-knowledge as philosophers are; see below for more.
For epistemic humility see Roberts and Wood, p. 237 ff.
Compare papers from Alicke and Dunning (2005), especially in parts Two and Three of the collection.
Christopher Rowe mentions a reading that is particularly relevant for us here:
On the interpretation in question (self-examination as the examination of one's belief-sets) this process has to do with examining and sorting one’s own individual beliefs, keeping some and throwing others away – a kind of individual intellectual therapy (even if everyone would, presumably, end up with exactly the same, true, set of beliefs). That – on the same interpretation – is what Socrates helps others to achieve, but also, and more importantly, aims to achieve for himself: “Socrates is more concerned with testing his own soul. And he tests it to see if it has true beliefs, assuming that they [sc. beliefs, presumably] determine character …”/footnote points to Irwin 1979 [= Gorgias commentary]: p. 182, on Gorgias 486D./ Seen in this way, self-examination is a means of self-improvement, which will – so Socrates hopes – throw up real truths along the way. (2011:203).
Rowe in fact disagrees with this reading; but the reading is congenial to our questions in the present paper. Julia Annas, on the contrary, claims that for early Plato self-knowledge, properly understood, is knowledge of what is impersonal and is most truly real. (1985:136). See also Moore (2015) for a more recent reading.
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Miscevic, N. Self-Inquisitiveness: the Structure and Role of an Epistemic Virtue. Acta Anal 33, 331–352 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12136-018-0358-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12136-018-0358-3