Self-Inquisitiveness: the Structure and Role of an Epistemic Virtue

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.