Curiosity, Truth, and Satisfaction

One of the issues in contemporary philosophical work on curiosity is on what conditions

curiosity is satisfied. In particular, the discussion is on whether believing that a person has

satisfied her curiosity is sufficient to say she has satisfied her curiosity. On one view,

represented by Kvanvig, if the curious person perceives herself as justified in believing that

she has satisfied her curiosity, then satisfaction is achieved. The opposing view, represented

by Whitcomb, takes the conditions for the satisfaction of curiosity to be external to the mind

of the curios person, and holds that knowledge about the object of curiosity is required for

achieving satisfaction. Inan, on the other hand, proposes a sort of dualism, and argues that

Kvanvig’s model amounts to subjective satisfaction while Whitcomb’s model amounts to

actual satisfaction. In this paper, I will argue that Kvanvig is right in saying that curiosity is

satisfied when a person believes that she has satisfied her curiosity. However, I will not use

Kvanvig’s own approach to the issue, but instead I will try to show that Inan’s detailed theory

of curiosity can actually give us the conceptual tools that we need in order to establish that the

satisfaction of curiosity does not require acquiring truth or knowledge about the object of

curiosity. Rather, if curiosity is itself not a desire for some specific knowledge but a mental

state that may cause such desire, then its satisfaction will come not when the desired

knowledge is acquired, but when the curious person, by acquiring sufficiently justified beliefs

about her object of curiosity, is no more in a state of curiosity.

Inan introduces this issue in terms of whether “the satisfaction of curiosity is a purely internal

state of the mind, or whether it has external conditions.” (2012, 140). The question that we

need to ask here is basically this: is curiosity satisfied when the curious inquirer reaches a

point where he believes to be justified that he has found relevant pieces of knowledge that

would satisfy his curiosity, or when he actually finds some? Kvanvig approaches this question
1
by understanding curiosity as an appetite for information such that the acquired information

will be considered to be true by the inquirer. He holds that “the sating of the appetite in

question occurs when a perception or conviction of truth arises, and such conviction

sometimes will constitute knowledge and sometimes it will not (2003, 146). To support his

claim, Kvanvig then argues that curiosity-guided inquiries are directed towards some closure

or finality where the inquirer is no longer curious. Then he states that “in seeking the truth, an

individual acquires subjective justification for a claim, and when that level of subjective

justification reaches a suitably high level, closure is experienced” (149).

This position is opposed by Whitcomb, who argues against the view that conviction of truth

satisfies curiosity. His main argument employs an analogy. He writes: “perhaps curiosity is

like hunger. Hunger is not always stated when you perceive being nourished; perhaps

curiosity is not always sated when you perceive believing the truth” (2010, 3). His other

argument draws attention to sentences of the form, “I believe that p, but I don’t know whether

p, and I am curious about whether p.” The legitimacy of such collections of attitudes towards

a single proposition suggests that knowledge is the proper end of inquiry, argues Whitcomb,

especially considering that “I know that p, but I am curious about whether p” is not a

legitimate attitude. I think neither of these arguments are successful.

There are two problems with how Whitcomb uses the hunger analogy. The first problem is

actually not directly related to my argument, but I think it deserves to be pointed out.

Consider the following case: Adam has not seen the movie Blade Runner, but he has heard

from his friend that it is a really good film about a dystopian future. Adam then becomes

curious about this movie, specifically about how Blade Runner portrays a dystopian future.

Then, a period of time passes, and even though Adam has still not seen the movie, he is no

longer curious about it. He has simply lost his interest in how Blade Runner portrays a

dystopian future. In this and similar cases, I believe it is correct to say that while Adam is no

2
longer curious about something that he was previously curious about, such a change takes

place in his mental states not because he has satisfied his curiosity, but because his curiosity

has faded away. In other words, the example shows us that satisfaction of curiosity is not

necessary for a change in one’s mental state from curiosity to non-curiosity. This seems

impossible for hunger; a hungry person does not become non-hungry for any reason other

than the satisfaction of hunger.1 So, this is one way in which the hunger analogy for curiosity

fails to work, but since this particular difference is not directly related to the satisfaction of

curiosity, but to curiosity in general, I will not further pursue this point.

The second problem with the hunger analogy is that Whitcomb simply gives us no argument

for it. Just because both hunger and curiosity seem to be desires for something is no guarantee

that they are or they should be satisfied in the same way. However, Whitcomb explicitly states

that Kvanvig only argues for his own theory without giving any reason why a view like

Whitcomb’s cannot be true. In other words, Whitcomb seems to place the burden of proof on

the other side when he says that the lack of arguments as to why curiosity is not like hunger is

enough to hold that curiosity is like hunger. I will argue later in this paper how the satisfaction

of curiosity differs from the satisfaction of hunger, but for now let me say that when a

curiosity-driven inquiry ends with a false belief (or conviction of truth, as Kvanvig says), for

instance when a person who is curious about the name of the capital of Turkey comes to

believe that “Istanbul” is the name of the capital of Turkey, the person actually stops being

curious, and not for the reasons that I listed in the Blade Runner example. This is not the case

for hunger, for when a hungry person is given a pill, he remains hungry.

Whitcomb’s second argument involves a comparison of these two types of utterances:

1
Of course, on de dicto readings, for the sentence “He is hungry now” to be true at t 1, and then be false
at t2, satisfaction of hunger is not the only way. If the person has died hungry, for example, then it is
not the case that he is still hungry even though his hunger was not satisfied. But such cases are not
relevant to my present discussion.
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 (P1) “I believe that p, but I do not know whether p, so more research is needed.”

(P2) “I know that p, but I am curious whether p.”

Whitcomb says that sentences in the form of (P1) are legitimate utterances, but those in the

form of (P2) are not. I think these are safe assumptions, and we can accept these at least for

the time being. Whitcomb’s rather controversial inference is his thinking that (P1) “implies

that inquiry properly ends in knowledge. If knowledge is the proper end of inquiry, then

knowledge is the unique satisfier of curiosity” (2010, 8). In other words, for Whitcomb, the

self-contradictoriness of (P2) shows that once you have knowledge, curiosity properly ends,

and the possibility for (P1) to be true shows that belief is not sufficient to properly satisfy

curiosity. Then he considers whether justified belief or justified true belief (Gettier cases)

could provide satisfaction of curiosity, and he argues that if curiosity-driven inquiries end

with only justified belief or justified true belie, then this would not amount to any satisfaction

of curiosity because in such cases, closed inquiries should not have been closed since “the

beliefs in virtue of which they are closed are not knowledge” (9).

This argument, for Whitcomb, is supposed to show that nothing less than knowledge is the

proper end of curiosity-driven inquiry, because even in Gettier cases, it is actually wrong of

the inquirer to close off her inquiry, and if she were to do so, then she would do it for the

wrong reasons. In other words, Whitcomb argues that curiosity is satisfied only when curious

inquiry is closed for the right reasons that amount to acquisition of relevant knowledge. There

are two assumptions in this view: The first is that Whitcomb doesn’t argue why proper closure

of inquiry and satisfaction of curiosity should be identical, or at least coextensive. If I am

curious about which city is the capital of Turkey, and if I look at Wikipedia and see that it is

Istanbul (because someone changed it from Ankara to Istanbul as a joke two minutes before I

look at it), then I will no longer be in a curious state, believing that I have satisfied my

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curiosity. Whitcomb simply assumes that satisfaction of curiosity can only happen when

further inquiry is not needed.

The second assumption is that such proper end of inquiry is only knowledge, and so

Whitcomb advocates for the norm that says inquiry should end only when knowledge is

reached. But is such norm really attainable? It seems that if we want to preserve a fallibilistic

account of justification and knowledge, then we should reject such a norm because we want to

say that we are justified in closing off some inquiries when we acquire relevant justified

beliefs even though justification does not guarantee truth. Moreover, Whitcomb’s view leads

us to very counterintuitive results, for instance to the idea that Newton was wrong in closing

off his inquiries because he thought time and space was absolute, or to the view that Einstein

was wrong in closing off his inquires because he thought the universe was static. If we grant

that both Newton and Einstein were actually justified in holding their beliefs, especially if the

evidence that was available to them could only point out to the conclusions they reached, then

it seems problematic to say that they were not supposed to end their inquiries. This point is

also emphasized by Kvanvig’s response to Whitcomb. Kvanvig (2012) says that when you

attain epistemic justification—when you are justified in holding that you have reached

knowledge—then closing off your inquiry is the normal thing to do. Furthermore, epistemic

justification and knowledge are indistinguishable from the perspective of the inquirer, and the

perspective of the inquirer is important because it is also the viewpoint that we adapt when we

judge on whether inquiry should be ended or not. So, for everything that we take to be

knowledge, we also take them to be epistemically justified; and for everything that we take to

be epistemically unjustified, we do not take them to be knowledge. Accordingly, when a

person utters (P1), the actual case is that he believes that p, but he doesn’t believe that he is

justified to assert the knowledge-claim that p. This happens, for example, when a scientist

suggests a hypothesis that seems intuitive to him, but wants to test it to be sure. As for (P2),

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the actual case is that the person believes himself to be justified in asserting the knowledge-

claim that p. This is what happens when a scientist confirms his hypothesis by adequate and

sufficient testing.

To sum up, Whitcomb argues that inquiry should be ended only when knowledge is reached,

and satisfaction of curiosity is coextensive with proper closure of inquiry. However, his first

claim does not hold provided that knowledge and epistemic justification are indistinguishable

from the inquirers’ perspective, and his second claim attributes an unnecessary normative

aspect to the satisfaction of curiosity, where finalizing a curiosity-ridden inquiry by reaching

epistemic justification and hence ceasing to be curious is not treated as satisfaction of

curiosity, which seems at the very least counterintuitive. In the next section, I will further

pursue Kvanvig’s model of satisfaction of curiosity in the framework of Inan’s work.

II

Inan proposes two conditions for a person to be curious; inostensible conceptualization and

interest. “Inostensible” is a term that Inan introduces, and as an adjective, it modifies

“linguistic expression[s] that we use to talk about or refer to something” (2012, 32). When I

say, for instance, “the pH value of Pepsi”, this term is inostensible for me (in my idiolect)

because I don’t know the pH value of Pepsi. But when I say, “the pH value of pure water”, the

term is ostensible for me because I know that the pH value of pure water is 7. The role of

inostensibility in curiosity is as follows: curiosity is always about something, that is, curiosity

always comes with an object of curiosity, a thing about which one is curious. Accordingly, the

object of curiosity is always expressible as a definite description that purports to have a

unique reference, and such descriptions are always inostensible for the speaker. In other

words, for a person to be curious, “one has to have a concept expressed by an inostensible

term in the form of a definite description” (2012, 136). If such inostensible conceptualization

is also accompanied by interest, in other words, if the person is sufficiently interested in the
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object, then he or she can be said to be curious. Curiosity, in the light of these two conditions,

can be understood as a mental state in which the curious person, with enough motivation,

desires to know the object that he or she is curious about, and by doing so seeks to convert the

inostensible term that expresses the object of his or her curiosity into an ostensible one.

This picture may suggest that the condition for the satisfaction of curiosity should be the

conversion of the relevant inostensible term into an ostensible one, hence an externalist model

like Whitcomb’s, but there is another way to read it. One way to look at how inostensible

conceptualization plays a role in curiosity is to understand it as an awareness of ignorance.

When a term is inostensible for a person, it means that she is ignorant about the referent of

that term. However, for such inostensibility to lead to curiosity, aside from interest, the person

must also be aware of her ignorance. Let us say, for example, that Michael is normally

interested in chemistry, but he mistakenly thinks that the name of the 107 th chemical element

in the periodic table is hassium, whereas it actually is bohrium. In this case “the name of the

107th chemical element” is an inostensible phrase for Michael, but he cannot be curious about

it as long as he doesn’t realize that he actually does not know what “the name of the 107 th

chemical element” refers to. To be curious about the name of the 107 th chemical element,

Michael must be aware of his ignorance. So, as Inan says, “every instance of curiosity

involves the conceptualization of an unknown object, a particular, a property, a universal, a

kind” (2012, 130).

The requirement of the awareness of ignorance shows us that ignorance itself is not sufficient

for curiosity, but then if it is the awareness of ignorance that is a condition for being curious,

shouldn’t curious inquiry be directed towards no longer being aware of one’s ignorance? If

realizing that one is ignorant about something that one is interested in is what leads the person

to curiosity, then perhaps the termination of the mental state of being aware of one’s

ignorance is the goal of the curious inquirer, and hence perhaps it is not knowledge that the

7
curious person seeks, but rather a justified belief in not being ignorant anymore. To put it

more clearly, if satisfaction of curiosity is understood as what happens at the end of a curious

inquiry which eliminates the curious mental state, then satisfaction of curiosity occurs when

the inquirer has adopted a piece of information, believing it to be true, and thus believing that

she is no longer ignorant about whatever it is that she was originally curious about. This is

pretty much what Kvanvig means when he says that perceived-truth is sufficient for curiosity

to be satisfied. When one perceives a piece of relevant information as true or correct, then

subsequently he is no longer curious, for he no longer believes himself to be ignorant, whether

he actually is or not. This applies to both propositional and non-propositional forms of

curiosity. If, upon curiously inquiring into what the population of Germany is or how to boil

an egg, a person comes to accept as true that the population of Germany is 30 million, or eggs

are to be boiled in hot water for an hour, then she will no longer be curious, and she will have

satisfied her curiosity despite the fact that she will still not know the population of Germany,

or how to boil an egg.

There are two points that need to be said in interpreting this conception. In this view,

satisfaction of curiosity is not just any event that puts an end to the state of curiosity. As I

have shown in my discussion of Whitcomb with the Blade Runner example, a curious person

can lose his curiosity by losing interest in the topic. But in such cases, the person would not

believe that he has found the answer to the question that made him curious in the first place;

rather he would believe that he remains ignorant about the question, but his ignorance is not a

concern for him anymore. This is the other way of becoming non-curious without satisfying

one’s curiosity. What I am proposing, however, is only related to those cases in which the

person would believe that he is no longer ignorant about the matter in question. The second

critical consideration is about how to understand my claim that the curious person only seeks

an answer that he can accept as true even if the answer is not actually true. What I am saying

8
is not that the curious person will be in a state of mind where he will only seek an answer but

he will not care about whether it is true or false. On the contrary, the curious person will only

seek an answer that he can accept as true, but if the answer is not true, his curiosity will still

be satisfied as long as the person does not know or believe that the answer is not true. Here I

am assuming that for any particular belief, Moore’s paradox does not obtain, and a person can

accept a belief only when he believes it to be true.

To understand this view, an important question that needs answering is this: is truth the goal

of curiosity-driven inquiry, and what is the role of truth in satisfying curiosity? Inan’s answer

to this question is a little complicated. In one sense, Inan is opposed to the view that truth is

the ultimate goal of curiosity-driven inquiry, because for him, there are forms of curiosity that

are not directed towards knowing whether a proposition is true. Coming to know whether “the

charge conjugation between a particle and an antiparticle is related to internal quantum

numbers” is true or not is different than coming to know the fact which makes the above

sentence true. One may know that it is true without knowing the corresponding fact. Or,

coming to know the population of Germany is also not about coming to know any truths in

one sense. Hence in some forms of inquiries, which may result from objectual ignorance or

what Inan calls fact-ignorance, “the acquisition of the knowledge of truths…cannot be the

ultimate goal of inquiry” (2016, 301). However, in the same article, Inan argues that curiosity

attributions, whether propositional or objectual, can be formulated as seeking answers to

particular questions (286). To give his own example, “Holmes is curious about who the

murderer is” could be reformulated as “Holmes wishes to answer the question ‘who is the

murderer?’” If that is the case, then all forms of curious inquiry is directed towards the true

answer for the question that asks for the object of curiosity, and thus perhaps Inan’s view is

also sympathetic towards regarding truth as a goal of inquiry. This also seems to support his

remarks on his book where he argues that curiosity-driven inquiry is aimed to come to know

9
the object of curiosity—or the referent of the linguistic term standing for the object of

curiosity—, as he holds that “the satisfaction of curiosity then is always in the form of coming

to know an object as falling under a concept” (2012, 136).

Following the preceding paragraphs, it seems as if truth is an inseparable part of inquiries and

also of the satisfaction of curiosity. But there is an ambiguity in the proposition that truth is

the goal of inquiry. If it is interpreted as the view that inquiry is directed towards knowing

whether a proposition is true or not, then this is neither mine nor Inan’s view as he explicitly

says and demonstrates that “the satisfaction of objectual curiosity requires more than learning

that a certain proposition is true” (2014, 52). However, if it is interpreted as the view that

inquiry is directed towards something true, then even objectual curiosity seems to be directed

towards it, since even when I am curious about the population of Germany, what I seek is the

true answer to the question “what is the population of Germany?” If we opt for the second

interpretation, then it follows that truth is going to play a crucial role in closing off inquiries

and satisfying curiosities.

Truth, then, as in the second interpretation that I have just given, plays a role in every curious

question and every curiosity-driven inquiry, only not as the truth-value of a proposition. Now

consider the following argument from Inan’s book (2012, 136):

The satisfaction of curiosity could always be expressible as the knowledge of an

identity statement in the form [the F is a] where “a” is any singular term and “is”

is the “is” of identity. But for that to be the case, “the F” must be the original

inostensible term that initiates the curiosity, and “a” must be an ostensible term

for the subject.

Accordingly, in curiosity-driven inquires, the curious person seeks to find an ostensible “a”

that is identical to the inostensible “the F.” Another way to present this view would be as the

10
following: Imagine the predicate, “___ is identical to a”, or “being identical to a.”

Accordingly, the curious person would be seeking to find a property (expressed by the above

predicate) that will be true of the object of curiosity. For example, when I am curious about

the population of Germany, [the F is a] will be “the population of Germany is identical to 80

million”, and hence I will be looking for something, namely the property of being identical to

80 million, which is true of the population of Germany.2 What this shows is that truth,

understood in this way, can be the goal of inquiry. We may say that the curious person may

wish to know something true of the object that she is curious about.

This conception of the relation between truth and inquiry is related to the satisfaction of

curiosity because it helps us to understand what the curious person may be after. Now, there

are two ways to go from the premise the inquirer seeks something true. Whitcomb’s answer is

that curiosity can only be satisfied by finding the relevant piece of information which is true

of the object of curiosity. This view is what I reject, and here’s why: Whitcomb’s argument

presupposes that curiosity is itself a desire to find some property which is true of the object of

curiosity. However, if such desire is itself not curiosity, but only a consequence of curiosity,

then we would need something else. Following Inan, I agree that “curiosity is a mental state

that is the entertainment of an inostensible concept of something that is of interest to the

subject. The entertainment of such a concept alone is of course not a desire, but it generally

causes one” (2012, 133). The only thing I would add is that the person must also believe that

the inostensible concept in question is in fact inostensible, that is, he is aware of his

ignorance. The satisfaction of such a mental state, then, could occur when the person no

2
One might object and say that identity relations are not actual properties of identical entities.
Furthermore, for propositional curiosity that asks for the truth-value of a proposition, one might say
that being true is not an actual property of propositions as per some deflationary account of truth. But
all that I am saying is that at the very least, both identity and truth can be expressed as properties by
using relevant predicates according to the grammar of English. So metaphysical views, which treat
truth or identity as non-properties or as trivial properties, would still be compatible with this view,
because all that I need is a grammatical construction which would enable me to translate [the F is a]
into [a is true of F].
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longer entertains the inostensible concept in question, and not because he has lost interest in

the object of curiosity, but because he no longer believes himself to be ignorant of the concept

in question. Accordingly, for a person to be no longer entertaining an inostensible concept of

something of which he no longer believes himself to be ignorant, epistemic justification

would be sufficient. When we perceive ourselves as justified in believing that we know that

the F is a, we would no longer believe that we are ignorant of F. Then, whether F is really a is

not important in order for us to satisfy our curiosity and move on.

Let me then sum up my argument. According to Inan’s model, for a person to be curious, she

must be aware of her ignorance and be interested in the object that she is ignorant of. Then, if

she meets this criteria and becomes curious, she most likely develops a desire to know

something true of the object of her curiosity. However, since curiosity itself is not this desire,

then actually attaining such knowledge is not necessary for the satisfaction of curiosity.

Rather, what satisfies curiosity is no longer being in the mental state of awareness of

ignorance regarding something that one is interested in.

III

In this final section of my paper, I want to discuss some peripheral issues about my account

for the satisfaction of curiosity, and also present some historical texts close to my view.

Among the few philosophers who were curious about curiosity, one that shared similar views

with me was Charles S. Peirce. Even though he does not even mention curiosity, Peirce, in his

discussion of beliefs and doubt, wrote:

Doubt is an uneasy and dissatisfied state from which we struggle to free ourselves

and pass into the state of belief… We may fancy that this is not enough for us, and

that we seek, not merely an opinion, but a true opinion. But put this fancy to the

test, and it proves groundless; for as soon as a firm belief is reached we are

12
 entirely satisfied, whether the belief be true or false. And it is clear that nothing

out of the sphere of our knowledge can be our object, for nothing which does not

affect the mind can be the motive for mental effort. The most that can be

maintained is, that we seek for a belief that we shall think to be true. But we think

each one of our beliefs to be true, and, indeed, it is mere tautology to say so.

(1877, 5)

Considering that Peirce was a very harsh critic of the method of Cartesian doubt, which is not

genuine, but only make-believe doubt, then I believe it is fair to say that when he talks about

doubt, he practically talks about at least propositional curiosity, as in curiosity about

whether-questions. In any case, what Peirce says about doubt seems to fit very well into my

picture of the satisfaction of curiosity. Indeed, if the only thing that we can say or know about

whether a is true of F is what we think about whether a is true of F, then it should come as no

surprise that inquiry that is aimed at truth can satisfactorily end when we think that the inquiry

has reached the truth. Giving conditions that are so external to the human mind that they are

out of reach, which is what Whitcomb’s position does, cannot be useful to our philosophical

efforts. If, following Peirce and Kvanvig, we give truth a role that is within human grasp, I

believe it would provide much better results for understanding curiosity.

Now I would like to answer one possible objection to my view, and also try to show that my

“internalist” thesis of the satisfaction of curiosity does not entail that curiosity itself is an

internal issue. The objection I have in mind is the comment of Inan on this whole discussion.

He says “Let us say that one is subjectively satisfied when one comes to believe that he knows

the object of his curiosity, and one is actually satisfied when one actually comes to know it”

(2012, 141). So why not hold this view? It seems to save us from the over-commitments of

both Whitcomb’s and my views. One reason to reject it is because I think this position avoids

the problem. If this is the answer to the question “how is curiosity satisfied?”, then one simply

13
has to change the question to “how is curiosity actually satisfied?” Inan gives two

paradigmatic examples for subjective satisfaction, and only one of them is the related to

ending curiosity-driven inquiry with false belief. These include cases like coming to believe

that Istanbul is the capital of Turkey, and I have already argued that such inquiry may end

with actual satisfaction of curiosity. The other example of subjective satisfaction in Inan is

when the curious person acquires some true beliefs about the object of his curiosity, but the

epistemic connection between the person and the object of curiosity is limited. For instance,

when a person is curious about the capital of Turkey (not merely its name, but the actual city),

and learns that it is called “Ankara”, if she believes to have satisfied her curiosity, then for

Inan, this is only subjective satisfaction because she doesn’t actually know anything about

Ankara other than its name. The reason why this is supposed to be subjective satisfaction is

because “Ankara” is still inostensible for the person. However, as Inan later argues, whether a

person knows a city, or a person, or some other object, and hence whether the term that

designated the object in question is ostensible, can depend on the context. He writes that

“curiosity and its satisfaction is then context relative. Context at times may be local or even

subjective, but it may also be social or cultural” (2012, 153). So, when the person claims to

know Ankara even though all that she knows about it is its name, in some contexts this may

count as knowledge, and hence actual satisfaction. This shows that the commitment to a

distinction between subjective and actual satisfaction may even be avoided to some degree in

Inan’s own theory. But perhaps we want to say that knowing the name of Ankara does not

entail actually knowing Ankara. Assuming so, a person can still stop being curious about

Ankara after learning only its name. Then one way to analyze this situation would be to say

that perhaps the person was not very interested in Ankara. Perhaps she only wanted to know

only one thing about the city, and if her curiosity has ended after coming to know Ankara’s

name, then perhaps in that case, “Ankara” was ostensible enough for her. I think what matters

14
is that if she no longer believes that she is ignorant about Ankara, then she has actually

satisfied her curiosity. Also, if it were the case that her curiosity was not actually satisfied,

then considering that she has stopped being curious and also considering that her curiosity has

not faded away like the Blade Runner example, then what happened to it?

Lastly, if my thesis is true, such that if a person satisfies her curiosity when she no longer

believes that she is ignorant of something that she was interested in, in other words when she

believes that she has satisfied her curiosity, it should not follow that the same conditions

apply to curiosity, too. In other words, my account does not entail that believing to be non-

curious is also sufficient for being non-curious as well. Consider the following example:

Brian is an 18 years old person, and comes from a very strict religious background. One day

he becomes curious about how it would be like to kiss another man. He becomes aware of his

curiosity, and starts to feel very guilty about it for religious reasons. He seeks the advice of

the priest of his church about the issue, and the priest tells him to forget about his curiosity

because it might lead to sinful action. Then, Brian convinces himself through what one might

call self-indoctrination that he is not curious anymore about how it would be like to kiss

another man. He forces himself to genuinely believe that he is not curious. However, suppose

it is true that if Brian were to be examined by psychologists and psychoanalysts, they would

all say that he has repressed his curiosity, and that his repressed curiosity could actually be

seen from his behaviour. Moreover, Brian admits to still being curious about kissing another

man under hypnosis. Further suppose that five years later, Brian will become disillusioned

with his religious worldview, and will confess to himself that he has been actually curious all

along.

This case is rather controversial in that it might objected that Brian stopped being curious

after his talk with the priest. But I think we can correctly say that Brian is curious about how

it would be like to kiss another man even though he perceives himself not to be curious. Cases
15
like this are actually more similar to Whitcomb’s hunger example because in the hunger

example, the person is actually hungry even though he doesn’t believe that he is hungry.

Similarly, Brian is actually curious even though he doesn’t believe that he is curious. But

unlike the hunger example with the pill, in which the person perceives being nourished, Brian

here does not believe that he has satisfied his curiosity. Rather, Brian would falsely believe

that his case is similar to the Blade Runner example. Nevertheless, if Brian is actually curious

even though he doesn’t believe to be, then what follows is that curiosity itself is not a

completely internal state of the mind. In any case, while this issue is not directly related to the

satisfaction of curiosity, I believe it may be fruitful to point out that an internalist view

regarding the satisfaction of curiosity does not have to be incompatible with an externalist

account of curiosity in general.

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 References

Inan, Ilhan. 2012. The Philosophy of Curiosity. New York, London: Routledge.

Inan, Ilhan. 2014. “Curiosity, Belief and Acquaintance.” In: Abrol Fairweather, ed., Virtue
Epistemology Naturalized: Bridges Between Virtue Epistemology and Philosophy of Science
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