HUMS 116 CURIOSITY

Core Curriculum
Syllabus Spring 2022
Lecturer: Ilhan Inan
Email: iinan@ku.edu.tr
Phone: 212-338 1580
Office: SOS 163
Lectures: Mondays and Wednesdays 13:00-14:10
Office Hours: Mondays and Wednesdays 12:30-13:00 and by appointment
Teaching Assistants: Selma Slocum (sslocum20@ku.edu.tr)
Kaj Zeller (kzeller21@ku.edu.tr)
TA Office Hours: TBA

COURSE DESCRIPTION:
While Ancient philosophers have praised curiosity as the initial motivator of all our inquiries,
the medieval thinkers thought of it mostly as a sin. With the rise of modern science and
philosophy curiosity once again gained a somewhat positive role. Nonetheless serious
scientific research on curiosity had to wait until the end of twentieth century to begin, and
only within the last decade philosophers have started working on curiosity in depth. In this
interdisciplinary course, we will read and briefly discuss some historical texts and
concentrate on some of the recent literature on curiosity in psychology, philosophy,
neuroscience, and education. In the first part we will deal with the question of what
curiosity is, how it is possible for a being to become curious, what different forms it has, and
how it is satisfied. In the second part we shall discuss when and how curiosity is valuable, in
what ways it may be a virtue or a vice, whether curiosity is needed for a good life, and the
role curiosity plays in education.

TENTATIVE SCHEDULE:

Week 1: The Study of Curiosity, its History, its Significance, its Interdisciplinarity

Inan, I. The Philosophy of Curiosity, Introduction, 2012.

PART 1: WHAT IS CURIOSITY? (Weeks 1-8)

Week 1: Wonder as the Start of Philosophy and the Sciences

Aristotle, Metaphysics, Book 1, Parts 1 and 2

Weeks 2-3: How Is Curiosity Possible?

1
 Plato, Meno, 80d-87c (especially (80d-e))
Inan, I. The Philosophy of Curiosity, Chapter 1-Meno’s Paradox and Inostensible
Conceptualization, 2012.
Inan, I. The Philosophy of Curiosity, Chapter 8-Conditions for Curiosity, 2012.

Weeks 3-4: Curiosity, Desire to Know and its Satisfaction

Kvanvig, J. from The Value of Knowledge and the Pursuit of Understanding, 2003.
Whitcomb, D. “Curiosity was Framed”, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research,
2010.
Inan, I. The Philosophy of Curiosity, Chapter 9-Conditions for the Satisfaction of
Curiosity, 2012.

Weeks 5-6: Perceptual versus Epistemic Curiosity and the Information Gap Theory

Berlyne, D.E. “A Theory of Human Curiosity”, British Journal of Psychology, 45, 1954.
Loewenstein, G. “The Psychology of Curiosity. A Review and Reinterpretation”.
Psychological Bulletin, 116 (1), 1994.

Week 7: Curiosity in Neuroscience

Kidd, C. & Hayden, Y. “The Psychology and Neuroscience of Curiosity”, Neuron 88,
2015.

Spring Break April 11-15

Mid-term (in-class) April 18, Monday

PART 2: THE VALUE OF CURIOSITY (Weeks 9-13)

Week 9: Curiosity as a Sin or a Vice

Dunnington, K. “Pre-modern Christian Perspectives on Curiosity”, in The Moral

Psychology of Curiosity, 2018.

Week 10-11: Curiosity as an Epistemic Value

Hume, Treatise of Human Nature (Of the Passions, Section X, Of curiosity, or the love
of truth).

2
 Schmitt , F. and Lahroodi, R. “The Epistemic Value of Curiosity”, Educational Theory
(58)2, 2008.
Miscevic, N. The Epistemic Value of Curiosity, Springer, 2020.

Week 12: Curiosity and the Good Life

Yiğit, S. “Curiosity as an Intellectual Virtue”, in The Moral Psychology of Curiosity,

2018.

Week 13: Curiosity in Education

Watson, L. “Educating for Curiosity”, in The Moral Psychology of Curiosity, 2018.

Week 14: Review

Final (in-class May 26, Wednesday)

Readings: The Moral Psychology of Curiosity, eds. Inan, Watson, Whitcomb, Yiğit, Rowman
& Littlefield, 2018. (Required)
Inan, I. The Philosophy of Curiosity, Routledge, 2012. (Required)

Individual chapters and articles that will be discussed in class will be uploaded on
Blackboard.

Requirements: The course is open to students in all majors within the limits of the class
quota. The only requirement for the course is to be genuinely curious about curiosity. Some
of the discussions in the class will not be based on the readings, so attendance is essential,
and discussion will be highly encouraged. There will be a midterm (40%) and a final (40%)
and 4 in-class exercises (20%).

Acknowledgments: I owe my special thanks to my colleague Professor Fatoş Gökşen and my

undergraduate student assistant Yaren Afra Dikdönek for their valuable inputs in designing
this course.