The role of values in curiosity
Cognitive and epistemic issues
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 21591994 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Selene Arfini (0000-0001-5499-8644, University of Pavia, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Pages | 1-25 |
| Publication date | 2025-09-23 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Philosophical Psychology (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0951-5089 • E-ISSN: 1465-394X |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/09515089.2025.2562049 |
| OpenAlex | W4414430603 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 60 |
This paper examines the role of values in the emergence of curiosity, focusing on its so-called “chicken-egg problem”: do we become curious because we already care about something, or do we start caring because we are curious about it? Drawing on an embodied and ecological perspective on cognition, as well as insights from Ignorance Studies, I analyze the affective and epistemic conditions under which curiosity arises. I defend two main claims: (1) curiosity emerges as an embodied response to the affordances of unfamiliar objects, which agents engage with because they already value them in some way; and (2) once curiosity arises, it reshapes how agents care for that content. To capture this dynamic, I propose a compound definition of curiosity as a bodily, emotional, and cognitive state, where caring guides curiosity and curiosity reveals caring
Cognition · Cognitive bias · Experimental philosophy · Motivated reasoning · Epistemology, Ethics, and Metaphysics · Misinformation and Its Impacts · Psychological and Educational Research Studies
Explaining Value
Ignorance and investigation
E Cognition
Interest—The Curious Emotion
On Distinguishing Epistemic from Pragmatic Action
The Psychology and Neuroscience of Curiosity
A Theory of Human Curiosity
Disentangling Curiosity
Constructive constraints
How many heuristics are enough? Testing a parsimonious theory of possibility generation in problem-solving
Traité de la nature humaine
Routledge International Handbook of Ignorance Studies
Race and Epistemologies of Ignorance
The Oxford Handbook of 4E Cognition
An Outline of a Theory of Affordances
The psychology of curiosity
Question‐directed Attitudes
The importance of what we care about
Motivated ignorance, rationality, and democratic politics
Curiosity was Framed
Two kinds of curiosity
The Contents and Causes of Curiosity
Understanding Violence
A Rich Landscape of Affordances
A Classroom-Based Study on the Antecedents of Epistemic Curiosity in L2 Learning
Using Curiosity to Improve Learning Outcomes in Schools
Time-inconsistent Preferences and Consumer Self-Control
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |