Lani Watson

In this paper, I explore the role that the intellectual virtue of curiosity can play in response to some of the most pressing challenges of the Information Age. I argue that virtuous curiosity represents a valuable characterological resource for the twenty-first century, in particular, a restricted form of curiosity, namely inquisitiveness. I argue that virtuous inquisitiveness should be trained and cultivated, via the skill of good questioning, and discuss the risks of failing to do so in relation to the design and use of novel technologies. If left unchecked, I argue, vicious forms of curiosity can emerge, with broad implications for society as a whole. Thus, we should seek to cultivate virtuous curiosity and teach the skill of good questioning to those of us (in principle, all of us) who use and rely on technology in our work and lives.

Questions are, in many respects, the hallmarks of the philosopher's trade. They are passed down from one generation to the next and yet, throughout history, philosophers have had relatively little to say about questions. In particular, few have asked or tried to answer the question ‘what is a question'. I call this the ‘Question Question’ and I offer an answer to it in this paper, furnishing philosophical analysis with the results of a large online survey, which has been running for more than a decade.

Questioning is ubiquitous and habitual in our daily lives. We ask questions all the time, often without reflecting consciously on the practice. Sometimes it goes well, sometimes it doesn't and often we don’t notice the difference. Questions are also a familiar feature of public discourse and here the difference between good and bad questioning can have important and sometimes damaging effects: a leading question that influences the results of a referendum, a loaded question that forces a prejudicial response in public debate, the aggressive or insensitive questioning of journalists hungry for a story.

In this paper I investigate what makes questioning bad (Section I) then offer a taxonomy of bad questioning practices (Section II). Drawing on examples of questioning in contemporary politics, I go on to discuss the nature and impact of bad questioning in the public sphere (Section III). I argue that bad questioning is an intellectual failing often expressed in intellectual vices such as negligence, closed-mindedness and arrogance (Section IV). As such, bad questioning in the public sphere degrades the professional character of, for example, journalists and politicians and undermines the wider role that they play in our epistemic communities. I conclude that greater attention should be paid to questioning practices in public and political forums in order to check and maintain the epistemic and characterological integrity of key social institutions (Section V).

How does the idea that knowledge is power play out in our schools and universities. How does it feature in our education systems and how does it impact upon the intellectual characters of students. Specifically, how does the pervasiveness of this idea in our schools and classrooms affect students’ willingness and ability to be intellectually humble. In this paper, I suggest that this idea presents itself in contemporary classrooms as a barrier to the development and exercise of intellectual humility. Simply put, when we equate knowledge with power, we make it harder to be intellectually humble. In its most prevalent manifestation, this barrier arises in the form of answer-oriented education. I spend the majority of the paper outlining the nature and impact of answer-oriented education and, towards the end, suggest one way to remove this barrier by shifting from answer-oriented to question-oriented education. The latter, I argue, warrants further attention in philosophical and educational research.

Epistemic rights feature both implicitly and explicitly in the highly polarized pro-life versus pro-choice abortion debate in the US. This paper explores the nature and role of epistemic rights in that debate. I argue that the proper characterisation of epistemic rights allows us to identify a range of epistemic harms perpetrated by key actors and institutions in the debate amounting to epistemic rights violations. Using two case studies, I highlight where epistemic rights arise and are violated in the abortion debate and examine the consequences of these violations for individuals and epistemic communities. I conclude that epistemic rights violations in the abortion debate harm individuals, diminish the quality of the debate and lead to increased polarization.

One natural application of Linda Zagzebski’s exemplarist moral theory (EMT) is found in the context of moral and intellectual character education. Zagzebski discusses this application in her recent book, commenting that ‘exemplars can serve as a guide for moral training’ (p. 129) and endorsing ‘the learning of virtue by imitation’ (p. 129). This theme has been pursued compellingly by authors working at the intersection of virtue ethics and education, contributing to an emerging case for exemplarist-based approaches to character education. I focus on intellectual character education and draw attention to an interesting case in which exemplarism in the classroom may be seen to inhibit, rather than promote, the development of intellectually virtuous character. This is the case of virtuous inquisitiveness.

Questioning is a familiar, everyday practice which we use, often unreflectively, in order to gather information, communicate with each other, and advance our inquiries. Yet, not all questions are equally effective and not all questioners are equally adept. Being a good questioner requires a degree of proficiency and judgment, both in determining what to ask and in deciding who, where, when, and how to ask. Good questioning is an intellectual skill. Given its ubiquity and significance, it is an intellectual skill that, I believe, we should educate for. In this paper, I present a central line of argument in support of educating for good questioning, namely, that it plays an important role in the formation of an individual’s intellectual character and can thereby serve as a valuable pedagogical tool for intellectual character education. I argue that good questioning plays two important roles in the cultivation of intellectual character: good questioning (1) stimulates intellectually virtuous inquiry and (2) contributes to the development of several of the individual intellectual virtues. Insofar as the cultivation of intellectually virtuous character is a desirable educational objective, we should educate for good questioning.

‘Euro judges “open floodgates to illegals”’ (The Sun, 8 June 2016), ‘Fury over plot to let 1.5M Turks enter Britain’ (Daily Mail, 13 June 2016), ‘European criminals free to live in Britain’ (Daily Telegraph, 7 June 2016). These headlines all appeared in the weeks immediately prior to the UK referendum on EU membership, held on 23 June 2016. They present a stark and unified message regarding the nature, scale and impact of EU immigration in the UK It is hard to deny that a correlation exists between public concern with EU immigration at this time and media attention on the topic. That the media actively shaped the beliefs of its audience, regarding EU immigration, and that it did so through the propagation of misinformation and in the biasing and concealment of accurate information is also, I argue, overwhelmingly plausible. As such, the media handling of information concerning EU immigration during pre-Brexit campaigning provides a compelling illustration of the systematic violation of epistemic rights. In this paper, I outline the nature of epistemic rights and epistemic rights violations and demonstrate the widespread perpetration of such violations in pre-Brexit media coverage. This provides a case study for the investigation of epistemic rights violations across national and international media; a topic of central concern for contemporary epistemology.

My aim, in this chapter, is to present a characterisation of the intellectual virtue of curiosity that offers some insight into educating for the virtue, and provides theoretically grounded motivations for doing so. I begin by outlining a characterisation of curiosity as an intellectual virtue. I then examine three key features of this characterisation relevant to the task of educating for curiosity as an intellectual virtue. Finally, I present, what I take to be two of the most compelling reasons to educate for the intellectual virtue of curiosity.

This paper offers characterisations of the intellectual virtues of curiosity and inquisitiveness and discusses the distinction between them. I argue that curiosity and inquisitiveness should not be regarded as synonymous. Specifically, virtuous inquisitiveness emerges as a restricted form of virtuous curiosity: it is virtuous curiosity manifested as good questioning. This has implications, within applied virtue epistemology, for the ways in which we educate for these closely related, but distinct intellectual virtues.

The landscape of contemporary epistemology has significantly diversified in the past thirty years, shaped in large part by two complementary movements; virtue and social epistemology. This diversification provides an apt theoretical context for the epistemology of education. No longer concerned exclusively with the formal analysis of knowledge, epistemologists have turned their attention towards individuals as knowers, and the social contexts in which epistemic goods such as knowledge and understanding are acquired and exchanged. As such the concerns of epistemology have once again aligned with questions lying at the heart of the philosophy of education regarding the nature, aims and practice of education. Employing the conceptual tools and frameworks of the contemporary field, these questions are addressed by both epistemologists and education theorists in the emerging epistemology of education literature. *** The epistemology of education raises and addresses epistemological questions concerning the nature, aims and practice of education. These questions have come to the fore in light of a changing epistemological landscape in which the focus and content of epistemological inquiry has significantly diversified in recent decades. The epistemology of education employs the conceptual tools and frameworks of the contemporary field in order to contribute to core debates in the philosophy of education. In order to provide a clear sense of the theoretical terrain in which this emerging field is situated some context-setting is worth doing at the outset. A number of long-standing debates in the philosophy of education are addressed in the epistemology of education literature. This reveals both the philosophical heritage of the discourse

This paper offers an in-depth examination of the intellectual virtue of inquisitiveness. A characterisation of inquisitiveness is developed in Part I in which the inquisitive person is identified as one who is characteristically motivated to engage sincerely in good questioning. Part II then examines the place of inquisitiveness among the virtues. Inquisitiveness is seen to bear a defining relationship to the process of inquiry as a fundamentally motivating intellectual virtue. On this basis it is argued that inquisitiveness plays a distinctively valuable role in the intellectually virtuous life placing it at the heart of autonomous virtue epistemology.

Inquisitiveness is a paradigm example of an intellectual virtue. Despite some extensive work on the characterisation of the intellectual virtues however (e.g. Roberts and Wood, 2007; Baehr 2011) no detailed treatment of the virtue of inquisitiveness has been forthcoming in the recent literature. This paper offers a characterisation of the virtue of inquisitiveness considered within the framework of educating for intellectual virtue. As such, it presents the case in support of educating for inquisitiveness. The characterisation offered seeks to highlight in particular the distinctive relationship that inquisitiveness bears to the activity of questioning. When considered within the context of educating for intellectual virtue, this distinctive relationship is seen to have particular significance. The activity of questioning is a ubiquitous feature of everyday learning. Young children in particular are often observed to be avid question-askers and this natural tendency is manifest in a wide variety of contexts including the school classroom. There is, therefore, a natural association between inquisitiveness and learning. On this basis it is argued, the natural inclination exhibited by young children towards questioning provides us with a valuable tool in the promotion of intellectual flourishing. Moreover, the distinctive relationship that inquisitiveness bears to questioning highlights its special significance in the intellectually virtuous life in virtue of its defining role in the initiation of intellectually virtuous inquiry. Insofar as the nurturing of intellectually virtuous inquiry is a central aim of the project of educating for intellectual virtue, this places inquisitiveness centre-stage. As such, inquisitiveness is a primary intellectual virtue to educate for.

We speak of the right to know with relative ease. You have the right to know the results of a medical test or to be informed about the collection and use of personal data. But what exactly is the right to know, and who should we trust to safeguard it?

This book provides the first comprehensive examination of the right to know and other epistemic rights: rights to goods such as information, knowledge and truth. These rights play a prominent role in our information-centric society and yet they often go unnoticed, disregarded and unprotected. As such, those who control what we know, or think we know, exert an influence on our lives that is often as dangerous as it is imperceptible.

Beginning with a rigorous but accessible philosophical account of epistemic rights, Lani Watson examines the harms caused by epistemic rights violations, drawing on case studies across medical, political and legal contexts. She investigates who has the right to what information, who is responsible for the quality and circulation of information and what epistemic duties we have towards each other. This book is essential reading for philosophers, legal theorists and anyone concerned with the protection and promotion of information, knowledge and truth.