What does ‘being curious’ mean today? A brief look at the concept of curiosity and some issues with calling it a ‘job skill’

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Why is curiosity valuable?

‘All men by nature desire to know’¹, this is how Aristotle began his work “Metaphysics” and this has been established as the standard philosophical definition of curiosity — ‘a desire to know’. Curiosity is tied to motivation and understanding how and what motivates us to learn might lead us to understand why we find it valuable. The notion of value of curiosity is well summarized by philosopher Nenad Misevic: “We have an interest in certain topics, and we care to know more about them. It is this kind of interest that motivates us to reflect on our ignorance, and only then we become curious.

So, in this sense, curiosity is value-laden. We are curious only about things that we are interested to know”². ‘Interest’ here has a broader sense and this could be illustrated by distinguishing between two kinds of value. The first comes from desiring to learn something because we find it interesting in itself, i.e. ‘intrinsic’ value. The second kind — ‘extrinsic’ — relates to pursuing knowledge for pragmatic reasons, as an instrument for advancing some further goal. We are interested whether there are traces of life on Mars, just for the sake of knowing it, on the other hand, we want to know the bus timetable for rather practical purposes. Certainly, there are many instances in which these two come together, and it need not be the case that we can always separate them by a sharp boundary.

Curiosity is an intentional mental state, i.e. it is always about something; strictly speaking we are never ‘just curious’ but curious about an object of our interest. There are different classifications of ‘curiosity’, but I won’t mention them all here. For the purposes of this article, one important notion to introduce is ‘trait curiosity’, which is used to refer to a ‘general capacity or propensity to experience curiosity’³. Trait curiosity has proved notorious for studying as results clearly depend on a “..match between individual’s or group’s areas of curiosity and those included in the measuring scales’’⁴. With respect to the value of curiosity, intrinsic and extrinsic value come from the individual, but value is also attributed from external sources — other people or social groups. What is obvious is that value will vary across different individuals for different fields of interest and it need not correspond to what social structures determine as valuable. In the lines to follow, I want to draw attention to how these different ways of valuation interact and briefly examine a relatively new notion of curiosity — as a job skill.

Contemporary reputation

We speak of curiosity as something positive and valuable, however, the term did not always have a good reputation. In the past it held negative connotation when it used to refer to what today we call ‘inquisitiveness’ as being too eager to know, or ‘prying’ — being interested in other people’s affairs.

Today curiosity is largely viewed in positive light, it is also considered a top ‘job skill’. One can find numerous guides on how to demonstrate curiosity at job interviews and so on. Society values ‘curiosity’ as a trait as well as in a tighter relation to some specific interests. Nevertheless, even when we speak of trait curiosity, which by definition isn’t about any concrete object, external valuation is not neutral to the interests that are demonstrated. We can imagine someone who is very eager to learn new things, however if the interests they show are, for example, related to harming others — we’d be rather hesitant to call them ‘a curious person’. The example shows that curiosity is a positive endowment and it is not attributed apart from some assessment of one’s interests. It isn’t obvious that trait curiosity and the ‘skill’ of curiosity are the same thing even though they can easily get confused — in speech they are both referred to with expression like ‘being curious’, without a mention of any particular interest. Moreover, at first glance, it seems that this ‘skill’ of curiosity is much more closely related to concrete interests rather than being trait-like. In the next sections I will examine ‘the curiosity skill’ in more detail and look at some of the basic considerations upon which it is usually awarded.

The skill of being curious

If the value we give to curiosity always has to do with how we see the object of curiosity, then the question of where the value comes from might be answered in part by understanding how and what determines the value of particular interests. As I already mentioned, curiosity is now among the top job skills, but how do institutions attribute it to people? Certainly, corporations do not care about how much you are interested in physics, music or astronomy (some do), what is relevant is that one learns things that companies consider important. Curiosity for practical purposes is paramount — it is the minimal requirement for being conferred the curiosity skill, while Intrinsic interest in the topic is not needed. It is true that the two can and may often coincide, but the point here is that what makes curiosity valuable is what institutions find worthwhile and important, and it need not relate to any genuine interest one has in a given topic. To illustrate, imagine if someone you know tells you: ‘I’ll not consider you curious, unless you learn what is interesting and important to me.’ It sounds ridiculous, but the analogy is not far from accurate.

Since being seen as ‘curious’ is not value-neutral, we do care about how and who receives this endowment. The worries I have raised above are that curiosity as a job skill is conferred on the basis of a predefined set of interests that do not have to agree with person’s own interests. From this follows that learning for purely practical reasons is sufficient for one to ‘obtain’ the skill of curiosity.

Here one may ask: Why does this deserve any attention?

First, curiosity is one of the most genuine forms of expression of our freedom and individuality. We determine our own interests, follow them and advance our natural capacities. Identifying curiosity as an essential part of human autonomy allows us to further appreciate it in others. In addition, we have a natural liking of people who appear interested in learning, but it is, I argue, precisely their genuine interest that provokes our appreciation. Curiosity as a job skill is driven by necessity, more importantly, it is essentially determined by external interests. Imagine a world where the concept of ‘curiosity’ is entirely defined by institutions who also enforce its positive status in this purely practical form; and imagine further that genuine human interests are seen as a waste of time unless they fit the predefined ‘valuable knowledge’. Thankfully, this is just a hypothetical.

One may object that I am criticizing curiosity where it pertains to practical purposes. This is not so, the object of my critique is the skill of curiosity which is presented as trait-like, while it is simply a way to require people to learn according to externally defined interests and further compete over it. Practical curiosity is not sufficient to constitute a trait or trait-like quality, the ingredient of intrinsic interest is nothing less than necessary.

One may still ask: “Isn’t it important to foster curiosity while promoting it as a valuable job skill?” Phrased this way, the question doesn’t make a lot of sense in light of the analysis; if we accept that the definition of curiosity (job skill) is under the blessing of institutions and their area of operation, there is not a single skill but a great number of skills, none of which can be considered trait-like in order to fall under the common concept of ‘curiosity’, the way they pretend to. Curiosity as a job skill is not trait-like but always ‘curiosity about something’, which also narrows down the concept of skill to some, at best, industry-specific interest.

When it comes to fostering curiosity — all people are naturally curious, we find gaining knowledge rewarding and curiosity essentially motivates all our epistemic achievements. The only good way to foster curiosity is to allow one to freely express it and bear its rewards in whatever form. It is true that there are people who are more curious than others in the trait-sense, i.e. they express broader and/or deeper interests in learning but no different treatment should apply here — promoting free selection and free pursuit of interests is what we should encourage and cultivate. What should always be kept in mind is that curiosity is a universal trait and attempts to equate it to a predetermined set of interests is detrimental to say the least.