Work in Progress: Virtue Epistemology and the Moral Status of Curiosity
Friday 23 December 2022
In a PS to my previous newsletter I noted that I have been working on space ethics since I gave a space ethics presentation during the Space Education Symposium last month. I have continued to work on this, and now I have this outline:
Space Ethics I
An Introduction to Moral Reasoning for Spacefaring Civilizations
- Why should I be Moral? F. H. Bradley and the Shopping Cart Problem
2. Astronauts, Officials, Engineers, & Entrepreneurs: Professional Ethics in the Space Industry
3. The Vocation of the Explorer: Virtue Ethics in Outer Space
4. The Harvest of Exploration: What Will We Find Out There, and How Will We Respond?
5. Axiological Conflict of Historical and Scientific Values: A Problem Set in Space Ethics
6. SETI, METI, SETA, and SATI: Another Problem Set in Space Ethics
7. Utilitarianism Live! A Thought Experiment of Life in Space
8. What are we trying to do in Space?
9. The Good Life in Outer Space
10. What is at Stake in Space Development? Existential Risk as a Moral Imperative
11. Our Radical Future in Outer Space: A Revaluation of All Terrestrial Values
12. Our Traditional Future in Outer Space: The Human Legacy Writ Large
Space Ethics II
Further Elaborations on Moral Reasoning in its Cosmological Context
1. The Natural History of Ethics in Deep Time: The Evolution of Moral Agents
2. The Moral Ontology of Space Ethics
3. Planetary Protection: Fortress Earth
4. Conservation Astrobiology
5. Pristine Biospheres: Preservation, Conservation, or Exploitation?
6. The Expansionist Imperative
7. Human Speciation: The Great Adaptive Radiation
8. Ethical Plurality: A Multiplicity of Non-Human (and Post-Human) Moral Agents
9. A Moral Taxonomy of Spacefaring Civilizations
10. Beyond Expansionism: Building Better Worlds
11. Beyond Civilization: Building Better Societies
12. Ethics at the End of Time
Some parts of this are already completed (e.g., Part I, №10), and the first half of Part I is substantially complete; nevertheless, these ideas are developing rapidly, so even the overall structure exhibited by the outline is subject to change. In trying to put together something more than an introductory talk, there is not only the problem of having something of interest to say about each topic, but also of stringing them together so that the whole is more than the sum of the parts, so that topics as arranged build up into a comprehensive outlook. Since the spacefaring future of human beings and our successor species could exceed any arbitrary limitation in space or time, the scope of space ethics is as indefinite as the universe within which space ethics will be a relevant inquiry, and we need above all a comprehensive conception that can prove a guide even where a given topic has been passed over or not anticipated.
It would be relatively straight-forward to take up in sequence a number of prominent moral theories and then test them against possible repercussions in the space environment; this needs to be done eventually for the sake of thoroughness, and, done right, it could be quite interesting. However, done poorly it would be deadly dull. Joseph Campbell once talked about how he was invited to write on mythology for a major publisher, and he said he wouldn’t touch the project of an updated version of Bullfinch’s Mythology. Instead, Campbell wrote the four volume Masks of God series on mythology, which is nothing at all like Bullfinch’s but which stands on its own as an important contribution of mythography.
In my space ethics reading I have been particularly interested in the problem of curiosity, which can be, and has been, viewed as both a virtue and a vice. The idea of curiosity as a virtue and as a vice came up more than once during the Resilience Symposium on December 14 and 15. I listened to most (though not all) of the presentations of Resilience Symposium 2022: In Awe of Space, and this spurred me on to think more about curiosity.
If we were to identify a set of intellectual virtues, or even of scientific virtues (or even, again, epistemic virtues, as some philosophers call them), we would presumably include scientific curiosity among these virtues. The role of curiosity is tied to the idea of scientific civilization in an important way: presumably, again, curiosity would be particularly celebrated within a scientific civilization, though even here it might need to be cultivated with a certain discernment. Lewis Ross, in his 2018 paper “The Virtue of Curiosity,” argues:
“…the virtuous agent will exhibit a skilful disposition to be curious: they will experience curiosity that is appropriately discerning (in being directed at the right object), timely (in arising in appropriate circumstances), and exacting (in not being satisfied too easily).”
The Wikipedia article on curiosity is entirely on scientific curiosity and has nothing whatsoever to say about the countervailing tradition that condemns curiosity as a vice. There are a great many quotes to be found on the condemnation of curiosity as a vice, so that even if this is not our attitude today, we must reckon with it as part of our tradition. The easiest way to meet the problem would be to make a distinction within curiosity, so that there is, say, mere idle curiosity on the one hand, and this is a vice, while, on the other hand, there is scientific curiosity, and this is a virtue. There is some basis for this distinction insofar as we discourage children from asking too many irrelevant or indiscreet questions even as we may reward them for what is seen to be a proper curiosity exercised in a responsible way. However, this doesn’t seem to quite capture the spirit of the condemnation of curiosity we find in Patristic sources, and this is what I would like to better understand.
The distinction above between idle curiosity and scientific curiosity implies that the former applies to mere trivia while the latter applies to matters of greater consequence, so that a scale of degrees of triviality or significance could be made, with curiosity in regard to the trivial being less forgivable while curiosity in regard to the consequential is more forgivable, if not admirable. The problem with this, and, by extension, the problem with the earlier distinction which seems to imply a distinction between the trivial and the consequential, is that the classical sources that condemn curiosity seem to particularly single out curiosity into matters beyond human comprehension as being especially pernicious. To illustrate what I mean by Patristic sources, here is a quote on curiosity from St. John Chrysostom:
“What then, is the cause of such a sickness? It is an inquisitive and curious mind, it is wanting to know all the causes of everything that happens, it is questioning the incomprehensible and unspeakable providence of God, and it is shamelessly investigation and being inquisitive about that which is limitless and unsearchable.”
St. Augustine often skewered curiosity, as in this passage from his Confessions (10.35.55):
“…pleasure seeketh objects beautiful, melodious, fragrant, savoury, soft; but curiosity, for trial’s sake, the contrary as well, not for the sake of suffering annoyance, but out of the lust of making trial and knowing them. For what pleasure hath it, to see in a mangled carcase what will make you shudder? and yet if it be lying near, they flock thither, to be made sad, and to turn pale. Even in sleep they are afraid to see it. As if when awake, any one forced them to see it, or any report of its beauty drew them thither! Thus also in the other senses, which it were long to go through. From this disease of curiosity are all those strange sights exhibited in the theatre. Hence men go on to search out the hidden powers of nature (which is besides our end), which to know profits not, and wherein men desire nothing but to know.”
We clearly recognize the kind of morbid curiosity that Augustine describes in those who are curious to see something that makes them shudder, but Augustine did not stop there but goes on to also condemn those who seek the hidden powers of nature, which is precisely what is distinctive about scientific curiosity.
One of the things that makes the problem of curiosity interesting is that curiosity is crucial to human survival and to the ongoing development of human society. Granted this, why would any tradition of identifying curiosity as a vice even appear? Merely from a selective perspective we can imagine that some forms of curiosity have a high survival value while some forms of curiosity would be fatal. We’ve all heard that curiosity killed the cat. Curiosity, then, has a dual aspect, and from this one is not surprised that it has been understood both as a vice and a virtue.
Imagine human ancestors exploring the caves now famous for their paintings — presumably this exploration would have been undertaken with a certain amount of fear, caution in response to the fear, and proper respect for the dangers involved. Was it curiosity that drove them forward into deeper and darker chambers, or was this merely an expression of the needs of survival during the last glacial maximum? Even if the survival instinct was the primary motivator, it was human curiosity — curiosity shaped and directed by intelligence — that sought out this survival method, and which adapted to it through the use of fire, torches, and eventually decorated these spaces with paintings and carvings. Without the technological curiosity that led to the use of fire, the utility of caves for survival would have been limited.
One could argue historically that a society requires a certain degree of curiosity while its institutions and practices are being initially developed, but after that society converges on stability curiosity is seen as a danger because it can contribute to the destabilization of these same institutions. Since the kind of curiosity that would be characteristic of an instinct has a dual aspect, and could contribute to either survival or death, the further refinements to curiosity found in human societies — scientific curiosity, technological curiosity, etc. — would be somewhat amenable to social conditioning (i.e., more amenable to social conditioning than instinctive curiosity), so that a society bent on rooting out the threat that curiosity has for social stability could probably make a significant dent in these refined forms of curiosity. (We find something like this in Islamic civilization in the idea of insidād bāb al-ijtihād, translated as “the closing of the gate of interpretation.”) Pre-modern and traditional societies have developed elaborate means for breaking the will of children, and one can find any number of colorful quotes about this as one can find about the vice of curiosity. I am reminded of a famous sermon by John Wesley:
“This, therefore, I cannot but earnestly repeat, — break their wills betimes; begin this great work before they can run alone, before they can speak plain, or perhaps speak at all. Whatever pains it cost, conquer their stubbornness: break the will, if you would not damn the child. I conjure you not to neglect, not to delay this! Therefore, (1.) Let a child, from a year old, be taught to fear the rod and to cry softly. In order to this, (2.) Let him have nothing he cries for; absolutely nothing, great or small; else you undo your own work. (3.) At all events, from that age, make him do as he is bid, if you whip him ten times running to effect it. Let none persuade you it is cruelty to do this; it is cruelty not to do it. Break his will now, and his soul will live, and he will probably bless you to all eternity.”
It needs to be emphasized that attitudes like this have characterized the bulk of human history, so that even if it sounds strange to our ears, most of our ancestors would have nodded along and approved Wesley’s advice. And in a society like this, which means almost all human societies until very recently, beating the refined curiosity out of children would not have been terribly difficult to do. There would have been a few rebels, to be sure, but most would have submitted to the corporal chastisement and felt themselves lucky to have learned to have scaped whipping. The unbreakable rebels would eventually be beaten to death, or, if they survived to adulthood, a society cut from the same cloth would likely have hung them for some trivial infraction or driven them out of their midst into a career as an outlaw.
Is the transformation of curiosity from a vice into a virtue a one-time event that separates history prior to the scientific revolution from history after the scientific revolution, or is there something perennial in the conception of curiosity as a vice? If it is perennial, it will be found in some form or another today, while if it is an artifact of a particular stage of human development, and we have passed that stage of development, curiosity as a vice may be permanently defunct. At a more subtle level of historical analysis, we would want to distinguish between survivals from the past (which implies a past condition functionally extinct but still present as the fading echo of a once robust reality), and subtle but pervasive signs of an underlying reality that might be dismissed as a mere survival.
William James, in the final chapter (Lecture XX) of The Varieties of Religious Experience, discusses the idea of religion as a survival in this sense, which he calls the “survival theory.” James argues vigorously against the survival theory, meaning that he takes (or he took) religion to be still a vital and living force in human affairs — my guess is that James would still make this argument today, 120 years after his Gifford Lectures. The idea of religion as a survival has come and gone more than once. Since James, secularization theory has seen the high tide of its influence, and today there are at least as many sociologists who argue again secularization theory as who argue for it. James today would find both supporters and critics.
Curiosity as a vice and as a virtue is not as hotly debated as religion, but it faces a similar historical back-and-forth, and since the critics of curiosity tend to be of the religious party, while the partisans of curiosity tend to be of the scientific party, the two debates are likely to track each other historically. If the present Age of Science since the scientific revolution should come to an end and be replaced by a new Age of Faith, I would expect that curiosity would again come to be seen as a vice, and the Wikipedia of this new Age of Faith would reflect that through an article that discussed only the vicious aspects of curiosity — perhaps curiosity when it is undiscerning, untimely, and insufficiently exacting — without mentioning the other tradition of curiosity as a virtue.
