Wondering and Epistemic Desires

Abstract

Abstract This paper explores the relationship between the questioning attitude of wondering and a class of attitudes I call epistemic desires. Broadly, these are desires to improve one’s epistemic position on some question. A common example is the attitude of wanting to know the answer to some question. I argue that one can have any kind of epistemic desire towards any question, Q, without necessarily wondering Q, but not conversely. That is, one cannot wonder Q without having at least some epistemic desire directed towards Q. I defend this latter claim from apparent counterexamples due to Friedman and Drucker, and finish with a proposal on which epistemic desires, particularly the desire for understanding, play an explanatory role in distinguishing wondering from other forms of question-directed thought.