2025-12-05

Unasked Questions: Unconcious Sub-Inquiry and Epistemic Satisfaction

      When we have a question we would like to know the answer to, we engage in a process of inquiry. We gather evidence supporting answers to that question, then deliberate on that evidence to decide which answer is most strongly supported.

      Though they characterize it in different ways, both Jane Friedman (2019) and Julia Staffel (2025) consider inquiry as finished when a doxastic attitude is reached¹ regarding the question under inquiry. Any doxastic attitudes towards the propositions that constitute the set of possible answers to a question must be reasonably settled for inquiry to be closed. This is to say that my answers must be such that I would not reopen inquiry unless I received credible evidence that supports a different answer or calls the quality of my reasoning into question. Inquiry is a process that is opened when someone wants to know the answer to a question, that is conducted while someone is trying to figure out the answer, and is closed when someone has reached a settled conclusion to their question.

      This is a simplistic picture of inquiry. Philosophers continue to debate its exact nature. For example, it is unclear if Friedman thinks suspension is an attitude than can conclude inquiry. Others propose different attitudes or actions necessary to begin or conduct inquiry. Staffel and Friedman have different ideas about what the stages or components of inquiry are. I will put all of these debates aside. The question under consideration in this paper concerns subjective feelings of dissatisfaction at the closure of inquiry, and what these feelings might tell us about processes that occur during inquiry. There are cases in which an agent rationally closes inquiry with a settled answer though they remain unsatisfied. Most of these aforementioned debates around inquiry do not strongly bear on the questions that arise when considering feelings of dissatisfaction at closure.

      I will start by giving some examples to draw out the different intuitions with regards to feelings of satisfaction at closure. I will present a natural reaction to these examples, that dissatisfaction at closure of a normatively adherent and successful inquiry are caused by unfulfilled non-epistemic desires. However, I will provide an account showing that dissatisfaction at closure is better explained in some cases by unsatisfied epistemic desires. I claim that epistemic dissatisfaction in these cases is a result of usually non-reflexive ‘added-on’ sub-inquiries that fail to be closed when the main inquiry is closed. I will consider an objection to my view, then finish with a brief discussion on implications.

      A general phenomenon can occur that fulfillment of desires produces feelings of dissatisfaction in the desirer. Maybe I desired to eat a hamburger, but it gave me a stomachache. My desire was satisfied, but its satisfaction produced disappointment. It can work the other way, too, where a desire going unfulfilled produces satisfaction. Say I desired a promotion at my job, but then I won the lottery and quit. My desire for promotion went unfulfilled, but I was satisfied regardless. These two brief examples relate to practical concerns, but epistemic desires can produce the same phenomenon. Say I have an inquiry into whether my partner is cheating on me. I close my inquiry with knowledge that they are, but I am obviously quite disappointed. My epistemic desire was satisfied, but I am sad because of the knowledge it produced. The dissatisfaction from this example, though, relates to an emotional concern, though one that was directly related to an epistemic inquiry. Below, I’ve given examples weakening the power of non-epistemic reasons to explain dissatisfaction at inquiry’s closure.

(Atlantis, on my own)

I am an epistemically rational and motivated researcher seeking to prove the existence of the lost city of Atlantis. I once read the Timaeus and since then desired to know if the city actually existed. I ride in my submarine for years until I find the ruins of an ancient city off the coast of the Azores, even with (somehow) well-preserved evidence of a war against Athens! I close my inquiry and feel satisfied.

(Atlantis, thanks to God)

I am an epistemically rational and motivated researcher seeking to prove the existence of the lost city of Atlantis. I once read the Timaeus and since then desired to know if the city actually existed. I ride in my submarine for years, but I never find any ruins. One day, God comes to me in my frustration. After proving to me that I am not hallucinating, he tells me that the city of Atlantis was real and that its ruins lie off the coast of the Azores. He gives no additional evidence for his claim other than his word because, being God, he knows everything. I close my inquiry after having definitive proof, but I don’t feel satisfied. In fact, I still desire to find the ruins, even though I no longer need any evidence to believe in Atlantis’s existence.

      In both examples, I had a sincere desire to know the answer to a question and, in both, my question was answered with strong evidence. In the second example, though, I leave my inquiry feeling unsatisfied. In fact, I have stronger evidence in the second example, given that God himself told me, but I still feel unsatisfied and want to see the ruins for myself.

      Since I got better evidence in the second case, I should feel more satisfied with my inquiry. Because of the better evidential quality of the second inquiry, it would be natural to try and explain the feelings of dissatisfaction from a non-epistemic angle. Maybe I wanted to feel like a good researcher or take credit for the discovery, neither of which are epistemic concerns but are natural explanations for the dissatisfaction. We can even think of similar examples, say someone publishes a paper with the same evidence and findings as one I was about to finish writing. I would feel disappointed that someone else took my credit and that I had wasted time trying to prove something someone else already figured out. Moreover, because the precise relation between desires’ fulfillment and satisfaction can be unclear, one may want to say it’s too difficult to know exactly what kind of value produced the dissatisfaction—practical, moral, epistemic, or otherwise—to claim it was strictly epistemic in this case.

      I agree that the fulfillment of epistemic desires can produce dissatisfaction for practical or other non-epistemic reasons. Non-epistemic reasons seem to be the best way to explain dissatisfaction after normatively valid closure of inquiry in some cases, like the cheating partner example, but I don’t think they are the best explanation in every case. Indeed, despite desire’s murky nature, there are some examples where epistemic reasons are the best to explain dissatisfaction. Consider another example in which a friend and I are anxious to know if the titan arum at the local conservatory will bloom in the next week. We go and stand there all day, waiting to see if it will bloom. Midway through the week, I am called out of town, but I continue to watch the livestream, and eventually I get to see it bloom on camera. My friend tells me about the blooming; the local news even reported on it. I have good evidence to support an answer to my question: the arum did bloom that week. But I still feel dissatisfied. I find myself wishing I could have been there in person to know what it smelled like.

      In both cases, I remain unsatisfied even though the object of my inquiry was answered. I know Atlantis did exist and the arum flower did bloom that week. However, in (thanks to God), I realize I am left with an unsatisfied desire to know the ruins look like. In the arum case, I realize I am left with an unsatisfied desire to know what the flower smells like. The desires to know what the ruins of Atlantis look like or what the titan arum smells like are epistemic desires; they are questions that have answers.² However, they don’t seem to have anything to do with my initial inquiries; they are incidental to knowing if Atlantis existed, or if the arum would bloom that week.

      An explanation for the dissatisfaction felt in cases like these is simple. I feel dissatisfied because I did not close inquiries separate from the ones I did receive answers to. ‘What do the ruins of Atlantis look like?’ is a separate question, and separate inquiry, from ‘Did Atlantis exist?’ So, it makes sense for me to be unsatisfied; there remains an open closely related inquiry. Importantly, though, I did not set out seeking to know what the ruins of Atlantis look like. I read Plato and had the guiding question of Atlantis’s existence. This was the question at the front of my mind during my research, and it was consciously what I aimed to answer with the evidence I hoped to discover. Indeed, though it’s possible that I became aware of my desire to know what the ruins looked like during my research, this needn’t have been the case. In fact, these unsatisfied epistemic desires will most likely have been unconscious if disappointment is felt at the main inquiry’s closure. While it’s possible that I knew of my desire to see the ruins, I would likely not end up feeling dissatisfied at closure. This is because I would be aware of my epistemic desire when God told me about Atlantis’s existence such that I would ask him to show me the ruins or a picture of the ruins. In the arum case, I would feel dissatisfied upon finding out I had to leave town. I would have known I wanted to smell it, and the disappointment (say I knew I would be out of town the entire possible time range for the arum to bloom) would come before the main inquiry was closed.

      Epistemic causes work the best to explain my dissatisfaction in these cases because I become aware after the main inquiry’s closure that I still have questions left unanswered. Some may want to object to this component, though. They might say that my stipulation of reflection, in which I discover a previously unconscious question I now know I want answered after the closure of the main inquiry, is overly fanciful. In real life, they may say, agents often don’t have a sufficient explanation for their dissatisfaction at the fulfillment of a desire. “I got everything I wanted, so why am I sad?” isn’t an uncommon thing to hear. However, there are many cases in which the fulfillment of a desire and the consequent dissatisfaction produces an inquiry into explaining the dissatisfaction. These can be brief. Say I go to the coffee shop thinking I have a desire to try the new pumpkin latte. I buy the latte and discover it tastes horrible. I am disappointed even though I satisfied my desire; I may momentarily wonder why I feel that way. I discover that I had stronger desire of which I was less aware: to taste yummy coffee. These desires blended together in my conscious awareness, likely because I thought I could satisfy both at the same time. Cases like these happen frequently in everyday life, so I don’t think my stipulation of reflection is embellished.

      A similar phenomenon to this blending of desires can occur in the process of inquiry. The explanation of my examples points to a phenomenon that can happen while inquiry is conducted, whereby other inquires related to the one first opened are ‘added-on,’ so to speak. Somewhere in the course of my research, I developed the desire to know what the ruins looked like—this desire was ‘added-on’ to my original desire to know if Atlantis existed. Staffel (2025) uses an example like this, wherein a detective, in order to close the larger inquiry of who committed a crime, must first discover who left cigarette butts at the crime scene. However, my examples of added-on inquires, unlike Staffel’s, are incidental to the main inquiry. Although she recognizes the existence of sub-inquiries, she treats them as instrumentally necessary, or at least helpful for resolving the primary question. In contrast, cases like (thanks to God) and arum reveal sub-inquiries that are epistemically incidental rather than instrumental. Knowing what the titan arum smells like is not necessary to know that it bloomed that week. Knowing what the ruins look like would have helped me prove my answer of Atlantis’s existence, but it was rendered incidental because of God’s intervention.

The cases allow us to articulate more precisely what it takes for a sub-inquiry to count as ‘added-on’; it must meet several criteria:

1. Non-reflexivity: It need not be consciously known or chosen.
2. Dependence: It would not have arisen without the primary inquiry and the specific way it was pursued.
3. Trajectorial co-closure: Given the way the inquirer was pursuing the main question—their method of gathering evidence, mode of engagement, etc.—the sub-inquiry would ordinarily be resolved in the same investigative trajectory, if the inquiry proceeds without disruption.
4. Epistemic Adjacency: It must be closely related to the main inquiry such that its failure to close before, or simultaneous with, the valid closure of the main inquiry would produce epistemic dissatisfaction.

      These criteria are not arbitrary. They follow from a general view about the cognitive machinery involved in inquiry. When we investigate a question, we do not just form beliefs in a consciously directed sequence. We also generate a background of non-reflexive expectations and desires, both epistemic and not. The generated specifically epistemic desiderata (1) typically operate beneath reflective awareness, (2) are caused directly by the particular inquisitive, evidential, and deliberative trajectory set in motion by the guiding inquiry, and (3) would ordinarily be satisfied “along the way” if the primary inquiry continued along its typical path, for example, by seeing the ruins in the course of seeking them, or by smelling the arum while observing it grow in-person. Finally, (4) only those tacit sub-questions that are epistemically adjacent to the guiding question can rationally produce the distinctive feeling that something remains unanswered when the explicit inquiry has been successfully closed. Taken together, these conditions mark out a unified phenomenon: sub-inquiries generated by the dynamics of inquiry itself, rather than as necessary components of the larger inquiry or as independent intentions or practical aims.

      Someone might object to my epistemic account of the dissatisfaction, though, by claiming that the disappointment does not come from unanswered ‘added-on’ sub-inquiries but from the failure to satisfy an experiential desire. Say in (thanks to God) that God shows me pictures of the ruins, and I walk away completely satisfied. It would feel strange to say my desire was only for a phenomenological experience of the ruins when it was be satisfied by a different type of experience, e.g., a phenomenological experience of the picture of the ruins. The satisfaction in the photo case would be better explained if I had an epistemic desire to simply know what the ruins looked like. However, we could just as easily imagine God just showing me a picture after which I walk away unsatisfied. Moreover, the arum case is certainly experiential, and we can imagine me feeling unsatisfied even if my friend described the smell to me. However, a desire can be for an experience and knowledge at the same time. More specifically, my ‘added-on’ question wouldn’t be ‘What does the titan arum smell like?’ but rather ‘What is it like to smell the titan arum?’

      An argument can be made that all experiential desires are epistemic. Even if I’ve tasted coffee a million times and already have an answer to ‘What is it like to drink coffee?’ there are separate questions and separate inquiries into ‘What is it like to drink coffee at t?’ if t is some future time. However, this point need not be accepted to accept the ‘added-on’ sub-inquiries. In both the examples I had never seen the ruins nor smelled the arum. Moreover, ‘added-on’ sub-inquiries don’t need to be experiential, though it’s easy to conceptualize those as producing dissatisfaction. If I had an unconscious desire to know if there were any sea stars in Atlantis, and if the desire only became conscious after God answered my primary question, I could ask him quickly before he left and get a satisfying answer without needing any sort of experience. If he left before I could ask, though, I would remain disappointed.

      Even if one does want to keep experiential and epistemic desires ontologically separate, it would be difficult to show that a desire for an experience and a desire for phenomenological knowledge of the experience don’t go hand in hand. If my desire is to experience the ruins, I don’t think it’s easy to show that I definitely don’t have the additional desire to know what it is like to experience them (at t), or even, say, that I don’t have the desire for the pleasure that would come from experiencing the ruins. Even if phenomenological epistemic desires are always bundled with experiential and pleasure ones, the epistemic dimension remains.

      I’ve presented a phenomenon whereby, in certain conditions,³ additional inquiries causally related to a primary inquiry being consciously conducted are ‘added-on’ to the list of questions for which answers are being sought, even if these additions are unknown to the inquirer. This account best explains the feelings of dissatisfaction in the cases I presented. Moreover, it has consequences for epistemic norms. Both Staffel and Friedman have been developing norms for inquiry, a project mostly left un-attempted until recently. However, both authors have ignored this phenomenon in their discussions. Friedman (forthcoming) discusses norms for starting inquiry. Any norms being developed, though, will have to consider these additional inquiries and the fact they are not necessarily consciously known. Friedman doesn’t think inquiry must always be voluntarily chosen, but neither she⁴ nor Staffel consider the possibility of an unconsciously opened inquiry when developing norms for inquiring.

      ‘Added-on’ sub-inquires suggest that inquiry is not merely a consciously directed doxastic process, but a dynamic cognitive environment in which related epistemic concerns can emerge spontaneously and non-reflexively. Any adequate theory of inquiry must therefore account not only for the closure of the explicit guiding question, but also for the network of derivative questions that can tacitly form during its pursuit.