Carrer Days: 'Joint Ignorance, Joint Curiosity and Joint Questions: Advanced Forms of Joint Attention'

Prof. Dr. Ilhan Inan
Philosophy Department - Koç University

Ilhan Inan (PhD, UC–Santa Barbara) recently joined the Philosophy Department at Koç University in Istanbul. Prior to that, he taught at Boğaziçi University Philosophy Department for twenty years, spent a year at LOGOS Research center in Barcelona as a visiting scholar, and taught for a semester in Virginia University. He works on philosophy of language, broadly construed, to include philosophy of curiosity, evolution of language, creativity, and inosten- sible reference.

He is the author of The Philosophy of Curiosity (Routledge, 2012) and the co-editor of The Moral Psychology of Curiosity (Rowman & Littlefield, 2018). He has published articles on

various topics within the philosophy of langua- ge as well as on how curiosity relates to referen- ce, representation, belief, acquaintance, truth, knowledge, ignorance, and creativity.

Currently he is working on an article on aware- ness of ignorance and a book manuscript on the subject of truth. Both works were motiva- ted by his theory of curiosity: his theory on awareness of ignorance is based on the notion of mental representation of unknowns, and the referential theory of truth which he argues for in his book grew from his theory of curiosity based on the notion of reference to the unknown, or inostensible reference.