More particularly, the project of analysing knowledge is to state conditions that are individually necessary and jointly sufficient for propositional knowledge, thoroughly answering the question, what does it take to know something? We have knowledge by acquaintance when we are directly aware of a thing, without any inference. Knowledge of things, when it is of the kind we call knowledge by acquaintance, is essentially simpler than any knowledge of truths, and logically independent of knowledge of truths, though it would be rash to assume that human beings ever, in fact, have acquaintance with things without at the same time knowing some truth about them. And if those qualities include rational thought. 213). New Essays on Bertrand Russell's The Problems of Philosophy, edited by Donovan Wishon and Bernard Linsky. Acquaintance, Knowledge, and Logic brings together ten new essays on Russell's best-known work, The Problems of Philosophy. Acquaintance, Knowledge, and Logic brings together ten new essays on Russell's best-known work, The Problems of Philosophy. In addition, this volume includes an editors' introduction, which summarizes Russell's influential book, presents new biographical details about how and why Russell wrote it, and highlights its continued significance for contemporary philosophy. We are immediately conscious and acquainted with a color or hardness of a table before us, our sense-data. The traditional foundationalist in epistemology holds that although I can know one truth by inferring it from something else I know, not everything I know can be inferred in this way. Put crudely, one has knowledge by acquaintance of things, and one has knowledge by description of propositions (representations of reality that are either true or false). The attempt to distinguish knowledge by acquaintance from knowledge by description is most closely associated with Bertrand Russell. He further distinguishes two types of knowledge of things, knowledge by acquaintance and knowledge by description. The distinction, then, might be better put in terms of a kind of knowledge which has as its object something that is neither true nor false (knowledge by acquaintance) and a kind of knowledge which has as its object a bearer of truth value (knowledge by description). So far we have been talking primarily about the role of acquaintancein securing a special kind of knowledge. According to Russell, all knowledge of truths ultimately rests on knowledge by acquaintance. In particular, knowledge by acquaintance has played a role in theknowledgeargumentagainstphysicalism. Bertrand Russell, the recipient of the 1950 Nobel Prize for Literature, was one of the most distinguished, influential, and prolific philosophers of the twentieth century. According to Russell one can distinguish the two kinds of knowledge in terms of their respective objects. The distinction is also crucial to one way of trying to develop a plausible foundationalist theory of justification and knowledge. While knowledge by acquaintance has its most immediate application to philosophical topics in epistemology, it has increasingly been applied to issues in metaphysics, especially in the philosophy of mind. But this crude characterization of the two kinds of knowledge is misleading. 426 PHILOSOPHY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH Russell's knowledge by acquaintance, is what is involved in knowing, or having direct experience of such things as ideas, feelings and sensations. These essays, by some of the foremost scholars of his life and works, reexamine Russell's famous distinction between “knowledge by acquaintance” and “knowledge by description,” his developing views about our knowledge of physical reality, and his views about our knowledge of logic, mathematics, and other abstract matters. The mind gains knowledge through processing information in stimuli and internally rationalizing it. ISBN (Paperback): 1575868466 (9781575868462), 5 Sense-Data and the Inference to Material Objects: The Epistemological Project in, 7 Russell on Acquaintance, Analysis, and Knowledge of Persons, 9 The Importance of Russell's Regress Argument for Universals, 10 The Constituents of the Propositions of Logic, Foundations and Methods from Mathematics to Neuroscience (No. This I know to be true, but it cannot stand alone. “It is hard to imagine that a seminar on Russell will now be taught that does not require Acquaintance, Knowledge, and Logic.” Therefore, the following propositions must also be taken into account for us to all take this statement as true: If the brain is a blank slate aside from instinctual qualities. Put crudely, one has knowledge by acquaintance of things, and one has knowledge by description of propositions (representations of reality that are either true or false). For philosopherslike Russell, acquaintance secures not only the objects of knowledgebut the objects of thought itself; it explains not only how knowledgeis possible, but also how thought is possible. Some argue that knowledge of qualia is direct and unmediated, which provides an insight into the nature of the mind that cannot be known through the ph… This is so not just fora special class of thoughts about experiences or experientialqualities as some hold (see sect… John Perry, Stanford University. According to Russell one can distinguish the two kinds of knowledge in terms of their respective objects. Propositional knowledge should be distinguished from knowledge of acquaintance, as obtains when Su… He is the author of Russell's Metaphysical Logic, also published by CSLI Publications, and The Evolution of Principia Mathematica: Bertrand Russell's Manuscripts and Notes for the Second Edition. edited by Donovan Wishon and Bernard Linsky Bertrand Russell, the recipient of the 1950 Nobel Prize for Literature, was one of the most distinguished, influential, and prolific philosophers of the twentieth century. Donovan Wishon is assistant professor of philosophy at the University of Mississippi. We can avoid a regress of knowledge by holding that at least some truths are known as a result of direct awareness of or acquaintance with those aspects of the world that make the corresponding propositions true. © 2020 Informa UK Limited, an Informa Group Company, Additional criteria of acquaintance, and an initial problem. Bernard Linsky is professor of philosophy at the University of Alberta and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. By propositional knowledge, we mean knowledge of a propositionfor example, if Susan knows that Alyssa is a musician, she has knowledge of the proposition that Alyssa is a musician. There is, however, anothercrucial role acquaintance has been thought to play. Russell also seemed to believe that one can have knowledge by acquaintance of properties and even facts (where a fact is a complex consisting of a thing’s exemplifying a quality or standing in a relation to another thing). The content of such experient knowledge, as in the case of salty taste,