Acquaintance

Abstract

Russell drew a distinction between knowledge by acquaintance and knowledge by description.¹ He regarded the former as a kind of direct awareness of an item, and the latter as a kind of indirect knowledge of an item. Russell maintained that unlike knowledge by description, knowledge by acquaintance is logically independent of all knowledge of truths. He also held that an individual is acquainted with his own sense-data, various abstract entities, and (in all likelihood) himself, but not with physical objects or persons other than himself.²

“The phenomenon or sign of the being or of the thatness which itself ever eludes us.” [E. B. Bax Outlooks From The New Standpoint III. 183 (1891)]

“But that which is properly himself, that which constitutes his essence, cannot be perceived from without, being internal by definition, nor be expressed by symbols, being incommensurable with everything else. Description, history, and analysis leave me here in the relative. Coincidence with the person himself would alone give me the absolute... There is one reality, at least, which we all seize from within, by intuition and not by simple analysis. It is...our self which endures... an inner, absolute knowledge of the duration of the self by the self is possible.” (1903 Bergson An Introduction To Metaphysics)

“There are two sorts of knowledge: knowledge of things and knowledge of truths.”[1902 Bertrand Russell The Problems of Philosophy V. 46 (1943)]