Acquaintance

Bertrand Russell famously distinguished between 'knowledge by acquaintance' and 'knowledge by description'. For much of the latter half of the twentieth century, many philosophers viewed the notion of acquaintance with suspicion, associating it with Russellian ideas that they would wish to reject. However in the past decade or two the concept has undergone a striking revival in mainstream 'analytic' philosophy--acquaintance is, it seems, respectable again. This volume showcases the great variety of topics in philosophy of mind, epistemology, and philosophy of language for which philosophers are currently employing the notion of acquaintance. It is the first collection of new essays devoted to the topic of acquaintance, featuring chapters from many of the world's leading experts in this area. Opening with an extensive introductory essay, which provides some historical background and summarizes the main debates and issues concerning acquaintance, the remaining thirteen contributions are grouped thematically into four sections: phenomenal consciousness, perceptual experience, reference, and epistemology.

Jonathan Knowles is Professor of Philosophy at Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim. He has published books and papers on the philosophy of mind, philosophy of science, and pragmatism. He is particularly interested in questions about consciousness, naturalism, representation, and realism.
Thomas Raleigh is a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at the Centre for Philosophical Psychology at the University of Antwerp. He has previously held positions at the Ruhr University Bochum, the University of Vienna, the Norwegian University of Science & Technology (NTNU), Concordia University, and the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). His research is primarily in philosophy of mind and epistemology.

- Introduction: The Recent Renaissance of Acquaintance - Part I: Phenomenal Consciousness - 1: Joseph Levine: Consciousness is Acquaintance - 2: Sam Coleman: Natural Acquaintance - 3: Alex Grzankowski and Michael Tye: What Acquaintance Teaches - 4: M. G. F. Martin: Betwixt Feeling and Thinking: Two-Level Accounts of Experience - Part II: Perceptual Experience - 5: David Woodruff Smith: Acquaintance in an Experience of Perception-cum-Action - 6: Tom Stoneham: Dreaming, Phenomenal Character and Acquaintance - 7: Jonathan Knowles: Relationalism, Berkeley's Puzzle and Phenomenological Externalism - 8: Anders Nes: Conceptualism and the Explanatory Role of Experience - Part III: Reference - 9: John Campbell: Acquaintance as Grounded in Joint Attention - 10: Jessica Pepp: Principles of Acquaintance - Part IV: Epistemology - 11: Richard Fumerton: Acquaintance: The Foundation of Knowledge and Thought - 12: Katalin Farkas: Objectual Knowledge - 13: Bill Brewer: Visual Experience, Revelation and the Three Rs