chapter v knowledge by acquaintance and knowledge by description

Similarly we may be aware of our feeling pleasure or pain, and generally of the events which happen in our minds. The table is 'the physical object which causes such-and-such sense-data'. But for our acquaintance with the contents of our own minds, we should be unable to imagine the minds of others, and therefore we could never arrive at the knowledge that they have minds. Chapter V - Knowledge by Acquaintance and Knowledge by Description, Chapter VII - On Our Knowledge of General Principles, Chapter VIII - How *A Priori* Knowledge is Possible, Chapter X - On Our Knowledge of Universals, Chapter XIII - Knowledge, Error, and Probable Opinion, Chapter XIV - The Limits of Philosophical Knowledge. 2014; Chapter VI - On Induction Chapter VI - On Induction. Suppose some statement made about Bismarck. we do not know any proposition of the form 'A is the candidate who will get most votes' where A is one of the candidates by name. This immediate knowledge by memory is the source of all our knowledge concerning the past: without it, there could be no knowledge of the past by inference, since we should never know that there was anything past to be inferred. Use up and down arrows to review and enter to select. If, however, we say, 'The first Chancellor of the German Empire was an astute diplomatist', we can only be assured of the truth of our judgement in virtue of something with which we are acquainted—usually a testimony heard or read. All acquaintance, such as my acquaintance with the sense-datum which represents the sun, seems obviously a relation between the person acquainted and the object with which the person is acquainted. To some it will recall travels in Germany, to some the look of Germany on the map, and so on. His comments when defining sense-data, that the physical world is unknowable to us, contradict his theory of knowledge by descriptions. Sense-data are our subjective representations of the external world, and they negotiate this indirect contact. That is to say, when we say anything about Bismarck, we should like, if we could, to make the judgement which Bismarck alone can make, namely, the judgement of which he himself is a constituent. Every complete sentence must contain at least one word which stands for a universal, since all verbs have a meaning which is universal. This object is the only object which matches the exact description we made up in our heads. In this case, if he made a judgement about himself, he himself might be a constituent of the judgement. 16 min; Customer Reviews See All. Since knowledge by description also depends on truths, we are prone to error about our descriptive knowledge if we are somehow mistaken about a proposition that we have taken to be true. This kind of acquaintance, which may be called self-consciousness, is the source of all our knowledge of mental things. I suspect that even the Universe, as considered by metaphysics, involves such a connexion with particulars. Hence, although acquaintance with ourselves seems probably to occur, it is not wise to assert that it undoubtedly does occur. It is therefore important to consider what kinds of things there are with which we have acquaintance. Many universals, like many particulars, are only known to us by description. Thus our statement does not mean quite what it seems to mean, but means something involving, instead of Julius Caesar, some description of him which is composed wholly of particulars and universals with which we are acquainted. We are not only aware of things, but we are often aware of being aware of them. We know a description, and we know that there is just one object to which this description applies, though the object itself is not directly known to us. The text begins: In the preceding chapter we saw that there are two sorts of knowledge: knowledge of things, and knowledge of truths. To make clear what sort of reason there is, let us consider for a moment what our acquaintance with particular thoughts really involves. His body, as a physical object, and still more his mind, were only known as the body and the mind connected with these sense-data. But we know that there is an object B, called Bismarck, and that B was an astute diplomatist. This preview shows page 1 - 2 out of 2 pages. 28 min; 7 JANV. We shall say that an object is 'known by description' when we know that it is 'the so-and-so', i.e. While innovative, Russell's theory of knowledge by description is not an attractive theory of knowledge. Russell, explains that the table we see in front of us is brown and it is round, which is its description. If we are describing Bismarck as 'the first Chancellor of the German Empire', the proposition we should like to affirm may be described as 'the proposition asserting, concerning the actual object which was the first Chancellor of the German Empire, that this object was an astute diplomatist'. But if they were the sole example, our knowledge would be very much more restricted than it is. The proposition 'a is the so-and-so' means that a has the property so-and-so, and nothing else has. In spite of the fact that we can only know truths which are wholly composed of terms which we have experienced in acquaintance, we can yet have knowledge by description of things which we have never experienced. It will be seen that there are various stages in the removal from acquaintance with particulars: there is Bismarck to people who knew him; Bismarck to those who only know of him through history; the man with the iron mask; the longest-lived of men. But, for the sake of illustration, let us assume that we think of him as 'the first Chancellor of the German Empire'. Focusing on problems he believes will provoke positive and constructive discussion, Russell concentrates on knowledge rather than metaphysics.Russell guides the reader through his famous distinction between "knowledge by acquaintance and knowledge by description" and introduces important theories of Plato, Aristotle, René Descartes, David Hume, John Locke, Immanuel Kant, Georg Hegel and others to lay the foundation for philosophical inquiry by general readers and scholars alike. The first extension beyond sense-data to be considered is acquaintance by memory. When a case of acquaintance is one with which I can be acquainted (as I am acquainted with my acquaintance with the sense-datum representing the sun), it is plain that the person acquainted is myself.

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