## 1. The Distinction



To get clear on the distinction between knowledge by acquaintance and
knowledge by description, let us briefly examine how its originator,
Bertrand Russell, characterized it (see Russell 1910-11 and
1912: Ch. 5). First, what is meant by "acquaintance" and
"description"? 



> 
> 
> We shall say that we have *acquaintance* with anything of which
> we are directly aware, without the intermediary of any process of
> inference or any knowledge of truths. (Russell 1912: 78)
> 
> 
> 
> I say that I am *acquainted* with an object when I have a
> direct cognitive relation to that object, i.e., when I am directly
> aware of the object itself. When I speak of a cognitive relation here,
> I do not mean the sort of relation which constitutes judgment, but the
> sort which constitutes presentation. In fact, I think the relation of
> subject and object which I call acquaintance is simply the converse of
> the relation of object and subject which constitutes presentation.
> That is, to say that *S* has acquaintance with *O* is
> essentially the same thing as to say that *O* is presented to
> *S*. (Russell 1910/11: 108)
> 
> 
> 



Russell thus characterizes acquaintance as a relation of *direct
awareness*, a relation in which, as Russell and some others have
put it, something is "presented" or simply
"given" to the subject (see e.g., Lewis 1929 and 1946;
Moser 1989: 80ff.; Fales 1996.) Various positions can accept some sort
of distinction between direct and indirect "awareness":
roughly, an awareness of *X* is indirect if it depends on
awareness of something else, and direct otherwise. But this
characterization of the distinction leaves open what counts as direct
awareness. 



What distinguishes acquaintance is, minimally, the following two
closely related features. First, it is a nonjudgmental and
nonconceptual form of awareness. Judgments, thoughts and concepts are
essentially *intentional or representational* in nature, i.e.,
they are *about* or *represent* other things.
Acquaintance with something does not consist in forming any judgment
or thought about it, or in having any concept or representation of it.
(In the second passage above Russell does characterize it as a special
"cognitive" relation, but one must immediately wonder what
this means given that he explicitly denies that it is judgmental in
nature.) Second, it is a form of awareness constituting a real,
genuine relation, a relation that cannot obtain without its
*relata* (the things or items related). One cannot be
acquainted with something that does not exist. Acquaintance is thus
like the relation of kicking or throwing, for one cannot kick or throw
without there being something that is kicked or thrown--something
that is the object of the kicking or throwing. (Of course, these are
not forms of *awareness*!) In contrast, judgments and concepts
may represent or be about things that don't exist. Philosophers
sometimes refer to this second feature by saying that acquaintance is
"infallible". However, this term is most often used to
refer to a property of *beliefs*: roughly, a belief is
infallible if it is immune to error or is guaranteed to be true. Given
the first feature above, being acquainted with something is not to be
understood in terms of having a belief or judgment about it, not even
an infallible one.



By a "description" Russell means any phrase of the form
"a so-and-so" (an "ambiguous" or
"indefinite" description) or "the so-and-so"
(a "definite" description), though he focuses on the
latter in his discussion of knowledge by description. Russell's
definition of knowledge by description builds naturally on this: To
know some thing or object by a definite description is to know that it
is the so-and-so or that the so-and-so exists, i.e., that there is
exactly one object that is so-and-so (Russell 1912: 82-3). On
Russell's view, proper nouns, and most common words, are really
disguised descriptions (1912: 84-5). We might claim to know who
Jack the Ripper was, that he was a vicious human being, and so on, but
we can only think of and know the individual about whom the claim is
made through a description of that individual--Jack the Ripper is
that person (whoever he was) who committed certain atrocities in
London in 1888. We have no "first hand" knowledge of the
person about whom our judgment is made--we don't even have
"first hand" knowledge that only one individual committed
the murders or, for that matter, that the murders took place. Put
another way, we are not directly acquainted with either the crimes or
the perpetrator of those crimes since he is long dead and we have
surely never met him.



Talk of descriptions naturally suggests the use of *language*,
and as we have just seen, Russell himself often characterizes
descriptions in linguistic terms, e.g., as *phrases* having
such-and-such a form. However, for Russell, description does not
essentially involve the use of words or phrases of a language; it
involves the use or application of *concepts*. To know
something "by description" does not require the use of
language or linguistic terms, but it does require the use or
application of concepts.



The example of Jack the Ripper just given, and many of Russell's
examples, are at best misleading. They trade on that commonplace
distinction between things we know "first hand" and things
we have only heard about or read about--the things that have been
described to us.



But our commonsense way of making the distinction soon goes by the
wayside. Most philosophers wedded to some notion of acquaintance end
up rejecting the idea that we have acquaintance even with bread-box
sized objects, immediately before us, under ideal conditions of
perception. The test to determine with what we are acquainted is often
reminiscent of the method Descartes recommended for finding secure
foundations of knowledge--the method of doubt (see Russell 1912:
74; Price 1932: 3). If you are considering whether you are acquainted
with something, ask yourself whether you can conceive of being in this
very state when the putative object does not exist. If you can, you
should reject the suggestion that you are directly acquainted with the
item in question. Based on possibilities of error about physical
objects from illusion, hallucination and dreams, it seemed to most
that we could rule out acquaintance with physical objects, future
events, other minds, and facts that involve any of these as
constituents. Consider, for example, physical objects. It seems that
the evidence that my experiences give me right now for supposing that
there is a computer before me is perfectly consistent with the
hypothesis that I am now having a vivid dream or a vivid
hallucination. If this is right, then the experiential evidence I
possess cannot be the computer or any of its constituents. Neither the
computer, nor any of its constituents, need be present in that vivid
dream or hallucination. Even when our evidence for the presence of
physical objects seems as good as we can get, then, we are not
acquainted with physical objects or their constituents. (However, some
have recently defended the view that we can be acquainted with
physical objects in perception. See, for example, Johnston 2004.)
Traditionally, acquaintance theorists have taken the most promising
candidates for entities with which we can be acquainted to be
conscious states of mind (e.g., an experience of pain, a sensation of
red) and their properties (e.g., painfulness, redness). Russell and
many other acquaintance theorists also take themselves to be
acquainted with *facts,* i.e., with something's having
some property--at least mental facts (e.g., my being in pain, my
desiring food, my experiencing red). 



What about the possibility of acquaintance with ourselves? Can an
individual be directly acquainted with him or herself? Russell takes
the question of whether we are ever acquainted with the self to be a
difficult one. He says that acquaintance with the self is "hard
to disentangle from other things," but tentatively concludes
that "it is probable, though not certain, that we have
acquaintance with Self" (1912: 78-81.) However, he later
denies that we have acquaintance with the self (see Russell 1914: part
III). In a recent paper, Duncan (2015) uses the method of doubt, or
something very much like it, to argue that we are acquainted with
ourselves.



Let us now return to the primary question of this section: how should
we understand the distinction between knowledge by acquaintance and
knowledge by description? When philosophers speak of
*knowledge* they typically mean to be discussing knowledge of
truths or propositional knowledge, knowledge that involves a belief or
judgment in some true claim or proposition. As introduced by Russell,
the distinction sometimes seems to be that between noninferential or
foundational knowledge on the one hand, and inferential or
nonfoundational knowledge on the other. Roughly, one has
nonfoundational or inferential knowledge that *p* when
one's knowledge that *p* depends on one's knowledge
of some other proposition(s) from which one can legitimately infer
*p*; and one has foundational or noninfrential knowledge that
*p* when one's knowledge that *p* does not depend
on any other knowledge one has. Knowledge by acquaintance is
foundational knowledge because it depends on one's acquaintance
with the object itself, or with properties of or facts about the
object, and not on any further knowledge of truths. Knowledge by
description, in contrast, always depends on some further knowledge of
truths for support; as Russell puts it, knowledge by description
"always involves...some knowledge of truths *as its
source and ground*" (1912: 72-3, emphasis added).



This seems to be a natural and relatively straightforward way of
drawing the distinction. However, there may seem to be a problem with
this way of drawing the distinction, at least as an interpretation of
Russell, for he denies that knowledge by acquaintance is knowledge of
truths:



> 
> 
> 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. (Russell 1912: 72)
> 
> 
> 



We have already seen that for Russell acquaintance is nonjudgmental or
nonpropositional; to be acquainted with something is to be *aware
of* it in a way that does not essentially involve being *aware
that* it is so-and-so. Russell seems to be extending this to
knowledge by acquaintance: it is knowledge *of* something, and
logically independent of knowledge *that* something is
so-and-so. Nor is this usage of the term 'knowledge' and
its cognates strange: we do indeed talk about knowing people and
cities. This might suggest that we should draw the distinction between
knowledge by acquaintance and knowledge by description not as one
between foundational and nonfoundational knowledge of truths, but as
one between knowledge of truths and knowledge of something other than
truths. Indeed, as we have seen, Russell at one point defines
knowledge of something by description simply as knowledge that it is
so-and-so, not *foundational* knowledge that it is so-and-so
(1912: 84-5). But then, what more than *acquaintance* is
involved in *knowledge* by acquaintance? It is difficult to
find an answer from Russell.



It is tempting to suppose that Russell equivocates between the
relation of acquaintance and the special kind of knowledge of truth
(foundational knowledge) whose sole source is acquaintance. That we
ordinarily talk about knowing things and people might encourage this
equivocation. Moreover, perhaps the fact that acquaintance is a form
of awareness of the most direct, most secure kind, and is fundamental
to all knowledge of truths, led Russell to think it deserves to be
called "knowledge" of the thing in question. The issue
here is largely terminological. In order to guard against confusing
*acquaintance* on the one hand with *foundational knowledge
of truths acquired by acquaintance* on the other, and facilitate
an examination of the relation between them, we should be more careful
than Russell and restrict *knowledge* *by acquaintance*
to foundational knowledge of *truths*. By contrast, one can
have *acquaintance* with items that are not truths, items that
cannot be said to be true or false. Knowledge by description, on the
other hand, is nonfoundational knowledge of truths; it "always
involves...some knowledge of truths as its source and
ground" (Russell 1912: 72-3). We adopt this usage in what
follows. 



For classical foundationalists like Russell, all knowledge of truths
ultimately depends on foundational knowledge of truths acquired by
acquaintance. But how exactly does acquaintance contribute to this
knowledge of truths? If acquaintance is nothing like a judgment or
belief, and if the items with which we are acquainted are themselves
neither true nor false, how do we get any knowledge of *truths*
out of acquaintance? We turn to this question in
 section 3.



First, however, let us briefly discuss contemporary views regarding
the nature and objects of acquaintance.


## 2. Contemporary Views on Acquaintance



We said above that what distinguishes the classical, Russellian notion
of acquaintance is, minimally, that (i) it is a non-intentional form
of awareness: acquaintance with something does not consist in forming
any judgment or thought about it, or applying any concepts to it; and
(ii) it is real relation requiring the existence of its
*relata*; one cannot be acquainted with some thing, property or
fact that does not exist. Let us use the label "acquaintance
theory" broadly to stand for any view, in the philosophy of mind
or epistemology, in which acquaintance so understood plays a central
role. There has been a resurgence of interest in acquaintance theory
in the last 25 years or so. Contemporary proponents include BonJour
(2001, 2003), Chalmers (2010), Fales (1996), Fumerton (1995, 2001,
2016), Gertler (2001, 2011, 2012), Hasan (2011, 2013), McGrew (1995,
1999), Moser (1989), Stoutenburg (forthcoming), and Taylor (2013). As
we shall see, some of these philosophers depart from Russell in
significant ways. However, like him, they are all committed to the
existence and philosophical significance of a direct, nonjudgmental
form of awareness (indeed, many of them call it
"acquaintance") and this warrants treating them all as
"acquaintance theorists." Most of them also explicitly
endorse classical foundationalism: like Russell, they hold that all
knowledge or justified belief ultimately depends on a foundation of
knowledge or justified belief acquired by acquaintance. There are
consistent ways to accept acquaintance theory without accepting
classical foundationalism. For example, some might agree that we do
have some knowledge by acquaintance and appeal to such knowledge in
the dualism debate in the philosophy of mind (see the entry on
 qualia: the knowledge argument),
 without endorsing the claim that all knowledge or justified belief
must depend, ultimately, on acquaintance. However, unless otherwise
indicated, we use "acquaintance theory" and
"classical foundationalism" interchangeably.



Acquaintance is typically taken to be simple and thus indefinable. The
philosophers for whom acquaintance plays a critical philosophical role
are usually unapologetic about their inability to define the concept
(e.g., Fumerton 1995: 76-7). They will quite plausibly argue
that analysis requires conceptual "atoms"--simple
ideas out of which other ideas are built. The concept of acquaintance,
for them, is arguably the most fundamental concept on which all
epistemology, and perhaps all philosophy of mind, is built. Still, one
philosopher's conceptual atom is another's complete
mystery, and unless one can convince oneself that one understands what
acquaintance is, one will not be able to understand views that invoke
it.



To be sure, one can use metaphors of one sort or another to explain
the concept, but the metaphors are as likely to be misleading as
helpful. The pain one feels, one might say, is "before"
the mind. There is nothing "between" one and the pain one
feels. But these are spatial metaphors and the relation between
one's self and that with which one is acquainted is not really
all that much like a spatial relation. Even if there is no object
between a chair and a table, the space between them is composed of
other spaces, and in virtue of this we can compare different spaces or
distances quantitatively; in contrast, acquaintance with something is
not composed of further relations, and so different relations of
acquaintance cannot be compared quantitatively in a parallel way. One
can add that acquaintance is a non-intentional or nonjudgmental form
of awareness, and that one cannot be aware of something in this way
without its existing, but the concept of awareness remains unanalyzed,
and these conditions merely assert that, and shed no light on why,
acquaintance has these features.



If the usual view is correct and acquaintance is simple and
unanalyzable, nevertheless, perhaps one can point to it by describing
it in some revealing way that is unique to it. Unfortunately, the
attempt at pointing involves controversial presuppositions. But
imagine the following sort of familiar case. One is in pain but as one
engages in an interesting conversation, one doesn't notice the
pain for a while. After the conversation ends, one is again aware of
the pain. There are two possibilities. One is that the pain
temporarily ceased. The other is that the pain continued, but that the
subject was temporarily unaware of it. On the supposition that the
latter makes sense, acquaintance is that relation the subject had to
pain before the conversation, the relation that ceased during the
conversation, and that began again shortly thereafter. 



The acquaintance theory is controversial, the idea that some things
can simply be "given" to the subject has often been
denounced as a "myth" (Sellars 1963), and those committed
to acquaintance disagree about its nature and its objects. All this
may seem to be a source of embarrassment for the acquaintance
theorist, for how could doubts and disagreements arise regarding what
is supposed to be immediately and transparently present to
consciousness? But there is no need for embarrassment. For the
proponent of acquaintance or the given, the lesson of these doubts and
disagreements is that from the fact that something is given it does
not follow that everything about the nature of the given or its
epistemic role is itself given; "profound puzzles can arise, and
legitimately demand solution, even in connection with that which is
indubitable" (Fales 1996: 2). (For some elaboration on the
acquaintance theorist's response to the existence of such doubts
and disagreements, see the
 concluding remarks.)



Some acquaintance theorists seem to disagree about the nature of
acquaintance. Fumerton regards acquaintance as a *sui generis
relation*; it "cannot be informatively subsumed under a
genus, and...cannot be analyzed into any less problematic
concepts" (1995: 76). It is an irreducible relation that can
hold between a self and some object, state, property, or fact. Like
Fumerton and other acquaintance theorists, BonJour agrees that there
is a form of awareness that is nonjudgmental and that is
"infallible" in the sense that it requires the existence
of its object; and like other classical foundationalists, he takes all
justified beliefs (or at least all justified empirical beliefs) to
depend, ultimately, on this form of awareness. Unlike Fumerton
however, BonJour (2003) takes this awareness to be a
"built-in" or intrinsic to conscious or experiential
states. On this view, awareness is not a relation between the self and
something else, but is an intrinsic feature of the mental state
itself, though one that is still relational in the sense that it is
directed at something; and what one is aware of is just the specific
character or content of that state of awareness. So, while Fumerton
takes the fundamental awareness or acquaintance to be a relation,
BonJour takes it to be an intrinsic feature of all experiences or
conscious states. Awareness or acquaintance is perhaps most naturally
thought of as a relation between a self and something else: we
typically talk of *people, animals, persons, selves, minds,
etc.* being aware *of* things, states, properties, or
facts. However, a view that regards the most fundamental sort of
awareness as an intrinsic property of certain mental states might
still be able to make sense of such talk: to say that I am directly
aware of *X* is just to say that I am in a state with
"built-in" awareness of *X*.



BonJour's view is similar to the view that conscious states are
self-representational in that the awareness of some content or feature
of the state is itself part of that state, but it is important not to
overstate the similarity. For BonJour, conscious states are in a
sense, as Chisholm might put it, self-*presenting*, but they
are not self-*representing*. BonJour denies that direct
awareness of something is intentional or representational, or that it
essentially involves a *thought about or representation of* it.
Again, like all acquaintance theorists, he takes the sort of awareness
underlying all foundationally justified belief to be unmediated by any
belief or representation, and to guarantee the existence of its
object: one cannot be directly aware of something that does not exist.




BonJour's view of acquaintance seems to explain why, as
proponents of the acquaintance approach tend to hold, one cannot be
acquainted with external world objects or external world facts
(BonJour 2001: 31). If acquaintance is a "built-in"
feature of conscious states in virtue of which one can be aware only
of intrinsic features of that very state, then on the plausible
assumption that ordinary physical objects and their intrinsic features
are not intrinsic features of mental states, one cannot have
acquaintance with such objects or their features. On the other hand,
Fumerton's relational view of acquaintance, like the traditional
Russellian view, seems to allow for the possibility of acquaintance
with abstract entities such as universals, which some acquaintance
theorists appeal to in order to make sense of the possibility of
thought and *a priori* knowledge
 (see section 4).
 There is room for more work here in investigating the nature of
acquaintance and its implications.



It's also worth noting that although talk of acquaintance often
brings sense-datum theory to mind, there is nothing about the
commitment to acquaintance itself that entails such a commitment.
According to sense datum theory, whenever one has a sensory experience
as of some object having some property *F*, there is some object
present that has the property *F*. For example, if I have a
sensory experience as of a green triangle, then there is something
present that is green and triangular. And since I could have this
sensory experience even while hallucinating (at least according to
sense datum theorists), this object that is green and triangular is
not a physical object. In contrast to the sense datum theorist who
treats the sensed property *F* as a feature of some object of
which the subject is aware, the adverbialist or advocate of the theory
of appearing treats it as a way of sensing or experiencing. To dance a
waltz is not to do something or perform some act, viz., dancing, that
takes something else, a waltz, as its object, but is rather a way or
manner of dancing--dancing waltzily; similarly, to experience or
have an appearance of green is not to have an act of awareness that
takes a green object as its target, but is rather a way of
experiencing or being appeared to--"experiencing
greenly", or "being appeared to greenly." The
acquaintance approach is compatible with adverbialism regarding sense
experience; one might be acquainted with experiential states, and with
one's experiencing greenly, as opposed to being acquainted with
some green object, and with its being green. (See, for example,
Fumerton 1985: 94-5; McGrew 1995: 93-4; and Chalmers 2010:
291.) Alternatively, some acquaintance theorists take perceptual or
sensory experience to involve acquaintance with *universals*,
and hope thereby to avoid problems with both the sense datum theory
and the adverbial theory. For an interesting defense of this view, see
Forrest (2005). (For more on sense datum theory and adverbialism, see
the entry on
 the problem of perception.)



As we have seen, the familiar experience of temporarily failing to
notice one's pain while engrossed in conversation serves as a
potential illustration of acquaintance. In at least some such cases,
the pain does not disappear entirely, even though one no longer
notices it. Some may be inclined to deny that one can have a pain
without being in some way aware or conscious of the pain. (BonJour
2003 seems to hold this view. See also, Chalmers 2010: 291.) But it
does seem that the sort of case Fumerton describes is a genuinely
possible, indeed frequent, occurrence, and that the act of noticing
one's pain is not a mere predication of one concept to another
(e.g., predication of the concept *pain* to the concept
*present experience*), but an act of fixing one's mental
gaze, so to speak, on some particular feature or aspect of one's
experience. A relation of acquaintance seems to provide just what is
needed here: if acquaintance is a relation that one can stand in to
one's experience or to some feature of the experience, that
would account for the possibility of having an experience of
something, like a pain or some other sensation, temporarily failing to
notice it, and then noticing it again. Can BonJour's account
handle such cases as well? BonJour does qualify the awareness required
for justification in a particular way that may help him to make sense
of such cases. I can be conscious of or directly aware of a great many
features simultaneously, but can *attend* to only a few
features at any one time. For BonJour, attention is not entirely
separate from the built-in awareness, but is "built upon it via
what might be described as a selective focus" (2003: 192). So,
while I cannot be in pain without being conscious of or aware of the
pain, I can be in pain without attending specifically or selectively
to the pain. Gertler (2001) presents an account of the justification
of introspective beliefs that takes attention as a primitive, direct
awareness. Though the connection to acquaintance is not explicit
there, in more recent work Gertler defends the same view as an
"acquaintance approach" to introspective knowledge, so
called because it is inspired by Russell's theory of
acquaintance (2011, 2012). She seems to regard demonstrative attention
(the sort of attention that makes possible introspective judgments
with demonstrative content, e.g., "I am experiencing
*this* property") as made possible by acquaintance
(2012). Taylor (2013) discusses a number of phenomenological and
theoretical advantages to identifying acquaintance with attentive
awareness.



To summarize, there is a great deal of agreement among philosophers
who adopt the acquaintance approach: they all take there to be an
epistemically fundamental awareness that is unmediated and
nonconceptual, a form of awareness that secures the existence of its
object. There seems to be some disagreement regarding the nature of
acquaintance, e.g., whether it is fundamentally a relation between the
self and the target of awareness, or an intrinsic,
"built-in" aspect or feature of some mental states; and
whether it consists in attention. There may also be some disagreement
regarding the possible objects or targets of acquaintance. And, as we
shall see below, there is also some disagreement regarding the proper
analysis of noninferential knowledge or justified belief, and how
acquaintance figures in that analysis.


## 3. Acquaintance and Noninferential Knowledge



Foundationalism regarding justification is often motivated by some
version of the regress argument. (Foundationalism regarding knowledge
can be motivated by a parallel version of the regress argument, put in
terms of knowledge rather than justification.) The argument goes
roughly as follows. By definition, any belief *B* that is an
instance of nonfoundational or inferential justification must depend
on some inference or inferential relation to other beliefs. It seems
that this dependence on other beliefs must take one of four forms: (i)
the belief depends inferentially on other beliefs, and the latter
beliefs on yet other beliefs, to infinity; (ii) the inference
eventually loops back to belief *B*, so that *B* depends on
itself for its justification; (iii) the belief ultimately depends on
other beliefs that are not themselves justified; or (iv) the belief
ultimately depends on a foundationally justified belief: a belief that
is justified but that does not depend on other beliefs for its
justification. The foundationalist argues that each of the
alternatives to (iv) is seriously problematic: (i) An infinite regress
is vicious, and even if it isn't, this is no help for finite
minds like our own. (ii) Circular reasoning is vicious; one cannot
depend, even in part, on a belief that *p* in order to justify
believing that *p*. (iii) One cannot generate justification by
relying on unjustified beliefs ("garbage in, garbage
out!"). So that leaves (iv): if any of our beliefs are
justified, then they must either be foundationally justified or
depend, ultimately, on foundational beliefs for their
justification.



Some worry that (iv) is no better, and possibly worse, than the
alternatives: how could a belief be justified, or be an instance of
knowledge, without depending on other beliefs? The acquaintance
theorists seems to have an answer: acquaintance with facts is designed
to end the potentially vicious regress of justification. But how
exactly do we get noninferential knowledge or justified belief out of
acquaintance? An acquaintance theorist who accepts the correspondence
theory of truth can provide a relatively straightforward answer. On
what is surely the classical conception of truth, truth consists in
correspondence between the truth bearer (the proposition, thought, or
belief) and the representation-independent fact to which that truth
bearer corresponds (see the entry on
 the correspondence theory of truth).
 The question of what constitute the primary bearers of truth value is
a matter of enormous controversy. Suppose, though, for this discussion
that it is a thought that is the primary bearer of truth value
(sentences are derivatively true or false when they express thoughts
that are true or false).



On a simple version of this view (perhaps too simple to have any
contemporary proponents, but an instructive place to start), we have
noninferential or foundational knowledge that *P* if and only
if we have the thought that *P* while we are directly
acquainted with the fact that *P*--i.e., a truth-maker of
the thought that *P*. So if I am the kind of being who has the
conceptual sophistication to form thoughts, and I have the thought
that I am in pain while I am acquainted with the fact that I am in
pain, I have the most secure and basic sort of knowledge of truth.



We said earlier that acquaintance is not itself judgmental or
propositional, and so does not have truth value--it is a form of
awareness *of* something, not awareness *that* something
is so-and-so. However, this leaves open the possibility that the
*object or target* of acquaintance--that with which one is
acquainted--be propositional or have truth value. If I am
acquainted with the proposition or thought that I am in pain then I am
acquainted with something that has truth value, even though
acquaintance itself is not to be understood as propositional in
nature. The simple view we are considering might hold that one has
foundational knowledge that one is in pain if, in addition to being
acquainted with one's being in pain, one is also acquainted with
the thought or proposition that one is in pain. 



This view of how we get from acquaintance to noninferential knowledge
or justified belief is problematic, however. First, the account seems
too weak, for acquaintance with a fact that corresponds to a thought
is *not sufficient for justification*, let alone knowledge.
Suppose that I am aware of the fact of there being a decagon in my
visual field. Suppose that I also believe that there is a decagon
in my visual field, but my belief is little more than a lucky guess,
or that I only believe this because I think there always is a decagon in my visual field. Intuitively, the belief is not justified.
Second, the account seems too strong, for the requirement that
one's thought correspond to reality rules out the possibility of
*false* noninferentially justified belief. The resulting
infallibilism regarding foundational belief is a *prima facie*
implausible requirement, and arguably has radically skeptical
consequences. This second problem will be taken up later, in
 section 6.



Contemporary acquaintance theorists have defended more sophisticated
versions of the view. In response to the first problem, the
acquaintance theorist can agree that in order to be justified it is
not enough that the subject be acquainted with a fact that happens to
correspond to what is believed. It will be useful to divide the
responses into two broad camps, introduced in the next two
sub-sections: those that require, in addition to acquaintance with
some fact, some sort of awareness of the correspondence between the
thought and what it is about (or perhaps awareness of some other
epistemically relevant relation--see the end of
 section 6),
 and those that require that the beliefs involve demonstrative or
phenomenal concepts. 


### 3.1 Awareness of Correspondence



Why is acquaintance with a fact that corresponds to one's
thought not sufficient for justification? Consider the example
mentioned above. I can be directly aware of there being a decagon
in my visual field, believe that there is a decagon in my visual
field, and yet I might fail to be justified if I believe this not
because I am unaware of there being a decagon in my visual field,
but because my belief was little more than a guess, or because I
believe (without justification) that there are always decagons in
my visual field. This might suggest that the acquaintance theorist
need only add some condition to the effect that the subject must
believe that *p because* she is aware of a corresponding fact.
Most acquaintance theorists will not be entirely happy with this
suggestion. Acquaintance theorists are paradigm internalists about
justification: they typically accept the internalist thesis that one
can be justified in believing that *p* only if one has a reason
or evidence in favor of *p*'s truth, something in virtue
of which the truth of *p* is not a mere accident from his or
her perspective; externalists deny this thesis (see the entry on
 internalist vs. externalist conceptions of epistemic justification).
 Acquaintance theorists are therefore likely to insist that awareness
of the fact that *p* cannot provide justification for believing
that *p* unless the subject is in some way also aware of the
relevance of that fact to the truth of *p*. This awareness of
the relevance of some fact to the truth of *p* might be
accepted as part of
 the epistemic basing relation,
 and for this reason necessary for "doxastic
justification": in order for *S* to *be justified in
believing that *p* on the basis of some ground or evidence
e*, *S* must be aware of the relevance of *e* to
*p*'s truth, and believe that *p* directly because
of this awareness. Alternatively, the awareness of the relevance of
some fact to the truth of *p* might be taken as a condition for
even "propositional justification": in order for *S*
to *have or possess noninferential justification for believing that
*p** (even if *S* does not believe that *p*, or
does not properly base the belief on that justification), *S*
must not only be acquainted with some fact that is relevant to the
truth of *p*, but must also be aware, in some way, of the
relevance of that fact to the truth of *p*. Moser (1989:
141-5) seems to endorse a view of the former sort, while
Fumerton (1995) endorses the latter. (While the distinction between
propositional and doxastic justification is important, to simplify
discussion, we do not distinguish carefully between these below.)



According to Fumerton, a belief that *p* is noninferentially
justified if and only if the subject is acquainted with the thought
that *p*, acquainted with a corresponding fact, and acquainted
with the correspondence between the thought that *p* and that
corresponding fact. (Fumerton qualifies the analysis to accommodate
false noninferentially justified beliefs, but let us ignore this for
the moment.) Suppose that I am acquainted with my having a headache,
acquainted with the thought that I have a headache, and acquainted
with the correspondence between the thought that I have a headache and
my having a headache. When this happens, everything constitutive of
the thought's being true is there directly before my mind.
Epistemically speaking, it doesn't get any better than this.



BonJour's account of noninferentially justified belief similarly
requires not only direct awareness of some fact, but also a
*"direct recognition" of the "fit"*
between that fact and the conceptual description embodied in the
belief (BonJour 2003: 73-4). Both Fumerton and BonJour thus
require some sort of awareness or grasp of the correspondence between
a thought and what it is about. However, while Fumerton's
acquaintance with correspondence is acquaintance with a fact and not a
judgment that a proposition is true, BonJour seems to understand the
"recognition" of fit or correspondence as judgmental or
propositional--something like a judgment to the effect that the
conceptual description embodied in the belief fits or correctly
describes one's experience. This naturally leads to the
question, must this judgment of fit itself be justified? And if so,
what justifies it? BonJour insists (2003: 65 and 193) that while the
judgment of fit requires justification, its justification depends on
one's direct awareness of the propositional content believed and
a direct awareness of the relevant experiential feature, and that
there is no need for any further awareness, judgmental or otherwise.
This response seems problematic, however, for we now have at least one
sort of belief or judgment, the higher-order judgment of fit itself,
that is noninferentially justified without there being any awareness
or recognition that *its* propositional content fits the facts.
If a judgment of fit is required for the first-order belief,
shouldn't the same be required for the judgment of fit itself?
But if it is required then we are off on a regress of judgments of
fit, with no foundation in sight. This suggests, in line with
Fumerton's view, that if some awareness of fit or correspondence
is required, then it must at the most fundamental level be a
nonconceptual and nonpropositional awareness of fit or correspondence.



### 3.2 Demonstrative Concepts and Phenomenal Concepts



Not all acquaintance theorists require acquaintance with the
correspondence (or some other epistemically relevant relation) between
some thought or proposition and a distinct fact for one to have
knowledge by acquaintance. Rather than require a further act of
awareness, some acquaintance theorists add constraints to the nature
of the foundational belief or the manner in which it is formed so that
acquaintance with some mental state or mental feature provides part of
the content of the belief itself, and does so in such a way as to
guarantee the truth of the belief. For example, according to McGrew
(1995, 1999), for any object of acquaintance or direct awareness, it
is possible to form a belief in which a demonstrative concept refers
directly to it. By virtue of my acquaintance with a painful
experience, I believe directly of it that it exists, or that the
property (painfulness) is instantiated. We could express the belief
roughly by saying "I am experiencing *this*"
(McGrew 1995, 1999), or "*this* is instantiated (in me,
now)" (Gertler 2012)*.* For this kind of belief (unlike
most other beliefs regarding contingent facts), to genuinely
understand or grasp the content of the belief *is* to grasp its
truth. 



It is important to see how this is different from the standard view of
demonstrative concepts. On the standard view, a demonstrative concept
is something like an *indexical* (see the entry on
 indexicals).
 Consider indexical concepts like *I, here,* and *now*.
The reference of these concepts is fixed by the context, by the
speaker or thinker's identity, location, and time. On the
standard view, the *content* of a token indexical concept is
constituted by or essentially tied to the actual referent, much as the
content of the concept *water* is constituted by or essentially
tied to the actual referent in the environment (at least according to
content-externalism about natural-kind concepts). The standard view of
demonstratives is similar. The actual referent of a token
demonstrative concept is taken to constitute or be essential to its
content, but unlike the indexical concepts just discussed, the
reference of a demonstrative is not fixed automatically by the
speaker's identity, location and time; something else is needed
to fix the reference. Different views of the reference-fixing factor
have been proposed, with the main suggestions being that reference is
fixed by one or more of the following: a *demonstration*,
understood as an act of pointing or gesturing or some similar
behavior; an *intention* to point or refer to an object of a
certain kind, or an object satisfying some description; or some
appropriate causal or spatial relation (e.g., between the
agent's pointing or utterance and some item in the environment).
What is important for our purposes is that none of these views take
the reference-fixing to be done *purely by acquaintance or direct
awareness*. On McGrew's view, the reference is fixed by
*direct awareness*, and not by acts of pointing or gesturing,
by the subject's intentions to refer to a certain sort of thing,
or by causal relations. 



McGrew is not alone in holding that experiential or phenomenal
features can, by virtue of our direct awareness of them, constitute
the content of a special class of concepts. Gertler (2001, 2011,
2012), Chalmers (2003, 2010), and Nida-Rumelin (2004) defend
views very much in the same spirit. Gertler (2001) distinguishes
between ordinary demonstratives, which typically involve an intention
to pick out an entity that satisfies some description, and a
*pure* demonstrative, which picks out its referent solely by a
fundamental act of attention or acquaintance. Chalmers (2003, 2010)
defends a similar view according to which some noninferential beliefs
are justified by virtue of involving a "direct phenomenal
concept," a concept whose content is *constituted* by a
phenomenal quality with which one is acquainted. The view is supported
by considering Frank Jackson's (1982) hypothetical case of Mary,
who has learned all of the physical facts about color but has never
had a visual experience in color until one day she experiences red.
Jackson argues there that Mary thereby learns some new information;
she acquires some new knowledge. And since Mary already knows all the
physical facts about color, this new item of knowledge must, Jackson
argues, be of a non-physical fact. Chalmers (2010) and
Nida-Rumelin (2004) argue that it is difficult to make sense of
the epistemic progress of subjects like Jackson's Mary unless we
accept that there is a core phenomenal concept whose content is
constituted by an underlying phenomenal or experiential quality with
which the subject is acquainted. Chalmers (2004) relies on the
acquaintance approach to phenomenal concepts to defend the knowledge
argument for dualism--i.e., the claim that Mary acquires new
knowledge, and that this must be knowledge of a *non-physical
fact*. (He notes (2003: 227) that demonstratives are naturally
used to express direct phenomenal concepts (e.g., "I am
experiencing *this* quality"), and that there may be a
sense in which a direct phenomenal concept is a
"demonstrative" concept, but he avoids such a label at
least in part because of the danger of confusing direct phenomenal
concepts with demonstrative ones as usually understood.) It is worth
noting that, in contrast, some philosophers appeal to knowledge by
acquaintance to make sense of Mary's new knowledge in order to
oppose, rather than to support, the success of the knowledge argument
for a dualistic conclusion (e.g., Conee 1994 and Balog 2012). 



McGrew endorses classical foundationalism, taking all our empirical
knowledge to rest on a foundation of knowledge that is had by
acquaintance or direct awareness, and in particular on demonstrative
beliefs. While Chalmers and Gertler seem somewhat sympathetic to
classical foundationalism, they have been concerned primarily to
defend the claim that at least some introspective beliefs or beliefs
regarding one's own phenomenal states constitute the most secure
sort of empirical, noninferential knowledge or justified belief, and
that these beliefs owe their privileged epistemic status to
acquaintance. Thus, Gertler (2012) endorses the acquaintance approach
for a limited class of introspective judgments, and leaves it open
whether there could be other sources of noninferential
justification.



Some worry that the demonstrative strategy yields beliefs with very
little content (Sosa 2003b). If, however, we keep in mind that the
content of the belief is secured by the subject's direct
awareness of the phenomenal features themselves then it is unclear why
the content can't be as rich as the features attended to. A more
serious worry in the vicinity is that, insofar as a demonstrative
concept is only *possessed* by the subject for as long as the
particular experience or property instance is given or presented, we
have no account of how concepts that the subject can possess over time
as experiences change can be applied directly to experience. Even if
purely demonstrative beliefs have an important role to play at the
foundations, many classical foundationalists will want to allow that
some concepts that we already possess can be compared directly to
experience to yield foundational knowledge. Unless some foundational
beliefs involve such enduring concepts, concepts whose connections to
other concepts we have had the opportunity to grasp, it will be
difficult to see how these foundations could support various other
beliefs that are intuitively justified. To accommodate such
foundations, Chalmers (2003) suggests that subjects might retain
knowledge of what an experience is like even after the experience is
long gone, by acquiring what he calls a *standing* phenomenal
concept. Standing phenomenal concepts are still very much like direct
phenomenal concepts in that the content is essentially tied to
phenomenal properties. While Chalmers does not say exactly what
determines the content of such concepts, he finds it



> 
> 
> plausible that their content is determined by some combination of (1)
> non-sensory phenomenal states of a cognitive sort, which bear a
> relevant relation to the original phenomenal quality in
> question--e.g., a faint Humean phenomenal 'idea' that
> is relevantly related to the original 'impression'; (2)
> dispositions to have such states; and (3) dispositions to recognize
> instances of the phenomenal quality in question. (2003: 239)
> 
> 
> 


## 4. Acquaintance, Thought, and *A Priori* Knowledge



So far we have been talking primarily about the role of acquaintance
in securing a special kind of knowledge. There is, however, another
crucial role acquaintance has been thought to play. For philosophers
like Russell, acquaintance secures not only the objects of knowledge
but the objects of thought itself; it explains not only how knowledge
is possible, but also how thought is possible. This is so not just for
a special class of thoughts about experiences or experiential
qualities as some hold (see
 section 3.2,
 on demonstrative and phenomenal concepts), but for thought in
general. The idea actually goes back to the empiricists who claimed
that all simple ideas have their source in experience. When refined
the suggestion probably amounted to the view that all simple ideas are
derived from objects or properties with which we are acquainted or of
which we are directly aware. On Russell's version of the view,
whenever you form a thought, the components of that thought are items
with which you are acquainted:



> 
> 
> *Every proposition which we can understand must be composed
> wholly of constituents with which we are acquainted.*
> (1912: Ch. 5) 
> 
> 
> 



You can, to be sure, think of Jack the Ripper, but the thought when
analyzed is broken down into constituents each of which is something
we can apprehend directly. The name "Jack the Ripper" gets
reduced to a description embedded in a quantified statement. The
thought that *Jack the Ripper is vicious* just is the thought
that there exists one and only one individual who has certain
properties--e.g., who is the most famous 19th Century
murderer*--*and who also has the property of being
vicious. Russell has always struggled with the question of how to view
our understanding of the quantifier--expressions of quantity such
as 'a' or 'the'--but it is clear that he
believed that we have the capacity to entertain in thought (directly)
the properties (universals) picked out by predicate expressions. If
having a thought essentially involves acquaintance with universals,
then it ceases to be a mystery how thought can represent the world,
since the world partly consists in instances or exemplifications of
universals; and if a thought involves acquaintance with universals
that happen to be instantiated or exemplified by some object of
acquaintance, then it makes sense that one can, at least in some
cases, directly compare and become acquainted with the correspondence
or fit between the two. 



The acquaintance theorist is in a position to offer a different gloss
on the traditional distinction between
 *a priori* knowledge
 of necessary truth and *a posteriori* or empirical knowledge
of contingent truth. On the classical acquaintance theory, knowledge
of both truths has the same source--acquaintance with facts. The
distinction lies with the *objects* of acquaintance. When I am
acquainted with my being in pain, that can give me knowledge of the
contingent truth that I'm in pain. When I am acquainted with the
property of being red, the property of being yellow and the relation
of being darker than holding between them, that can give me knowledge
of the necessary truth that red is darker than yellow. When I am
acquainted with being triangular and being trilateral and the relation
of inclusion holding between them, that can give me knowledge of the
necessary truth that triangles are trilateral. When I am acquainted
with being a circle, and having corners, and the relation of exclusion
between them, that can give me knowledge of the necessary truth that
circles have no corners. For similar views of the nature of thought
and the *a priori*, see Bealer (1982: Ch. 8, especially
187-90) and BonJour (1998: Ch. 6). 


## 5. Acquaintance and Inferential Knowledge



An acquaintance theorist aiming to provide a general account of
knowledge owes us an account not only of noninferential knowledge, but
also of inferential knowledge. How can we get at least reasonable or
justified belief when we are not directly acquainted with the truth
makers of those beliefs, the facts that make the beliefs true? Again,
we stress that the question we are concerned with here is not how we
can get knowledge of truths in contrast to knowledge of something
other than a truth. We have already suggested that knowledge by
acquaintance should be thought of as knowledge of a truth made
possible by acquaintance with the truth maker. The question, rather,
concerns how we can get knowledge of a truth when we are not
acquainted with the truth maker. For the classical acquaintance
theorist, that question, in turn, reduces to the question of how we
can acquire knowledge through inference.



There are at least two possible answers the acquaintance theorist
might give. A view we might call inferential externalism suggests that
to acquire inferential knowledge that *Q* by inferring
*Q* from *P* it is enough that *P* makes highly
probable *Q*. The relation of making probable, itself, can be
interpreted in many different ways. A detailed discussion of
interpretations of probability would take us too far afield, so let us
be content with a few very brief remarks (see the entry on
 interpretations of probability).
 One might try to understand probability in terms of frequency.
Roughly the idea is that *P* makes *Q* probable when
*P* and *Q* form a pair of propositions of a certain
kind, where usually when the first member of a pair of propositions of
that sort is true then so is the second. Alternatively, some
philosophers would follow Keynes (1921) and argue that there are
relations of making probable that hold between propositions analogous
(in some ways) to the relation of entailment that holds between
propositions. On this view, when *P* makes probable *Q*,
it is a necessary truth that *P* makes probable *Q*
(though that necessary truth is perfectly consistent with the fact
that the conjunction of *P* and *X* might not make
probable *Q*).



Most classical foundationalists at least implicitly rejected the idea
that the mere obtaining of a probability relation between one's
noninferential evidence that *P* and the proposition *Q*
one infers from that evidence is sufficient to acquire inferential
justification or inferential knowledge. Rather, they insisted, one
must be aware of or have access to the probabilistic connection that
obtains between one's premises and one's conclusion.
Direct acquaintance with facts was proposed to end a potentially
vicious regress of justification
 (see section 3),
 but now the regress looms again in connection with knowledge of
probabilistic connections. How can one get knowledge of probabilistic
connections between premises and conclusions? If one infers the
existence of the probabilistic connections from the truth of some
other different proposition *F*, then one not only needs
justification for believing *F*, but, one needs justification
for believing that *F* does indeed make probable that the
probabilistic connection holds! The problem here is essentially the
one that has been pointed out by Lewis Carroll (1895), though he
applied the problem to deductive inference. BonJour (2005) cites this
problem as a reason for taking a direct, nonpropositional grasp of
logical relations as crucial to inferential justification, at least
for deductive inferences; similarly, Fumerton (2015) argues that, to
halt the regress, the internalist should require a direct awareness of
relations of making probable between propositions. But are we aware of
such relations? The problem seems hopeless if one understands
probability in terms of frequency, for we do not seem to have any
direct access to such complex, contingent facts as the ratio that one
proposition is true relative to another (logically independent) one.
That seems to be the sort of thing one can only know by extensive
observation, data gathering, or empirical research, and the question
of how we know that some observation makes probable our judgment of
probability arises all over again. But if one can convince oneself
that there are real logical relations of making probable holding
between propositions, then perhaps the acquaintance theorist can
secure the required knowledge of those connections once again through
acquaintance. Ramsey (1926) famously objected that we do not seem to
perceive such relations of making probable, but Hasan (2017) argues
that these objections are weak, and that there are good reasons to
think we can be directly aware of such relations. This version of the
acquaintance theory relies critically on the fundamental concept of
acquaintance in understanding both noninferential and inferential
knowledge. Noninferential knowledge is secured by direct acquaintance
with truth makers. Inferential knowledge is secured by direct
acquaintance with logical and probabilistic connections between known
propositions and other propositions.


## 6. Fallible Noninferentially Justified Beliefs



An acquaintance theory of justification that requires acquaintance
with a proposition's truth maker in order for the subject to be
justified in believing the proposition may seem to require too much.
The requirement rules out the possibility of *false*
noninferentially justified belief, and the problem is that there seem
to be plausible examples of such beliefs. Suppose that I am
experiencing what seems to be a marginal or border-line case of pain,
and that I believe it is an experience of pain. But suppose that, as
it turns out, my belief is false; the experience is not a pain but,
say, a painless itch. *Prima facie*, it is plausible that the
belief has some degree (perhaps not very much) of justification, the
same or very close to the degree of justification I might have in the
"good" case in which I *correctly* believe that I
am experiencing pain on the basis of an experience of marginal pain.
Other cases might involve mistaking hot and cold, mistaking shades of
phenomenal color, mistaking the number of speckles in a region of
one's visual field, and mistaking the content of one's own
thoughts. Moreover, even when we restrict our attention to
*true* noninferentially justified beliefs, it seems plausible
that the degree of justification can vary, and we need some way of
accounting for this. Suppose, for example, that I really am
experiencing a marginal case of pain. It is plausible to think that my
belief that I am experiencing pain, while true, is not as justified as
the belief would be if I were in searing pain. 



McGrew (1995, 1999) argues that a kind of certainty or infallibility
(in his terms, "incorrigibility") is a necessary feature
of empirical foundational beliefs: a belief that *P* is
empirically foundational only if being justified in believing that
*P* guarantees its truth. He defends the view that such
foundations are available and that they are adequate to yield
knowledge of the external world. Other classical foundationalists want
to allow for the possibility of *false* foundational beliefs.
(See Fumerton 1995: 77; BonJour 2003: 73-74; and Fales 1996:
174-80. For a critique of acquaintance theorists' attempts
to accommodate fallibility at the foundations, see Huemer 2007, Poston
2010, and Tucker 2016. For replies to some of these critiques, see
Fumerton 2010 and 2016, Hasan 2013, and Stoutenburg (forthcoming).
Stoutenburg nevertheless motivates infalliblism, and provides an
account of how propositions that moderate foundationalists regard as
basic derive their justification from infallibly known
propositions.)



Intuitively, we may want to allow that one be justified to some degree
if the fact with which one is actually acquainted corresponds to a
proposition that is very similar to the proposition believed (Fumerton
1995: 77). This might suggest the following principle: 


1. If one is directly aware of *x*'s being *F*, and
*F* is sufficiently similar to *G*, then one thereby has at
least some defeasible justification for believing that *x* is
*G*.



One apparent problem with this suggestion is that the satisfaction of
the antecedent does not seem to give the subject a reason to think the
belief is true. The problem is clear if we assume, as acquaintance
theorists generally do, that a belief can be justified for a subject
only if the proposition believed is made probable by the
subject's evidence, or by that with which the subject is
acquainted. The mere fact that I experience one of these shades fails
to make probable, indeed, rules out, that I experience the other, and
so gives me no justification for believing that I experience the
other. Here's a second attempt:


2. If one is directly aware of *x*'s being *F*, but
it seems to oneself that *x* is *G* or one is inclined to
believe that *x* is *G*, then one thereby has at least some
defeasible justification for believing that *x* is *G*.



The problem with this suggestion is that acquaintance or direct
awareness doesn't seem to be doing the crucial epistemic work.
If the principle is true, why not hold some version of
"phenomenal conservativism" in epistemology, the position
that a propositional awareness--a seeming that *x* is
*G* or an inclination to believe that *x* is
*G*--is a source of defeasible justification for believing
that *x* is *G*? If so, then the acquaintance or direct
awareness requirement should be dropped from (2) and there would still
be the justification. Here is perhaps a more promising strategy:


3. If one is directly aware of *x*'s being *F*, and
*x*'s being *F* makes it probable for one that it is
*G*, then one thereby has at least some defeasible justification
for believing that *x* is *G*.



We get different versions of the acquaintance approach to fallible
beliefs depending on what is required for something to "make
probable *for one*". Acquaintance theorists with strong
internalist inclinations are likely to insist that awareness of the
fact that *p* cannot justify one in believing that *p*
unless the subject is in some way also aware of the fact's
making it probable that *p*.



Reflection on some examples suggests the following problem with this
principle. An experience's being a mere itch does not make it
probable that it is a pain, for its being a mere itch rules out its
being a pain; and an experience's being indeterminately either
an itch or a pain does not make it probable that it is a pain, for it
might just as probably be an itch. Or suppose that I am directly aware
of a phenomenally red patch in my visual field, and on the basis of
this I form the false belief that it is, say, pink; or that I am
directly aware of a determinate shade red1, but I form the
false belief that the patch is red2. Again, principle (3)
does not apply: something's being red cannot make it probable
that it is pink, for there are many other shades of red;
something's being red1 cannot make it probable that
it is red2, for being one determinate shade rules out being
the other. (See Huemer 2007 for an argument against (2) and (3) along
these lines, though one that employs some different examples.)



The problem, however, might not be with principle (3) itself but with
the sorts of features focused on (see Hasan 2013: section 3). There
may be other features involved in such apparent cases of fallible
foundational justification that do make probable the proposition
believed. For example, consider the following principle, which is a
specific version of (3): 


4. If one is directly aware of some feature's seeming to be
*G* (or of one's being inclined to believe that it is
*G*), and its seeming to be *G* makes it probable for one
that it is *G*, then one thereby has at least some defeasible
justification for believing that it is *G*.



Tucker (2016) presents a dilemma for this proposal: Either the
relevant making probable relation is contingent, or it is necessary.
If it is contingent, then the justification will be inferential, and
so the principle can't account for misleading noninferential
justification. If it is necessary, then (like (2)), the principle has
too much in common with phenomenal conservatism to be attractive from
the point of view of classical foundationalism. A plausible reply
would grasp the second horn: Unlike (2), this does not threaten to
collapse to conservatism, since it still requires acquaintance with
something epistemically relevant to the target
proposition--acquaintance with a probability maker (and perhaps
also, for those with strong internalist inclinations, acquaintance
with the relation of making probable). If the view still has something
in common with phenomenal conservatism, that might be a point in its
favor: it can help capture what the phenomenal conservatism seems to
get right without accepting it.



Moser (1989) seems to accept a view along these lines, though he would
put the fundamental principle in explanatory terms, roughly as
follows:


5. If one is directly aware of *x*'s being *F*, and
*y*'s being *G* is the best explanation for one of
*x*'s being *F*, then one thereby has at least some
defeasible justification for believing that *y* is *G*.



So, for example, if one is directly aware of the appearance of a blue
book, and such an appearance is best explained for one by the presence
of an actual blue book, then one has some justification for believing
that a blue book is present. For Moser, physical object
*appearances* may be given even though physical objects cannot,
and these appearances may justify beliefs about physical objects
without requiring beliefs about appearances. Though Moser does not
discuss this explicitly, perhaps beliefs regarding our own experiences
can be justified in a similar way. If an appearance of pain can be
given to me despite the fact that I am not in pain, and the appearance
makes probable or is best explained by the fact that I am actually
experiencing pain, then perhaps I have some justification for
believing that I am in pain. Moser thus aims to defend a form of
foundationalism that is classical in its commitment to acquaintance or
the given, and yet "moderate" not only in holding that
some noninferentially justified beliefs can be false, but also that
some external world beliefs can be noninferentially justified. A great
deal depends, of course, on whether a plausible account of these
seemings or appearances can be given, and whether a strong enough case
can be made for the claim that the truth of the relevant propositions
do best explain the appearances (see Moser 1989: 158-165, for a
defense of the latter for external-world beliefs). 



Others who accept something along the lines of (3) or (4) seem to
focus on different features. According to Fales (1996: 175), while
something's being given to one is not a matter of degree, the
"transparency" of the given is a matter of degree, and can
itself be given. When one is thinking that some given experience or
item *x* is *G*, and one is directly aware of the uncertain
or not-fully-transparent character of one's awareness, this can
make it merely probable for one that *x* is *G*. Fumerton
(2016: 242) appeals to the controversial idea that correspondence can
come in degrees. For example, one can be aware of a shade of color
that is closer to the orange part of the color continuum but still
corresponds relatively well to the thought that it is red; as the
correspondence gets weaker, the justification one has for the belief
also gets weaker.



Accommodating fallible foundations complicates some aspects of the
traditional view introduced above. First, it no longer seems that
Russell and Price's criterion that is reminiscent of the method
of doubt is a very good method for determining what one is acquainted
with, for there will be some objects of acquaintance that are
susceptible to some degree of doubt. However, the method of doubt
might remain useful as a guide to the *sort* of thing with
which one can be acquainted: for any physical object, I can conceive
of a case in which any justification I have for believing that it
exists is just as it is now, and yet there is no such object, and
nothing remotely like it, in my vicinity. Second, we said above that
noninferential knowledge is secured by acquaintance with truth makers,
while inferential knowledge is secured by acquaintance with logical
and probabilistic connections between the propositions known and what
one infers from those propositions. One natural way for the
acquaintance theorist to accommodate fallible foundations is to say
that *p* is noninferentially justified for one only if one is
directly aware of some *fact* that either makes true *or
makes probable* for one that *p*; if the subject's
justification for believing that *p* depends on one's
justification for some other *proposition(s)* then the
justification is inferential.



Those who do find it plausible that they can be directly aware of
relations of correspondence between propositions and facts, and who
accept some internalist requirement to the effect that one must be
aware of the relevance of some fact to the truth of a proposition in
order for that proposition to be justified for one, may be inclined to
go a bit further and accept the possibility of acquaintance with other
logical or probabilistic relations between propositional and
nonpropositional items. As we saw above in discussing inferential
knowledge, some acquaintance theorists already accept that we can have
acquaintance with entailment relations and, more controversially,
epistemic probability relations between propositions. If we can be
aware of similar relations, at the foundational level, between some
propositions and facts with which we are acquainted, this might
significantly extend the sorts of foundational beliefs satisfying
strong internalist requirements. To give just a few simple examples,
suppose that I am directly aware of a red triangle in my visual field,
and also aware of a relation of logical exclusion or incompatibility
(or, if you like, non-correspondence) between the figure's being
a red triangle and the proposition that it is green, that it is a
circle, or that it has five sides. If acquaintance with correspondence
is a source of noninferential justification, then perhaps acquaintance
with these relations of incompatibility can be a source of
noninferential justification for disbelieving these propositions, or
for believing their negations--believing that the figure is not
green, that it is not a circle, and that it is not five-sided
respectively. According to Moser (1989), we can also be directly aware
of probabilistic or explanatory relations between propositions and
nonpropositional items--e.g., between the proposition that there
is a blue book here, and the given appearance of a blue book (though,
as already mentioned in
 section 3.1,
 he seems to take this as a requirement for doxastic as opposed to
propositional justification).


## 7. Criticisms



Many objections and concerns have been raised against the acquaintance
approach. We here discuss three main ones: the Sellarsian Dilemma,
Sosa's problem of the speckled hen, and the threat of
skepticism.


### 7.1 The Sellarsian Dilemma



In developing the view, we have already responded to one of its most
common criticisms. As was noted above, it has been argued (most
famously by Sellars 1963) that even if there were such a thing as
acquaintance with individuals, properties, or facts, that relation
wouldn't give one knowledge of *truths*. The observation
is correct (since acquaintance with something does not amount to a
judgment, let alone a true judgment, about it), but it is irrelevant
to the more sophisticated view according to which the acquaintance
with the relevant fact is only a *constituent* of the ground of
propositional knowledge. As we have seen
 (section 3),
 acquaintance theorists typically add conditions that make the fact
with which one is acquainted directly relevant to the truth of some
thought or belief--e.g., by requiring awareness of the
correspondence or fit (or perhaps some other relation) between the
thought and the fact, or by requiring that the fact constitute part of
the content of the belief.



These sophisticated views also seem capable of handling a closely
related, influential objection. Inspired by Sellars, BonJour (1978,
1985) presented the following dilemma for any foundationalist view
that takes one's justification to consist in or depend
essentially on some sort of awareness, acquaintance, or apprehension.
(See also, Sellars 1963: Part I, 1975; Davidson 1983; McDowell 1994;
and Williams 2005.) Is the awareness or acquaintance that is the
alleged source of noninferential justification propositional or
conceptual? That is, does it involve the acceptance of a proposition
or thought, or at least the categorization of some sensory item or the
application of some concept to experience? If, on the one hand, the
acquaintance or awareness is propositional or conceptual in this way,
then while such acts or episodes of awareness seem capable, in
principle, of justifying other beliefs, they would surely need to be
justified themselves. The episode of awareness would involve something
like the acceptance of a proposition, and such an attitude clearly
needs justification if it is to justify anything else. But then, the
allegedly foundational belief is not foundational after all. If, on
the other hand, we can regard direct awareness as nonpropositional and
nonconceptual, then while these acts or states of awareness do not
require or even admit of justification--for simply being aware of
something is a mental state that is clearly neither justified nor
unjustified--they also don't seem capable on their own of
providing a reason or justification for propositional items like
beliefs. Therefore, the classical foundationalist's acquaintance
or direct awareness cannot serve as a foundational source of knowledge
or justified belief.



Most sophisticated versions of classical foundationalism are perhaps
best understood as grasping the nonpropositional horn of the dilemma,
since acquaintance is a nonpropositional form of awareness. Fumerton
(1995: 75) replies that while acquaintance itself is nonpropositional,
that does not rule out that propositions or thoughts are objects of
acquaintance or constituents of objects of acquaintance, and if one is
acquainted with a relation of correspondence between a thought and a
fact, that would seem to provide all the justification one could need
or want. As we have seen, BonJour (2003) gives a similar reply that
appeals to direct awareness of some fact and a direct recognition of
the fit between the fact and the proposition believed. He regards this
recognition as judgmental or propositional, and that may lead some to
push the propositional horn again: we need something further to
justify the judgment of fit, and so the regress of justification has
not yet come to an end. (For a response, see BonJour 2003: 193. For
some critical discussion, see Bergmann 2006: Ch. 2.) McGrew, Chalmers,
and others who adopt the demonstrative or phenomenal concept strategy
might reply that at least in the case of demonstratively formed
beliefs the relevance of the truth maker to the proposition believed
is transparent and guaranteed by the manner in which the belief is
formed: acquaintance simply picks out some feature of experience and
takes it up into the content of a belief or judgment that asserts that
the feature exists or is instantiated.


### 7.2 The Problem of the Speckled Hen



Recently, Sosa (2003a,b), Poston (2007) and Markie (2009) have raised
the problem of the speckled hen in objection to the acquaintance
theorist's conception of noninferential justification. The
speckled hen presents an appearance of, say, 48 speckles. One is, they
assume, directly acquainted with one's visual field replete with
the 48 speckles. Yet unless one has counted the speckles, one is
unlikely to have justification for believing that one's visual
field contains the 48 speckles. Even if one guesses correctly the
number of speckles in the field, one's guess hardly counts as a
justified belief. Direct acquaintance with truthmakers for one's
belief is, then, clearly not sufficient for noninferential
justification.



There are a number of responses available to the acquaintance theorist
(see BonJour 2003 and Fumerton 2005). It need not be part of the
acquaintance theorist's view that in being directly acquainted
with an experience one is directly acquainted with all aspects of the
experience. One might be directly acquainted with the fact that one is
being appeared to many-speckledly without being acquainted with the
fact that one is appeared to 48-speckledly. Think, for example, about
how you can be aware of a car's having a dark color without
being aware of its having a determinate shade. Some may deny that
cases like the latter are clearly possible, for is one not aware of
the specific shade as well, even if one does not have a term or
concept for it? Indeed, as we have seen, some acquaintance theorists
hold that one is acquainted with or directly aware of all intrinsic
sensory or phenomenal features of one's experience, including
specific shades of color. However, they require in addition that the
subject *attend* to the relevant feature or fact, and so they
are still able to distinguish between a selective, attentive awareness
and a more minimal consciousness or peripheral awareness. They may
attempt in this way to accommodate the intuition that we are conscious
of or aware of a great deal more than we attend to or notice, while
insisting that this attention or noticing is a nonjudgmental awareness
that secures its object--a form of acquaintance in our sense.
(See for example, BonJour 2003: 192 and Chalmers 2010: 88, n. 5. See
 section 2
 above for some elaboration.) On this view, one might attend to
one's being appeared to many-speckledly without attending to
one's being appeared to 48-speckledly. 



One might also respond that even if one is acquainted with one's
being appeared to 48-speckledly, one might fail either to have the
right sort of thought or fail to be directly aware of a correspondence
relation holding between this fact and the corresponding thought. It
may be that we do not have the simple concepts for such properties,
and so cannot compare them directly with the contents of experience.
Perhaps, when one thinks of something's having 48 speckles, one
can think of it, as Russell might say, *only by*
*description* (e.g., that number that is picked out by the
numeral '48', or by some other description) such that
one's having the thought does not involve acquaintance with the
property of being 48-speckled. A Russellian about the nature of
thoughts
 (see section 4)
 might say that we cannot be directly aware of the property
(universal) of being 48-speckled, and so cannot compare that property
directly with what is experienced. Alternatively, some might say that
while we have phenomenal concepts for color and perhaps some basic
shapes and numbers, we (most of us anyway) lack the phenomenal concept
of being 48-speckled (Feldman 2004). On such a view, if my thought
that I am appeared to 48-speckledly does not involve such Russellian
or phenomenal concepts, but rather involves descriptive or complex
contents, then it is no surprise that I am not foundationally
justified in believing that I am appeared to 48-speckledly. 



As long as one has an account of why one of the conditions for
noninferential justification fails, one is in a position to respond to
the objection.


### 7.3 The Threat of Skepticism



Although it is not always offered explicitly as an argument, many no
doubt reject the acquaintance theorist's account of both
noninferential and inferential knowledge out of fear that the account
will inevitably lead to a radical skepticism. If knowledge by
acquaintance is restricted to belief in propositions where one's
epistemic situation precludes the possibility of error, critics might
well be right in suggesting that we have a tiny body of knowledge
secured by direct acquaintance. The rest of what we know or
justifiably believe must be secured by inference, and the fear is that
we simply don't have anything like the inferential resources to
get from such a narrow base to commonsense beliefs about the world
around us. Even if we allow for some fallible foundational beliefs, as
many contemporary acquaintance theorists do (see
 section 6),
 one might still worry that the class of facts with which we are
acquainted do not constitute a very impressive base. How legitimate
that fear is depends very much on the analysis of inferential
knowledge one accepts. If one requires access to probabilistic or
explanatory connections as a condition for inferential knowledge, then
unless one can be acquainted with such connections holding between
propositions, skepticism does, indeed, loom on the horizon. A number
of acquaintance theorists are more optimistic, however, that
skepticism regarding the external world can be avoided (see McGrew
1995; Moser 1989; BonJour 2003; and Hasan 2018).



Even should it be true that the classical foundationalist has a view
that invites skepticism, it should, perhaps, be an open question as to
whether that constitutes a legitimate objection to the view. Classical
foundationalists are likely to deny that skeptical implications of a
theory of justification generally or automatically discredit it. Even
if we don't have good grounds for many of our beliefs, including
beliefs regarding the external world, it may be that we need good
grounds to be justified and we do not have them. The skeptical
implication may be correct rather than objectionable. 


## 8. Concluding Remarks



Many honestly claim that they are not sure what acquaintance is. If
asked what reason they have for thinking that there is such a thing as
acquaintance, some acquaintance theorists would reply that they are
acquainted with their being acquainted with things, or directly aware
of their being directly aware (Russell 1912: Ch. 5; Fumerton 1995:
77). Moser provides a useful analogy:



> 
> 
> Compare the parallel situation where one is so absorbed in what is
> happening on the movie screen that one is completely unaware of
> *one's watching* a movie. (1989: 78)
> 
> 
> 



Becoming aware of one's watching a movie is analogous to
becoming acquainted with one's being acquainted with pain, or
becoming acquainted with one's being acquainted with a shade of
red. However, if the analogy is apt, the opponent might see it as a
reason to doubt that the acquaintance relation is really there, for
once we reflect on whether we are watching a movie it is almost always
easy to determine whether we are, but the opponent has no easy time
finding any such relation as acquaintance or direct awareness. Of
course, the movie analogy is just that--an analogy. As already
discussed in
 section 2,
 from the acquaintance theorist's perspective, such analogies
and metaphors are bound to be misleading in some respects. It might be
more fruitful to direct one's attention to it by describing it
in some (hopefully) revealing way, as we did in
 section 2:
 acquaintance is that relation the subject had to pain before being
engrossed in the conversation, the relation that ceased during the
conversation, and that began again shortly thereafter. 



Many do find it intuitive and *prima facie* plausible that they
are acquainted with or directly aware of at least experiential states
and their features, and that this direct awareness is a fundamental
source of knowledge. Still, some will claim not to find such a
relation. It's not clear how damaging this is to the proponents
of acquaintance. The fact that doubts and disagreements can arise
regarding acquaintance or the given should not be too puzzling since
not everything about the nature of the given is itself given, and, as
Descartes observed long ago, one can easily raise doubts regarding
what one can see most clearly and distinctly, at least while one is
not attending directly to the appropriate ground or insight. To be
clear, this is not to say that those who doubt the existence of
acquaintance must not be trying to attend to it, or even that they are
somehow unable to find it; it would be more appropriate to say that
they don't realize that it is acquaintance that they have found,
or that this realization is fleeting, unstable, or easy to dismiss as
merely apparent. Some opponents may actually accept that something
like acquaintance exists but doubt that it can provide much, if any,
justification for our beliefs; in denying that they have found
anything like acquaintance, it may be that they mean only to deny that
they have found a relation of acquaintance *that can make a
significant difference to the epistemic justification of our
beliefs*. 



But what of those who deny that they ever find anything like a
relation of acquaintance when they introspect or go looking for it?
Shouldn't such denials raise serious doubts regarding
acquaintance? To determine the impact of such denials on the
acquaintance theory, it will help to reflect more carefully on how we
should understand them. If we understand the opponents as claiming
that they are not directly aware of being directly aware of anything,
or that they are not acquainted with being acquainted with anything,
then they would be presupposing the existence of that which they claim
not to find. It seems that we ought, instead, to take them as claiming
that they simply do not understand what acquaintance is, or what the
acquaintance theorist means by 'acquaintance,' even after
attempting to follow the acquaintance theorist's attempts to
lead us to grasp or understand it. Dialectically, there seems to be no
way for the acquaintance theorist to reject this opposing position
without begging the question. However, this does not show that the
acquaintance theory is false or unjustified. Objections to the very
intelligibility of critical philosophical concepts (concepts of self,
universals, causation, free will, matter, etc.) are hardly rare in
philosophy, and philosophers do not abandon their positions in the
face of such disagreements. The fact of disagreement between
philosophers on fundamental matters may lead to difficulties.
Disagreement between those who seem to be our intellectual peers or
equals may suggest that we should lower our confidence in our own
views, perhaps even drastically lower our confidence. But these are
not difficulties that only the acquaintance theory confronts. So, to
the extent that there is an objection or problem with the fact that
some deny that there is such a thing as acquaintance, a similar
problem seems to afflict most any other philosophical theory. 



The acquaintance theorists are aware that their claim to being
acquainted with acquaintance is unlikely to be of much help to those
who claim not to understand what acquaintance is, and may point out
that there are other, dialectical considerations in favor of their
view (see Fumerton 1995: 77; Chalmers 2010: 287; and Taylor 2015). We
end by summarizing a number of such considerations. While these
considerations are controversial, they suggest that acquaintance
theories deserve more serious attention than they have recently
received. Most of these have already been covered above. First,
acquaintance theorists have defended sophisticated accounts of
noninferentially justified belief, and offered responses to classical
arguments against the possibility of such beliefs, like the Sellarsian
dilemma. Second, a view that accepts the possibility of acquaintance
with universals seems able to explain not only how knowledge is
possible, but also how thought itself is possible, and how a thought
can be *about* something else. Third, the acquaintance theorist
who accepts acquaintance with complex universals is in a position to
provide an account of our knowledge of necessary truths. Fourth, those
who accept acquaintance with logical or probability relations between
propositions can give a unified treatment of foundational and
nonfoundational knowledge--a unified treatment of knowledge by
acquaintance and knowledge by description--and are not as
vulnerable to the threat of skepticism. Fifth, the sophisticated
acquaintance theory seems to accommodate two constraints on epistemic
justification that many find intuitive (though not everyone accepts;
many accounts end up rejecting one or the other): justification is
*truth-conducive*, since it requires acquaintance with facts
that make true (or at least make probable) our beliefs; and
justification is *internal* in the sense that the subject has a
secure perspective on the truth, or possesses a kind of assurance of
the truth (or probability) via acquaintance with truth-making and
probability-making relations.



Opponents of the theory may seek acquaintance with such relations or
entities without finding it, or at least, without realizing that it is
acquaintance that they have found. While acquaintance theorists are
likely to take phenomenological considerations seriously, they may
plausibly argue, first, that it is far from obvious that we are
*not* acquainted with such entities as those just mentioned
(indeed, many have found it difficult to deny that we can sometimes,
in very simple cases at least, just "see" the entailment
relation between propositions), and second, that the fact that other
philosophers disagree about this does not raise a problem specific to
the acquaintance theory. Moreover, the significant theoretical
advantages gained may more than compensate for any lack of
phenomenological obviousness. 



To summarize: Russell's distinction between knowledge by
acquaintance and knowledge by description is arguably best understood
as a distinction between foundational knowledge of truths acquired by
acquaintance and nonfoundational knowledge of truths that depend,
ultimately, on foundational knowledge. Acquaintance is a direct,
nonjudgmental and nonconceptual form of awareness that he took to be
crucial for both forms of knowledge. Following Russell, some appeal to
acquaintance with particular facts to account for the possibility of
foundational empirical knowledge; some appeal to acquaintance with
universals to account for the possibility of thought itself; some
appeal to acquaintance with complex universals to account of the
possibility of foundational *a priori* knowledge; and some
appeal to acquaintance with logical and probabilistic relations to
account for the possibility of nonfoundational knowledge or
"knowledge by description." Thus, for Russell and many
other acquaintance theorists, even "knowledge by
description" depends on acquaintance, and in more than one way.
Recently, more sophisticated forms of the acquaintance theory have
been developed, and responses to central objections offered. Moreover,
some philosophers of mind have appealed to acquaintance to either
defend, or critique, the knowledge argument for dualism. In light of
all this, one can expect the relation of acquaintance and the
distinction between knowledge by acquaintance and knowledge by
description to remain at the center of a number of debates in
epistemology and the philosophy of mind.