Abstract: Bertrand Russell divides our knowledge of things into two kinds: knowledge by acquaintance, which is direct, passive awareness of sense-data, and knowledge by description, which lets us think about physical objects we never experience directly. On this basis he builds a foundationalist theory in which all knowledge of the external world ultimately rests on acquaintance. This article outlines the distinction and the theory built on it, then examines Wilfrid Sellars’ “Myth of the Given” objection. Sellars argues that knowledge is propositional and answerable to reasons, while acquaintance is neither, so acquaintance cannot count as knowledge or justify our beliefs about the world. Uriah Kriegel’s reply, that acquaintance can justify as a truth-maker, faces a dilemma: being acquainted with the truth-making relation seems to require conceptualising it, which would turn acquaintance into description. I conclude that Russell’s programme for knowledge is uncompelling.
Introduction
Bertrand Russell thought all our knowledge rests on the things we experience directly. Wilfrid Sellars thought that idea falls apart. Here is why.
How do you know there is a table in front of you? You see it, so it seems obvious. But philosophers have long asked what, exactly, that seeing gives you. In this article I outline Bertrand Russell’s answer, which splits knowledge into two kinds, and then explain why I think it ultimately fails.
Two kinds of knowing
Russell says there are two sorts of knowledge: knowledge of things and knowledge of truths. His famous distinction, set out in The Problems of Philosophy (1912), is about knowledge of things. It comes in two forms: knowledge by acquaintance and knowledge by description.
Knowledge by acquaintance: what you directly experience
Acquaintance is direct, unmediated awareness. Take Russell’s example of a table. What you are acquainted with is not the table itself but the shape and colour you experience, which he calls sense-data (Russel, 1912, Ch 5).
The reason is doubt. You cannot sensibly doubt the colour you are experiencing right now, but you can doubt whether a physical table is really there. You might be dreaming, or fooled by an illusion. So acquaintance cannot prove that physical objects exist, but it can tell you, for example, that you are in pain.
Two features define acquaintance:
It is passive and has no concepts. Being acquainted with something means no judging, labelling or classifying. Early readers of Russell put it this way: Hicks described it as a “condition of acquiescence in what is given” (Hicks, 1917, p 332), and Edgell as “a passive recipient of the ‘given’” (Edgell,1919, p 200). The “given” is simply whatever is presented to your awareness.
It is not a belief. Being acquainted with the colour red is logically independent of any claim about what causes it. That does not mean the colour has no cause, only that experiencing it doesn’t commit you to a belief about one.
Knowledge by description: reaching beyond experience
Description is how we think about things we never experience directly, such as physical objects and the material world. Russell counts any phrase of the form “a so and so” (an ambiguous description, like “a tree”) or “the so and so” (a definite description, like “the tallest tree in the park”) (Russel, 1912, Ch.5). He focuses on definite descriptions, which pick out exactly one object.
Descriptions are built from concepts we gain through acquaintance, so even descriptive knowledge is grounded in experience. This is what lets us ask what might be causing our sense-data. As Russell puts it:
“The chief importance of knowledge by description is that it enables us to pass beyond the limits of our private experience.” (Russel, 1912, Ch.5)
The big picture: a foundation for knowledge
Together, the two ideas make up Russell’s foundationalism. Acquaintance is the bedrock. Our beliefs about the material world are justified as the best explanation of the stable patterns in our sense-data (Russell, 1912, Ch.2). In his words, ‘All our knowledge … rests upon acquaintance as its foundation” (Russel, 1912, Ch.5).
That gives two claims to defend:
1. Acquaintance knowledge exists.
2. It is the foundation of our empirical knowledge.
Both are needed. If there were no acquaintance knowledge, then on Russell’s view there would be no knowledge at all. Only together do they deliver his programme: we can know the external world, but only thanks to what we know by acquaintance.
Sellars and the “Myth of the Given”
Wilfrid Sellars attacked this picture in his well-known essay Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind. His target is the idea that mere passive awareness of the “given” can count as knowledge. He goes after both of Russell’s claims.
‘For what is known even in non-inferential knowledge, is facts rather than particulars, items of the form something's being thus-and-so or something's standing in a certain relation to something else’ (Sellars, 1956, p 128).
In other words, knowledge is about how things are, which means it is propositional. The given is not. So the given cannot be an object of knowledge.
Sellars also says what makes something knowledge:
‘In characterizing an episode or a state as that of knowing, we are not giving an empirical description of that episode or state; we are placing it in the logical space of reasons, of justifying and being able to justify what one says’. (Sellars, 1956, p 128).
This seems reasonable to me. We need some way to tell a mere mental state apart from knowledge, and being open to justification is a good test. A state of pure passive awareness is not the kind of thing that can be justified or unjustified. For a mental state to justify a belief about how things are, it would have to say something about how things are. Acquaintance, by its nature, says nothing. It can neither be justified nor justify anything, so it is not genuine knowledge. That undercuts Russell’s first claim.
Even if we granted that acquaintance knowledge exists, the second claim would still be in trouble. If our experiences are non-propositional, it is mysterious how they could give our beliefs any justification. I think this is a formidable objection. It undermines both parts of Russell’s programme: that we have knowledge by acquaintance, and that our beliefs about the external world can be justified by it.
Can Russell fight back?
Uriah Kriegel offers a reply. A belief needs a truth-maker, something that makes it true, to avoid being arbitrary. For Russell, the truth-maker of my belief that P is the fact that I am acquainted with the relevant thing. A mental state can justify without “saying anything” because it “shows something” (Kriegel, 2024, p 23).
The worry is that to be justified in believing P, I would have to be acquainted with two things: the truth-maker and the truth-making relation, the link that explains why the truth-maker makes P true. But acquaintance is meant to be direct and non-conceptual. Being aware of a truth-making relation as a truth-making relation seems to require conceptualising it, which would turn it into knowledge by description. So I cannot be acquainted with the relation without conceptualising it, and I cannot avoid conceptualising it if I am to recognise the connection. The reply does not fully solve the problem.
Conclusion
Russell splits knowledge into acquaintance and description, and builds a foundationalist theory of knowledge on that split. I find the theory uncompelling because of Sellars’ criticisms. First, passive acquaintance does not look like knowledge at all. Second, even if it were, it is mysterious how it could justify our beliefs about the world.
References
Edgell, B. (1919). Is there “Knowledge by Acquaintance”? Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volumes, 2, 194-205.
Hicks, G.D. (1917). The Basis of Critical Realism. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 17, 300-359.
Kriegel, U. (2024). Knowledge‐by‐Acquaintance First. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research
Russell, B. (1912). The Problems of Philosophy. New York: Holt and Co. and London: William and Norgate.
