Russell's Distinction

Anyone who has studied or is studying Bertrand Russell is probably aware and interested in the distinction he makes between "acquaintance" and "description." If you don't fully understand it, let me help.

He starts the explanation in PIP at the end of chp. 4 by doing a typical "analytic" break-down of the word "know." There are two ways in which you can "know" a thing. You can know it as in be aware, be familiar, have experienced it. Or you can know it is true. This is a careful and famous distinction that he makes and only by really "getting" it can we decide if its important. Let's make sure we got it.

I can know Paris. I can be familiar with it. I am "acquainted" with it's green copper roofs and the narrow streets. I experienced with my eyes the landmarks and the people. In this sense, I am familiar with Paris. I "know" it.

But I can also know it exists. I "know" that Paris is a real city. I have knowledge of Paris as a real place. I "know" a truth.

For Russell this is the beginning of his distinction. As an "analytic" thinker he is worried about language and wants you to understand that when you use the word "know" you often use it in one of these ways and may not make the distinction. For Russell the first "knowing" is 'acquaintance." In this sense, I have experienced it - gathered what he calls "sense-data" about it. The second "knowing" is description, I have understood a truth. I have knowledge of a truth. In this case, that Paris is real. He further explains in Chp. 5 (Knowledge By Acquaintance and Knowledge By Description) that "acquaintance is anything "of which we are directly aware..." The qualities of the object have given us acquaintance with the object. For instance, with color, I have awareness of the color but, in this sense, I don't "... know the color itself." Description is not "direct knowledge," but it is a way of "describing" the thing-itself. To know that an object exists, for instance, is known through examining a truth.

We may roughly say then that making statements about the qualities of an object is by "acquaintance," and statements about the thing-itself is by "description."

Russell sums this up clearly: "There is no state of mind in which we are directly aware of the table; all our knowledge of the table is really knowledge of truths, and the actual thing which is the table is not, strictly speaking, known to us at all." (p. 47, chp. 5, Oxford Univ. Press, 1959).

This distinction relies of course on his earlier claim that we cannot know objects in-themselves. That issue - one I don't think is as simple as he believes - is too large for this section.

For our purposes, "acquaintance" is direct sensory knowledge. "Description" is a truth made by some form of inference, from other truths, say. In language our examples serve Russell's point, I can "know" in the sense of familiarity and I can "know" in the sense of what Russell also calls "judgement."

Is Russell right in this and does it matter? Firstly, I think his distinction serves its purpose and only by an extended analysis would we be able to find examples that don't fit into his outline. In the first cases - or the popular usage - it seems to work. Secondly, as to value, I can only write what I always write. That is that Russell, as one who is considered belonging to what used to be called "philosophy," fulfills the requirements of that discipline though he does not fulfill the requirements of the new critical commonsense. In this regard, Russell's analytics is an exercise, as all "philosophy" was in thinking and this exercise is necessary to bring the mind from a state of stagnation to active exploration. "Philosophy" was certainly a teaching tool. But is it anything else? That answer of course is bigger than the last example that we passed up, but I can say that in addition to being a teaching tool, this kind of clarity expands communication. If critical commonsense relies on social behavior and communication as its main environmental advantage, then the practice of what used to be called "philosophy" is indispensable in that it clears up language and distinctions. It allows us to communicate and it enable us share in learn in ways that were impossible when, as often was the case, people were speaking different intellectual languages.

Are these two things the end-all, be-all of thinking? No. In fact, this was the problem with what used to be called "philosophy." It saw itself (the thinkers certainly believed) and imagined itself as able to do much more. Kant, for instance, and in response to Hume's "relativism", really thought he was making metaphysical progress, bringing to light actual truth.

References

Bertrand Russell. The Problems of Philosophy, 1959, Oxford Univ Press. (PIP)