Online research in philosophy

Russell’s theory of memory as acquaintance with the past seems to square uneasily with his definition of acquaintance as the converse of the relation of presentation of an object to a subject. We show how the two views can be made to cohere under a suitable construal of ‘presentation’, which has the additional appeal of bringing Russell’s theory of memory closer to contemporary views on direct reference and object-dependent thinking than is usually acknowledged. The drawback is that memory as acquaintance with the past falls short of fulfilling Russell’s requirement that knowledge by acquaintance be discriminating knowledge – a shortcoming shared by contemporary externalist accounts of knowledge from memory.

In this paper I begin to develop an account of the acquaintance that each of us has with our own conscious states and processes. The account is a speculative proposal about human mental architecture and specifically about the nature of the concepts via which we think in first personish ways about our qualia. In a certain sense my account is neutral between physicalist and dualist accounts of consciousness. As will be clear, a dualist could adopt the account I will offer while maintaining that qualia themselves are non-physical properties. In this case the non-physical nature of qualia may play no role in accounting for the features of acquaintance. But although the account could be used by a dualist, its existence provides support for physicalism.

This paper proposes a way of semantically representing de re belief ascriptions that involves contextual resolution of the acquaintance relation between the attitude holder and the object about which the attitude is de re. A special case is that where the belief is about the believer herself. Here, we may discern two possibilities: the acquaintance relation is equality, in which case we end up with a de se belief, or, if the first option fails, we search the context for a different suitable relation of acquaintance between the believer and herself, like looking in a mirror or seeing yourself on TV. This second option leaves open the possibility that the believer herself is unaware of the fact that she's actually seeing herself, thereby accounting for the true reading (de re/non-de se) of ``Lain believes she will win'' in mistaken identity scenarios. To implement all this formally, I use a two-dimensionally modal extension of DRT, and second order binding and unification.

We think about and refer to things that we’ve never perceived or experienced. This paper bears on how this could be. Someone is testimonially acquainted with something just in case the explanation of one’s ability to think de re thoughts about it essentially appeals to communication with others who already have that ability. The main motivation for the claim that testimonial acquaintance is possible is that it best explains how we can think de re about and refer to things we’ve never perceived or experienced: we gain these abilities in part by communicating with those who already have them. The main point of this paper is negative: to argue that testimonial acquaintance, as we currently understand it, is impossible. Although one might take this to show that we cannot be acquainted with things we haven’t perceived or experienced, I prefer to think of it as motivation for rethinking the nature of acquaintance.

While Russell’s concerns in developing the theory of descriptions were primarily with his foundation of logic, he was aware of the epistemological uses of both the theory of denoting concepts and the 1905 theory of deWnite descriptions. At the end of “On Denoting” he suggests that the principle of acquaintance is a “result” of the new theory of denoting. In this paper I examine the relation between the theory of descriptions and the principle of acquaintance, and I reject two suggestions, one that Russell’s view commits him to the position that quantiWers range only over objects of acquaintance, the other that the principle of acquaintance plays a crucial role in the Gray’s Elegy argument. Russell’s earlier theory of denoting concepts went hand in hand with the principle of acquaintance, as Russell made clear in his “Points about Denoting”. So the principle of acquaintance was neither a motivator for the new account nor a special consequence of it. The new account of “On Denoting”, while dispensing with denoting concepts, preserved the connection that the older de-.

What one is acquainted with has always been important for the rejection or acceptance of any ontological description. Yet the relevance of acquaintance to ontology has not always been clearly stated. Some philosophers have held that they were acquainted with the simple entities of ontological analysis. They also held that if they were not acquainted with such entities, their analysis would be inadequately supported. In this paper I argue that acquaintance with ontological simples cannot be a reason for accepting or rejecting any ontological analysis. At the same time, I examine what I believe to be the relevance of acquaintance to ontological description.

I criticize Richard Fumerton’s fallibilist acquaintance theory of noninferential justification.

This paper responds to Ernest Sosa's recent criticism of Richard Fumerton's acquaintance theory. Sosa argues that Fumerton's account of non-inferential justification falls prey to the problem of the speckled hen. I argue that Sosa's criticisms are both illuminating and interesting but that Fumerton's theory can escape the problem of the speckled hen. More generally, the paper shows that an internalist account of non-inferential justification can survive the powerful objections of the Sellarsian dilemma and the problem of the speckled hen.

In this article, I try to defend my conception of noninferential justification from important criticisms raised by Ted Poston in a recent article published in Philosophical Studies. More specifically, I argue that from within the framework of an acquaintance theory, one can still allow for fallible noninferential justification, and one can do so without losing the advantages I claim for the theory.