What Is Acquaintance?

Abstract This chapter describes what acquaintance is and situates it within contemporary philosophical views, not just about acquaintance, but about knowledge, justification, perception, the metaphysics of experience, and more. The author starts with a brief historical overview of the notion of acquaintance, focusing primarily on the work of Bertrand Russell. Then he describes contemporary acquaintance theories and the debates about perception and introspection that they feature in. Finally, the author defines a core notion of acquaintance—that is, direct conscious awareness of properties and objects—and addresses some lingering questions about it. Along the way, the author distinguishes between two, more specific forms of acquaintance—“weak acquaintance” and “strong acquaintance”—that correspond to how strictly ‘direct’ is understood. The author also argues that the existence of these forms of acquaintance is consistent with all major theories of the metaphysics of experience.