Strong Acquaintance Exists

Abstract This chapter argues that “strong acquaintance” exists. One is strongly acquainted with something just in case one is consciously aware of it, and one’s conscious awareness of it is not mediated by awareness of any other thing, nor by inference, judgment, conceptualization, causal processes, or any other knowledge. To make his case for the existence of strong acquaintance, the author draws on and develops the implications of a very old notion: skeptical doubt. He argues that, in some cases, we cannot doubt that our experiences exist, and that from this we can infer that we are strongly acquainted with them. The author then extends his argument to show that even stronger forms of acquaintance exist, including a form of acquaintance (“phenomenal acquaintance”) that delivers complete immunity to skeptical doubt.