Acquaintance (Russell’s Principle)

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Acquaintance (Russell’s Principle)

What is acquaintance?

Start with it’s formal properties ...

‘Acquaintance ... essentially consists in a relation between the mind and something other than the mind’

\citep[chapter 4]{Russell:1912ln}

Russell, 1912 Chapter 4

But which relation is acquaintance? ...

What else can we say about acquaintance?

‘we have acquaintance with anything of which we are directly aware, without the intermediary of any process of inference or any knowledge of truths’

\citep[chapter 5]{Russell:1912ln}

Russell, 1912 chapter 5

What does this mean? Nothing, by itself. But Russell goes on to explain what he means:

Contrast: infer existence of a phone in your washing machine from the bumps vs opening it and finding the phone.

Modes of acquaintance (?):
perception?
memory?
self-awareness?
attention?

‘knowledge by acquaintance, is essentially simpler than any knowledge of truths, and logically independent of knowledge of truths’

\citep[chapter 5]{Russell:1912ln}

Russell, 1912 chapter 5

So there's a contrast between K of things and K of truths.

Why care about acquaintance?

Our concern is with a question about reference. So what are we doing discussing acquaintance? For Russell, and many following him, acquaintance is the core of reference.

\emph{The Principle of Acquaintance}:

‘Every proposition which we can understand must be composed wholly of constituents with which we are acquainted’

\citep[p.~209]{Russell:1910fa}

Russell, 1910 [1963] p. 209

‘it is scarcely conceivable that we can make a judgement or entertain a supposition without knowing what it is that we are judging or supposing about.
We must attach some meaning to the words we use, if we are to speak significantly and not utter mere noise;
and the meaning we attach to our words must be something with which we are acquainted’

\citep[chapter 5]{Russell:1912ln}

Russell, 1912 chapter 5

What’s that?

Provisionally : the meaning of a word = its referent. This is nice because it is close to Russell and avoids introducing another unknown.

Puzzle: how can we be acquainted with a meaning? Isn’t acquaintance supposed to be a relation of direct awareness (e.g. as characteristically involved in perceiving something)?

Solution: meanings are things : the meaning of a word is its referent.

I want to go over this one more time as it’s important

Why do those utterances differ in that one is made true by how things are with Earth whereas the other by how things are with Mars?

Guess: There is some relation between the utterance of ‘Earth’ [the word] and Earth [the thing] in virtue of which Steve’s utterance of the sentence is about Earth rather than Mars.

Terminology: call it ‘reference’

Q: What is this relation?

Russell: For an utterance of ‘Earth’ to refer to Earth, the utterer must be acquainted with Earth. (And ...)

Russell’s claim about reference is incompatible with
(the sufficiency of) three crude theories of reference ...

Russell: For an utterance of ‘Earth’ to refer to Earth, the utterer must be acquainted with Earth. (And ...)

Causal (Kripke): For an utterance of ‘Earth’ to refer to Earth is for (a) Earth to have been baptised ‘Earth’ and (b) this utterance to be causally related in the appropriate way to that baptism event.

Russell: For an utterance of ‘Earth’ to refer to Earth, the utterer must be acquainted with Earth. (And ...)

Pragmatist: For an utterance of ‘Earth’ to refer to Earth is for this utterance to sieze the ‘interpreter’s eyes and forcibly turn them upon’ Earth.

Russell: For an utterance of ‘Earth’ to refer to Earth, the utterer must be acquainted with Earth. (And ...)

Description (nobody?): For an utterance of ‘Earth’ to refer to Earth is for (a) the speaker to have associated this utterance of ‘Earth’ with a descripton, and (b) Earth to be the thing which, uniquely, this description is true of.

Does reference require acquaintance with the referent?

Russell’s principle is clearly significant if true because it conflicts with alternative approaches (although we could revise them to incorporate it, albeit changing their nature dramatically). But is it true?

My proposal:

1. There are multiple, internally consistent characterisations of reference.

2. If our aim were only to explain The Difference, there would be no ground for preferring one over all others.

Methods: Note that a lot of effort goes in to specifying the thing to be explained (The Difference).

So let us consider whether we should broaden our aims ...

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