Russell
According to Russell, all knowledge is ultimately dependent upon experience, but some of it is direct, which is when we have knowledge by acquaintance, and some of it is indirect, which depends on a description of a direct experience. Thus, for example, if someone feels a pain, he is directly acquainted with it and knows that he has a pain, which is knowledge by acquaintance. If someone else reports that he is experiencing a pain, then one only knows this by virtue of his description of the pain, and not because one is directly acquainted with it: this is knowledge by description.
Read more about this topic: Knowledge By Description
Famous quotes containing the word russell:
“Joy comes, grief goes, we know not how;
Everything is happy now,
Everything is upward striving;”
—James Russell Lowell (1819–1891)
“How like a prodigal doth nature seem,
When thou, for all thy gold, so common art!
Thou teachest me to deem
More sacredly of every human heart,
Since each reflects in joy its scanty gleam
Of Heaven, and could some wondrous secret show,
Did we but pay the love we owe,
And with a child’s undoubting wisdom look
On all these living pages of God’s book.”
—James Russell Lowell (1819–1891)
“They talk about their Pilgrim blood,
Their birthright high and holy!
A mountain-stream that ends in mud
Methinks is melancholy.”
—James Russell Lowell (1819–1891)