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:
“Dear common flower, that grow’st beside the way,
Fringing the dusty road with harmless gold,
First pledge of blithesome May,
Which children pluck, and, full of pride, uphold,
Hight-hearted buccaneers, o’erjoyed that they
An Eldorado in the grass have found,
Which not the rich earth’s ample round
May match in wealth—thou art more dear to me
Than all the prouder summer-blooms may be.”
—James Russell Lowell (1819–1891)
“Let us be of good cheer, however, remembering that the misfortunes hardest to bear are those which never come.”
—James Russell Lowell (1819–1891)
“What a sense of security in an old book which Time has criticized for us!”
—James Russell Lowell (1819–1891)