Editing Knowledge by acquaintance (section)

==Subsequent views==
===Sellars===
[[Wilfrid Sellars]], in ''Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind'' (1956), rejects acquaintance theory, arguing that acquaintance is not necessary to provide a solid foundation for knowledge and thinking, as acquaintance theorists claim. In his Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind, he dissects the internalists' case for acquaintance. He calls the proposal that we have direct acquaintance with sensory data "The Myth of the Given". Sellars argues, "there is no reason to suppose that having the sensation of a red triangle is a cognitive or epistemic fact." He reasons that if sensations, impressions, desires, images, or feelings are to be considered as veridical experiences, then it must be likewise possible for them to be unveridical. He believes that if "immediate experience" like sensations, is susceptible to being misperceived, thus resulting in erroneous inferences for epistemic agent (as is very common in everyday life) then it doesn't make sense to think of acquaintance as a necessity for knowledge.

Sellars bypasses the usual objections to acquaintance theory, which largely focus on absence of explanation for how acquaintance is connected to the knowledge that is said to result from it. Instead, Sellars emphasizes the need to dispel the myth by closely examining the “form of the givenness”, dissecting the proposed operations of acquaintance in terms of “such facts as that physical object X looks red to person S at time t, or that there looks to person S at time t to be a red physical object over there.” (Sellars)

Sellars asserts that acquaintance theory has not been sufficiently evaluated, and that in order for the theory to be validated, the range of sense impressions it claims can be "given" to the epistemic agent must be fully accounted for by an "exhaustive list", and each type of impression must be meticulously scrutinized as a prospect for such givenness. He also argues that it is necessary to presuppose that the epistemic agent possesses empirical knowledge of particular truths in order to make assumptions about the epistemic state of cognitive states that are independent of inference. However, Sellars reasons, because presupposition is inferential, empirical knowledge, regardless of being non-inferentially acquired, is nevertheless epistemically dependent if based on the presupposition that the epistemic agent possesses other pertinent empirical knowledge. Therefore, he concludes that cognitions that are organized propositionally do not qualify as “the given”. Sellars does determine that there are beliefs that are non-inferential but that are intermixed with other beliefs that are connected in chains of inferences.
(These arguments are later pursued by DeVries.)

===Conee===
[[Earl Conee]] invoked the idea of acquaintance knowledge in response to [[Frank Cameron Jackson|Frank Jackson's]] knowledge argument. Conee argued that when [[Knowledge argument|Mary the neuroscientist]] first sees a red object, she doesn't gain new information but rather "a maximally direct cognitive relation to the experience."[2]

[[Michael Tye (philosopher)|Michael Tye]] makes similar use of the distinction between acquaintance and factual knowledge in his analysis of the Mary thought experiment.[3]

In some versions of acquaintance theory, the “given” is actually acquired by the mind's work to register, maintain, and recall a particular sensation or other object of acquaintance until it ultimately becomes established as an acquaintance relation for the epistemic agent., but theorists emphasis that this is not to be confused with the same processes by which memories are developed.

===Fumerton===
[[Richard Fumerton]] views direct acquaintance (the theory of which he often refers to as “classical foundationalism”) as simple, hence indefinable. He asserts that it is the central concept around which philosophy of mind and epistemology must be developed. He acknowledges that although he takes direct acquaintance to be basic, it is viewed by other philosophers as a mystery. Fumerton (1995) suggests that the following are the necessary conditions to constitute knowledge by acquaintance.

::i. S is directly acquainted with the fact that p; 
::ii. S is directly acquainted with the thought that p; and 
::iii. S is directly acquainted with the correspondence that holds between the fact that P and the thought that P (Fumerton 1995, pp. 73–79).

According to Fumerton, acquaintance awareness is not non-relational or intentional thinking. There is a sui generis relation between the individual epistemic agent and “a thing, property, or fact”. He concurs with Russell that the acquaintance relation between the individual's awareness and a state, object, fact, or property obtains in a way that cannot be reduced to more basic operations.
He suggests that one potential benefit of acquaintance, or “the given”, is that it solves the problem of infinite regress of justification for beliefs by serving as the basis on which all inferences can be grounded. Skeptics reject this proposal, arguing that in “the given” would need to be propositional in order to ground inferences, or, at minimum have its own truth value.

Fumerton asserts that because acquaintance requires that its relata actually exist, having acquaintance with something both justifies belief in the thing and makes the belief true. Fumerton offers this response to skeptics of acquaintance.

::If I am asked what reason I have for thinking that there is such a relation as acquaintance, I will, of course, give the unhelpful answer that I am acquainted with such a relation. The answer is question-begging if it is designed to convince someone that there is such a relation, but if the view is true it would be unreasonable to expect its proponent to give any other answer. (Fumerton)

Skeptics who find Fumerton's response unsatisfactory persist that having a truth value requires employment of concepts, i.e., comparing, classifying, and making judgments. That process involves at least the simplest of beliefs associated with memories of previous experienced, making acquaintance a form of inference.

But, Fumerton further asserts that an individual can have direct acquaintance not just possible with the non-propositional experiences but also with the “relation of correspondence that holds between the non-propositional experience and the propositional thought." He finds that these three acquaintance relationships are required in order for a proposition to be true (correspondence theory of truth).

::a. the truth-maker (S is directly acquainted with the fact that p); 
::b. the truth-bearer (S is directly acquainted with the thought that p); and 
::c. the correspondence relation (S is directly acquainted with the correspondence between the fact that P and the thought that p). (Fumerton)

Fumerton proposes that while acquaintance does not depend on proposition, one can have thoughts and propositions established in acquaintance, and that justification for belief is effected by the individual's acquaintance with the correspondence relation between a thought and the fact associated with it. BonJour also mentions this relation, but he views this recognition as requiring proposition or judgment.

===BonJour===
[[Laurence BonJour]] (2003) asserts that acquaintance is a "built-in" awareness, that does not involve cognitive processes, and that it justifies belief. He argues that an adequate defense of acquaintance must explain the process by which acquaintance builds and maintains its cache of impressions into which new inputs of matching impressions can be added and caused to engage with cognitive processes. He also posits that for an epistemic agent to establish acquaintance unavoidably engages a proposition, or at least requires categorizing of inputs.

In response to Sellars, BonJour asserts that an individual can have experiences that are not connected to inferences but that there is a suitable relation of those experiences and her/his beliefs. BonJour asserts that awareness is “built-in” and that it provides full justification for essential empirical beliefs.

Fallibility: BonJour asserts that the cognitive content that constitutes the basis for typically accurate interpretation of sensory inputs makes it possible to acquire many true acquaintances, and the efficacy of this arrangement is not undermined by occurrences of inaccurate interpretations.

===Chisholm===
In his “Object and Person” (2002), [[Roderick Chisholm]] examines the conflicting perspectives between philosophers on whether or not we can actually be directly aware of the contents of our experiences. The unique property of an object of acquaintance permits the epistemic agent to develop acquaintance with that particular property by which the agent can identify it. In his Acquaintance and the Mind-Body Problem, Chisolm asserts that all epistemic agents have direct acquaintance with the self. He notes that both [[René Descartes]] and [[Gottlob Frege]] held this view as well.

===Chalmers===
[[David Chalmers]] (2002) argues that for acquaintance to depend on propositions as Bonjour suggests, then instances of acquaintance require their own justification. He further contends that acquaintance with an object of acquaintance cannot serve as justification for any beliefs without the acquaintance itself being justified. Chalmers contends that as acquaintances is understood as separate from cognition, it does not seem feasible as justification for beliefs or as a basis for knowledge.

===The speckled hen case===
{{more citations needed section|date=September 2018}}
The famous [[The problem of the speckled hen|speckled hen case]] has been invoked by acquaintance skeptics who insist that the theory cannot explain acquaintance with very simple mental states, like viewing a few dots against a solid background color can be said to justify belief in knowledge by acquaintance, while it is believed that viewing a significantly larger number of dots cannot justify belief in it. They believe that defenders of acquaintance theory should answer as to why the capacity of direct acquaintance should be so limited. Sellars resolved the problem simply by asserting that naturally the speckled hen experiment fails to support an acquaintance relation because the individual cannot reasonably be expected to build up such an association where the total number of objects in an array cannot be known without methodically accounting for them all. He points out that the “character of the experience” is not distinguishable to the individual's subconscious in such cases of instant presentations of complex arrays of data.

===Knowledge of other people===
Some recent work in [[epistemology]] deploys ideas concerning knowledge by acquaintance in developing an epistemology of knowing other people. For some examples, see Bonnie Talbert's "Knowing Other People"<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Talbert |first1=Bonnie |title=Knowing Other People |journal=Ratio |date=2015 |volume=28 |issue=2 |pages=190–206 |doi=10.1111/rati.12059|doi-access=free }}</ref> and Matthew Benton's "Epistemology Personalized"<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Benton |first1=Matthew |title=Epistemology Personalized |journal=The Philosophical Quarterly |date=2017 |volume=67 |issue=269 |pages=813–834 |doi=10.1093/pq/pqx020 |url=https://philpapers.org/rec/BENEP-3 }}</ref> and "The Epistemology of Interpersonal Relations".<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Benton |first1=Matthew |title=The Epistemology of Interpersonal Relations |journal=Noûs |date=2024 |volume=Early view |issue= |pages=1–20 |doi=10.1111/nous.12499 |url=https://doi.org/10.1111/nous.12499 }}</ref>