Problems of science and philosophy : the papers read at the joint session of the Aristotelian Society, the British Psychological Society, and the Mind Association, held at Bedford college, London, July 11th-14th, 1919.

Date:
1919
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Problems of science and philosophy : the papers read at the joint session of the Aristotelian Society, the British Psychological Society, and the Mind Association, held at Bedford college, London, July 11th-14th, 1919. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    be such that there is no entity z such that «Ry can be analysed with zSz and zTy, where § and T are other relations. Directness in this sense is no part of what is meant by acquaintance, as | understand it. Suppose, eg., that the statement: I am acquainted with w should prove to be analysable into the propositions: This awareness has w for its object and This awareness is one of my states of mind. Then the relation between me and x would not be direct in the present sense, but this would not prevent it being acquaintance. There is one other sense of directness which concerns us at present. Propositions are said to be about their terms, and when I believe them I believe something about the terms. When my mind has this relation to a term it is said that, so far, it is not directly related to the term in question. In this sense directness means absence of aboutness. I am inclined to think that acquaintance is direct in this sense. This does not of course imply directness in the first sense. It does imply that acquaintance is not knowledge, if all know- ledge be about ; but it does not imply, even on this hypothesis, that there is no acquaintance or that there is no knowledge by acquaintance. Gii) I shall now try to offer examples of what I mean by acquaintance. I feel no doubt of its reality; but there are two difficulties in giving satisfactory examples. The first is that when I am acquainted with anything I generally stand in other cognitive relations to it as well. £#y., if I suddenly open my eyes, or suddenly see a landscape illuminated on a perfectly dark night by a flash of hghtning, or suddenly in the quietness of the night hear a clap of thunder, my cognitive relation to these sights and sounds seems to me to be primarily one of almost pure acquaintance. But I almost at once begin to note distinctions in the total field and to pass judgments about physical objects, such as: This is a tree, That is a horse, ete. I take these sudden and yet vivid experiences as examples (a) because the experience is too short for many acts of