Knowledge by description versus knowledge by acquaintance

Russell holds that we can refer to an object directly – in the semantic sense of ‘direct’ we have effectively been using so far – only if we are directly acquainted with that object – here ‘direct’ is used in a cognitive/

epistemological sense. To be directly acquainted with an object is to cog- nize it ‘without the intermediary of any process of inference, or any knowledge of truths’ (Russell, 1912, p. 46). Objects with which we are directly acquainted are, in a sense, immediately present to the mind. And Russell is claiming that it is only when an object is immediately pre sent to the mind that it is possible for us to refer to it and to talk and think about it ‘directly’. Now, Russellian direct acquaintance with an object requires an extraordinarily tight cognitive hold on that object. One who is directly acquainted with an object, cannot, for example, intelli gibly doubt its exis- tence. Moreover, when a thinker is directly acquainted with an object, it is not possible that she be presented with that very object twice over, with- out recognizing that she is presented with the very same object again. Hence when we are directly acquainted with an object, informative state- ments of identity, of the sort that motivated Frege’s distinction between sense and reference, are simply not possible with respect to that object.

By Russell’s own admission, there are precious few objects with which we are directly acquainted. Though he does equivocate on this issue, he seems to hold that only what he called absolute simples are possible objects of acquaintance. Among the absolute simples, he counted only sense data, certain universals, and one’s own inner states. He took it to be an open question whether one could be directly acquainted with an enduring self. When this relatively meagre inventory of absolute simples is conjoined with his views about genuine names, it follows that objects to which we can directly refer are few and far between. Since, for example, an object like Socrates is decidedly not the possible object of immediate of awareness for any person currently living, we cannot refer to or think about Socrates directly – indeed, by Russell’s lights we prob- ably can’t even refer to or think about directly Obama or people we take ourselves to encounter ‘in person’.

But Russell’s severe epistemic strictures on direct reference are not intended to banish Socrates or Obama entirely from the realm of that about which we can think or speak. First, Russell allowed for the possi- bility that Socrates was immediately acquainted with himself. So at a minimum, Socrates may have been able to refer directly to himself. But, more importantly for our present purposes, Russell allows that the rest of us can at least know Socrates by description. And this allows us to think and talk about him – or at least various ‘logical complexes’ intim- ately associated with him – indirectly. Now the view that we cannot

think or talk about Socrates directly is connected to Russell’s view, briefly examined above, that ordinary proper names are really definite descrip- tions in disguise. For on Russell’s view, a sentence like ‘Socrates was put to death at the hands of the Athenians’ – which apparently makes a claim about the individual Socrates – is really a short-hand way of saying something like (24) or (25) below:

(24) The teacher of Plato and husband of Xanthippe was put to death at the hands of the Athenians.

(25) The philosopher accused of corrupting the young was put to death at the hands of the Athenians.

Each of (24) and (25) makes a claim not directly about some one definite individual, but about what we might call a structure of properties. In effect, (24) says that the property of being a teacher of Plato and husband of Xanthippe, on the one hand, and the property of having been put to death at the hands of the Athenians, on the other, have exactly one common instance.4 _{It is not entirely wrong to think of Socrates – who is perhaps pre-}

sent to himself as a simple, but was known to others only via various logical complexes with which he was somehow intim ately associated, but not identical – as the common bearer of these two properties, but he neither was nor is identical with either property. Nor was/is he identical with the combination of those properties. Indeed, without change of meaning, (24) could be true even if Socrates had never existed, or if he had had existed but never taught Plato and married Xanthippe. Another way to appreciate that Socrates is not, as such, directly semantically implicated in the semantic content of (24) is to note that (24) can be rephrased as (26) below:

(26) The teacher of Plato and husband of Xanthippe, whoever he was, was put to death at the hands of the Athenians.

And (26) is explicitly non-committal about the identity of the teacher of Plato and husband of Xanthippe. Notice, moreover, that although Socrates, in fact, both taught Plato and was accused of corrupting the young, (24) and (25) make different assertions about different structures of properties. Sentence (25) says, in effect, that the property of being uniquely a philosopher accused of corrupting the young and the prop- erty of being put to death at the hands of the Athenians have one

instance in common. For all the contents of (24) and (25) require in order to be true, the person that makes (24) true could simply be distinct from the person that makes (25) true. At a minimum, this helps us to see another sense in which neither (24) and (25) can be said to be directly about a certain individual – one with which only a certain long-dead Greek philosopher could be directly acquainted. That individual is not, as such, the direct subject matter of either (24) or (25).