Acquaintance, Conceptual Capacities, and Attention

Abstract

I distinguish two reactions to Russell’s theory of acquaintance, specifically to its claim that perceptual awareness is simpler than and independent of conceptual thought and yet a source of propositional knowledge. The conceptualist response, championed inter alia by John McDowell, argues perception can be a source of knowledge only if conceptual capacities are in play in perception. The relationist response, championed inter alia by John Campbell, endorses Russell’s view that perceptual awareness is non-propositional and even non-representational, yet holds it is a relation to physical objects not sense-data. I here point up an underappreciated convergence between McDowell’s recast, non-propositionalist conceptualism and Campbell’s attention-centric relationism; I show how the former can be defended drawing inter alia on some central claims in the latter.

Epistemic Actions, Abilities and Knowing-How: A Non-Reductive Account

“…Such a being would necessarily have concepts and, therefore, be capable of propositional knowledge. Accordingly, knowledge-by-acquaintance depends on propositional knowledge, or so it could plausibly be argued (Nes 2019).…”