Epistemology Personalized

Benton, Matthew A.

doi:10.1093/pq/pqx020

Cited by 26 publications

(17 citation statements)

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“…Some philosophers argue that acquaintance exists—and even that it is a type of knowledge—by appealing to ordinary language. For example, Matthew Benton (2017) argues that semantic differences between “S knows NP” (where “NP” is a noun phrase, like “Paula” or “The Windy City”) and “S knows that φ” suggest that there is a nonpropositional, acquaintance‐like kind of knowledge (p. 2). He also points out that many languages have a distinct sense of “know” that refers to something like acquaintance 30 .…”

Section: Does Acquaintance Exist?mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…M. Oreste Fiocco (2017) defends a Brentano‐inspired account of something like knowledge by acquaintance. Matthew Benton (2017) talks about interpersonal knowledge, which is nonpropositional and may be a species of knowledge by acquaintance. And Frank Hofmann (2014) argues that perceptual experience is “non‐conceptual knowledge,” which is nondoxastic (though propositional).…”

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Acquaintance

Duncan

2021

Philosophy Compass

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To be acquainted with something (in the philosophical sense of "acquainted" discussed here) is to be directly aware of it. The idea that we are acquainted with certain things we experience has been discussed throughout the history of Western Philosophy, but in the early 20th century it gained especially focused attention among analytic philosophers who drew their inspiration from Bertrand Russell's work on acquaintance. Since then, many philosophers-particularly those working on self-knowledge or perception-have used the notion of acquaintance to explain various facts about human experience and knowledge. In this paper, I offer an overview of this work, with particular focus on the resurgent literature on acquaintance in contemporary analytic philosophy. After more fully explaining what acquaintance is (or is supposed to be), I describe some reasons for thinking that we are indeed acquainted with certain things we experience, and then I survey some of the facts about experience and knowledge that acquaintance may help explain. 1 | INTRODUCTION This paper is about acquaintance-an especially direct mental relation that we (allegedly) bear to certain things we experience, such as colors, smells, tastes, pains, and itches. This philosophical notion has received renewed interest and use of late, but it has also invited misunderstanding and skepticism. My aim in this paper is to dispel some of that misunderstanding and, hopefully, some of the skepticism too. Most contemporary philosophers who appeal to acquaintance draw their inspiration from Bertrand Russell (1911, 1912), who characterizes acquaintance as direct awareness. This differs from the ordinary sense of "acquaintance," as in "Hector and Paula are acquaintances" (or related knowledge attributions, such as "Hector knows Paula"). For one may be acquainted with something in that sense without being directly aware of it.

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Section: Does Acquaintance Exist?mentioning

confidence: 99%

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confidence: 99%

Acquaintance

Duncan

2021

Philosophy Compass

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“…22 22 It can thus ground “reactive attitudes” in Strawson's (1974) sense—in particular, the attitude of pride in the investee and that of “second‐personal disappointment.” Moreover, as Martin (2020) explains, we usually invest hope in people whom we know “interpersonally.” On interpersonal knowledge and knowledge of persons, see Stump (2010, Chapters 3–5), Talbert (2015), Benton (2017). …”

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confidence: 99%

Hope: Conceptual and normative issues

Rioux

2021

Philosophy Compass

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Hope is often seen as at once valuable and dangerous: it can fuel our motivation in the face of challenges, but can also distract us from reality and lead us to irrationality. How can we learn to "hope well," and what does "hoping well" involve? Contemporary philosophers disagree on such normative questions about hope and also on how to define hope as a mental state. This article explores recent philosophical debates surrounding the concept of hope and the norms governing hope. It also underlies hope's significance for the philosophy of emotion and the ethics of interpersonal relations. 1 | INTRODUCTION Our hopes are multifarious, ranging from the mundane or the prosaic to the life-shaping or the profound: we hope that it won't rain tomorrow, hope for success in our personal endeavors, hope to be cured from life-threatening diseases, and hope that we will somehow overcome the climate crisis. At bottom, is there anything that sets apart our "deepest" hopes from more superficial ones? Or do all hopes, including even the kind we "invest" in other people, in fact share the same underlying nature? Since hope is often portrayed as both valuable and dangerous, questions about its nature take on special significance. We are indeed often told to "never give up hope"; that "there is always room for hope," while also being warned against the possibility of entraining "false hopes," somehow divorced from reality and potentially leading to disastrous outcomes. But without knowing what hope is, how can we aspire to hope well? And what does "hoping well" even mean? Until quite recently, conceptual and normative questions about hope hadn't received much attention within the analytic tradition. This could be due, as Pettit (2004, p. 54) suggests, to the influence of a conception of hope emerging in the Modern period (notably in the works of Hobbes and Hume), according to which all hope consists in the combination of a desire for an outcome and the belief that outcome is possible but not certain. 1 If all there is to hope is "desire in the context of epistemic uncertainty," 2 then hope might not seem worthy of a standalone philosophical investigation. Attitudes toward hope's philosophical significance have now shifted, however, while hope also figures prominently in current public discourse. 3 This article aims to take stock of these recent philosophical developments. Section 2 turns to descriptive questions about the nature of hope, centering on the relationship between hope, desire, and the emotions, while Section 3 focuses on various evaluative measures used for assessing hope, in

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“…8Although Russell did not use this terminology, we might say that knowledge by acquaintance is an objectual knowledge relation, whereas knowledge by description is a propositional knowledge relation. For discussion of the epistemic features of objectual knowledge relations, see Bengson and Moffett (2011) and Benton (2017). …”

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confidence: 99%