Problems of Philosophy Chapter 5 - Knowledge by Acquaintance and
Knowledge by Description After distinguishing two types of
knowledge, knowledge of things and knowledge of truths, Russell
devotes this fifth chapter to an elucidation of knowledge of
things. He further distinguishes two types of knowledge of
things, knowledge by acquaintance and knowledge by description.
We have knowledge by acquaintance when we are directly aware of
a thing, without any inference. We are immediately conscious and
acquainted with a color or hardness of a table before us, our
sense-data. Since acquaintance with things is logically
independent from any knowledge of truths, we can be acquainted
with something immediately without knowing any truth about it. I
can know the color of a table "perfectly and completely when I
see it" and not know any truth about the color in itself. The
other type of knowledge of things is called knowledge by
description. When we say we have knowledge of the table itself,
a physical object, we refer to