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Full Idea
All our knowledge, both knowledge of things and knowledge of truths, rests upon acquaintance as its foundations.
Clarification
'Acquaintance' is direct awareness
Gist of Idea
All knowledge (of things and of truths) rests on the foundations of acquaintance
Source
Bertrand Russell (Problems of Philosophy [1912], Ch. 5)
Book Ref
Russell,Bertrand: 'The Problems of Philosophy' [OUP 1995], p.26
A Reaction
Russell here allies himself with Hume, and with the empiricist version of foundationalism. 'Acquaintance' plays the role which 'impressions' played for Hume. He is eliminating any possible cognitive content from the Hume idea, implying pure sense-data.
| 5697 | The only possible standard for settling doubts is the foundation of the senses [Lucretius] |
| 2206 | Reasons for belief must eventually terminate in experience, or they are without foundation [Hume] |
| 5378 | All knowledge (of things and of truths) rests on the foundations of acquaintance [Russell] |
| 5163 | Basic propositions refer to a single experience, are incorrigible, and conclusively verifiable [Ayer] |
| 8793 | If observation is knowledge, it is not just an experience; it is a justification in the space of reasons [Sellars] |
| 8882 | Perception may involve thin indexical concepts, or thicker perceptual concepts [Sosa] |
| 8883 | Do beliefs only become foundationally justified if we fully attend to features of our experience? [Sosa] |
| 8823 | Reasons are always for beliefs, but a perceptual state is a reason without itself being a belief [Pollock] |
| 8855 | Sensory experience may be fixed, but it can still be misdescribed [Williams,M] |
| 3578 | Are empirical foundations judgements or experiences? [Williams,M] |
| 8875 | Sense experiences must have conceptual content, since they are possible reasons for judgements [Brewer,B] |