The Normativity of Introspective Acquaintance Knowledge

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Abstract

Recent works in epistemology have defended the existence of acquaintance knowledge - a non-propositional form of knowledge constituted by the subject's acquaintance with particulars. A significant obstacle to the epistemic legitimacy of acquaintance knowledge lies in the fact that acquaintance is a descriptive psychological phenomenon, whereas knowledge is a normative one. In this paper, I aim to address this challenge by arguing that introspective acquaintance knowledge - the subject's knowledge of their own experiences constituted by acquaintance with them - exhibits a normative dimension. My argument critically hinges on the role of conscious introspective attention. Based on the idea that a distinctive manifestation of the presence of epistemic normativity has to do (at least) with the possibility for a piece of knowledge to be epistemically better or worse, I will argue that we can have epistemically better or worse introspective acquaintance knowledge and that this depends on the degree of attention that is involved in it. By assuming that possibly being epistemically better or worse implies for a piece of knowledge to possibly instantiate different degrees of epistemic goodness, and that conscious introspective attention comes in degrees, I will argue that conscious attention plays a gradual epistemic role in acquaintance knowledge. The paper aims to strengthen the case for introspective acquaintance knowledge as a genuine form of epistemic achievement, governed by attention-based normative standards.

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Jacopo Pallagrosi
University School for Advanced Studies IUSS Pavia

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References found in this work

Knowledge and practical interests.Jason Stanley - 2005 - New York: Oxford University Press.
Knowledge and Its Limits.Timothy Williamson - 2000 - Philosophy 76 (297):460-464.
Subjective Consciousness: A Self-Representational Theory.Uriah Kriegel - 2009 - Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press UK.
Knowledge by acquaintance and knowledge by description.Bertrand Russell - 1911 - Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 11:108--28.

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