A CRITICAL EXAMINATION OF BERTRAND RUSSELL'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE
In his Problems of Philosophy, Bertrand Russell distinguished knowledge by acquaintance and knowledge of truths. Russell believes that acquaintance is necessary in order for us to form any proposition; that any belief we form must be composed entirely of experiential components with which we have acquaintance. For Russell, all foundational knowledge is by acquaintance, and all non-foundational (inferential) knowledge is developed from acquaintance relations. The study aimed at critically examining Russell's theory of knowledge with the specific objective to evaluate the limits of Russell's theory of knowledge. The study adopted qualitative research design; data were sourced from text books, encyclopedias, journals, periodicals and internet. The study employed the historical, expository and evaluative methods of philosophical research. The historical method was used to trace philosophers' account of our knowledge claims. The expository method accounted for Bertrand Russell's theory of knowledge. The evaluative method critically examined Russell's theory of knowledge to ascertain his claims of knowledge by acquaintance and truths. This study argued that Russell's claim of knowledge by acquaintance of an object neither suffices for knowledge that one is acquainted with the object, nor puts a subject in a position to know that he/she is acquainted with the object. Although, Russell insisted, knowledge by acquaintance is obtained through a direct causal (sense-based) interaction between a person and the object that person perceived. That is to say, experience of an object is the only thing that people can ever become acquainted with; they can never truly know the physical object itself. Russell is however, criticized for insufficient explanation of acquaintance with an asymmetrical relation to the sense of a proposition in which knowledge of an object occurs. The study thus concluded that our knowledge of physical objects and of other minds is only knowledge by description; the descriptions involved being usually such as involve sense- data.
Keywords: