Russell held that we must be acquainted with the constituents of the contents of our thoughts, and remnants of this doctrine persist in the work of a number of more recent philosophers. Our knowledge of our own phenomenal experience is supposed to be a paradigm of acquaintance, but acquaintance is sometimes explained in a way that implies that it involves knowledge of the essential nature of a thing or property.
2007 Lecture 5: Acquaintance and essence
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The John Locke Lectures are among the world's most distinguished lecture series in philosophy. The series began in 1950 and are given once a year.