The Acquaintance Network

Acquaintance is the relation of conscious awareness that we bear to the things we experience most directly. The notion of acquaintance has shown up throughout the history of philosophy, but it was largely ignored in the 20th and early 21st centuries. Now it is regaining interest among contemporary philosophers. It has proven useful, not just in philosophy of mind, but also in epistemology, metaphysics, aesthetics, ethics, and more. We believe that it has the potential to explain a wide range of important facts in these and other domains.

 

The aims of the Acquaintance Network are twofold: to support current work on acquaintance, and to promote future work on acquaintance. We aim to support current work by fostering collaboration between contemporary acquaintance theorists through a series of seminars and conferences on topics related to acquaintance. We aim to promote future work by clarifying what acquaintance is and showing how it is theoretically fruitful in a wide range of areas of philosophy.

 

Some of the questions that we’re currently interested in are: What is the nature of acquaintance? Is it part of the essential nature of experience? What is knowledge by acquaintance? Is acquaintance itself a distinctive kind of non-propositional knowledge? How does it relate to other knowledge? Does acquaintance have prudential value? Does it have moral value? Does it have aesthetic or other forms of value?

 

If you’re interested in acquaintance or the Network, please do not hesitate to reach out. Also see our Resources page for more information on what acquaintance is and for helpful resources and seminal texts on the topic.