The function of acquaintance in Russell's philosophy

Abstract

Russell's Principle of Acquaintance puts a restriction on the under standing of meaning. His theory about the meanings of words is in general realist: the meanings of most words actually are things, which become constituents of propositions when the words occur in sen tences.1 The restriction is "that every proposition that we can under stand must be composed wholly of constituents with which we are acquainted".2 Because acquaintance comprises perception, intro spection and certain kinds of memory, the effect of the restriction is that a de re theory about the meanings of words becomes an empiri cist theory. So far the function of acquaintance is tolerably clear: it is the way in which the mind apprehends things which in the case of perception and memory of perception originate as input. However, Russell then gives acquaintance another function, which makes a different demand on its nature. It is also the way in which the mind grasps basic truths about those things.3 The combination of the two functions is not easy to understand, and it should be remembered that in the development of Russell's philosophy the second one came later. Acquaintance was primarily the way of understanding meanings and only secondarily the way of grasping basic truths. One topic of this paper will be the relation between the two functions of acquaintance. But this will lead immediately into another topic, logical atomism. Russell came to believe that the ultimate constituents, or perhaps the only real constituents of propositions, are simple particulars and simple qualities and relations. If a particular is simple its name will be simple too, because it has no parts possessing separate meanings and cannot be analyzed into parts possessing separate meanings. He took much the same view of simple qualities and relations and their names. He then identified sense-data as simple particulars and held that some (but not all) of their qualities and relations are simple.4 This theory is evidently a by-product of his theory of meaning. But of which part of it? Did he take it to follow from his realist theory