William James, the Nature of Knowledge, and Current Issues in Emotion, Cognition, and Communication

Abstract

This article summarizes the distinction between knowledge by acquaintance and knowledge by description (or knowledge about) put forward by William James in Principles of Psychology. The relevance of this distinction for the Zajonc-Lazarus debate on the primacy of affect versus cognition is considered, and Gibson s ecological theory of perception is invoked to suggest that the initial pickup of events is "filtered" by special-purpose motivational/emotional systems, leading to knowledge by acquaintance of the event. The phenomenon of agnosia is considered as a case of a modality-specific inability to convert knowledge by acquaintance into knowledge by description. From this, a model of the appraisal process is presented in which appraisal is defined as the integration of the knowledge by acqaintance of the event and motivational/emotional responses associated with the event. Subjective experience is considered as the knowledge by acquaintance of the state of certain motivational/emotional systems (feelings and desires), as is spontaneous emotional communication fostering the knowledge by acquaintance of the state of "other minds" via the direct pickup of specific displays.