Will, Acquaintance, Knowledge

Russell's notion 'acquaintance' typifies the Empiricist concept of the subject-object relation. Acquaintance consists, most fundamentally in an object producing a sense-datum in the subject, with knowledge of the object further determined via an inference from the affect, to which the object presumably corresponds. Hence, acquaintance is an atomistic event that presupposes a tabula rasa condition of the subject, i. e. that it is discrete from any previous experience. In contrast, here the subject-object relation is conceived as an encounter of an object to Will, in which the Motility of the subject is impeded. Accordingly, the affect is, more precisely, a modification of the subject, i. e. a transition from one condition to the other, and, hence, is not discrete from previous conditions, e. g. even a bare sense-datum, prior to any further inference being drawn, is the product of a synthesis that combines two conditions of the subject. Hence, the distinction between acquaintance and encounter reveals that Russell's famous formulation, Knowledge by Acquaintance, presupposes Comprehension of an Encounter, and that any correspondence to an external object presupposes the attainment of intrasubjective coherence.