(Nie)samodzielność epistemiczna wiedzy przez znajomość

The article addresses the problem of properties and epistemic functions of Russellian ‘knowledge by acquaintance’ interpreted here as a variant of intuition. The epistemic functions of intuition can be performed in two ways: first, as propositional knowledge of direct and immediate kind (a foundational function), and secondly, as a non-‑propositional form of consciousness that provides a justifying basis for intuitive truths. The distinction between these two functions of intuition presupposes a differentiation – not explicitly articulated by Bertrand Russell – between acquaintance and knowledge by acquaintance. Acquaintance as a form of non‑propositional consciousness is not epistemically autonomous, which is to say that it is not a judgment and cannot be qualified as either true or false, so a separate epistemic problem arises here, one of the shift from acquaintance to knowledge by acquaintance. The author points out that the shift from acquaintance to knowledge by acquaintance is difficult to accomplish, and she offers the opinion that the epistemic function of acquaintance or, more generally, of various similar kinds of consciousness, should not be interpreted in terms of justification. They should be understood not as a justifying element or a justifying reason for propositions that underlie other propositions, but as a factor that is an indispensable genetic and simultaneously structural element of propositional content in the sense assumed in transcendental philosophy.