Acquaintance, Attention, and Introspective Justification

Abstract

This paper develops a version of the acquaintance theory of introspective justification. In the process, it rejects the view that acquaintance is sui generic in favor of a view that identifies acquaintance with availability for selection by attention mechanisms. Moreover, unlike many recent accounts of knowledge by acquaintance, it explains the epistemic significance of acquaintance in terms of the epistemic basing relation without any need to appeal to the structure or existence of phenomenal concepts. Lastly, while in ideal cases acquaintance will provide a kind of infallible justification, the paper shows how to extend these ideas to allow that acquaintance can provide fallible introspective justification.