The Acquaintance Trilemma: Knowledge, Consciousness, and Mental Qualities
Erkenntnis February 21, 2026 Jacopo Pallagrosi
A philosophical argument shows that three common assumptions about acquaintance—that it provides knowledge of qualitative character, that it constitutes phenomenal consciousness, and that mental qualities are necessarily conscious—cannot all be true together. Accepting all three leads to a trilemma where the object of acquaintance becomes dependent on the epistemic relation itself, trivializing acquaintance's role in disclosing an independent reality. The author maps the logical options and costs of abandoning or revising each assumption, urging theorists to take a principled stance.