Knowledge by description - Definition

Knowlege by description is an epistemological concept, and it deals with one of the means by which we acquire knowledge about the world, the other principle means being from knowledge by acquaintance. Both of these concepts and the specific phraseology were given prominence by the British philosopher and logician, Bertrand Russell.

According to Russell, all knowledge is ultimately dependent upon experience, but some of it is direct, which is when we have knowledge by acquaintance, and some of it is indirect, which depends on a description of a direct experience. Thus, for example, if one feels a pain, one is directly acquainted with it and knows that she has a pain, which is knowledge by acquaintance. If someone else reports that he is experiencing a pain, then one only knows this by virtue of his description of the pain, and not because one is directly acquainted with it.