Ch. 2 questions

Man is the Measure by Reuben Abel (1976)
Chapter 2: The Basis of Knowledge
1. How does Bertrand Russell differentiate between “knowledge by acquaintance” and “knowledge by description”? (check out the footnote at bottom of p. 19)
"Acquaintance is direct and immediate; it consists of 'raw feel.'... But acquaintance is knowledge only in a preliminary or inarticulate sense. Organized scientific and philosophic knowledge, by contrast, is knowing that such and such is the case: it is descriptive of fact; it is couched in propositions."(19) Knowledge by description can be described and formally stated/proposed, whereas acquaintance cannot due to its being more of a feeling, not fully explicable to other humans or machines (i.e. computers).
2. How does Abel distinguish between “knowing how” and “knowing that”?
"Knowing how" is basically knowledge by description - it can be articulated in propositions, whereas "knowing how" cannot fully be explained or described. Abel says "One may know how to swim, for example, or how to tie a bowtie, without being able to describe exactly how one does these things" whereas "Knowing how to play tic-tac-toe can be articulated precisely in propositions, and formulated as a computer program."(19).
3. What does he mean when he asks: “can knowing how theoretically always be reduced to knowing that?" What is Abel’s answer?  What do you think?
I think he means: Can things you know HOW to do, personally, always (in theory) be broken down and explained in pieces of information like facts? Is any knowledge truly indescribable, just a feeling...?
Abel's answer to this is "knowing HOW to do these things perhaps cannot be fully specified in propositional knowing THAT."(20). In other words, no not really; some things you know HOW to do can't be effectively broken down into "I know THAT..."s. I agree with him. I know HOW to breathe, I know HOW it feels to be hungry, but as hard as I try, I cannot fully describe these things or explain them into I know THATs.
4. How does language become a problem of knowledge?
"It is apparently not possible to state fully the rules for some ordinary English usages which we all know how to employ, such as the order of adjectives." (20). Things make sense to our brains because we have become acquainted with and familiarized with their usage, and we recognize certain patterns but cannot fully put them into words that can be comprehended by another person. Some rules and patterns of language are like this; we cannot really state them as a clear fact, a "knowing that.." Thus it makes it hard to communicate how to speak a language to other people; foreign people make mistakes all the time because they are not used to these odd things we native speakers know but cannot explain.
5. What do you think William James means when he says: “Life defies our phrases?” He means that life is too big, too full of feelings, emotions, experiences, and things that we don't even have words for, to be smushed into our vocabulary. There are so many things we cannot even begin to describe accurately and fully... If we try to explain all of life with our words, it will defy us with its complexity, mock us with its indescribable richness.
6. What, according to Abel, is the difference between “experience” and “propositional knowledge”?
On page 21 Abel says, "Experience is a very wide philosophical term: it includes everything we do and everything that happens to us; it encompasses sensations and emotions and pains and aesthic experiences and mystical transports." He describes the function of propositional knowledge as being not to duplicate experience or reproduce what occurs, but to describe and explain it. In other words, experience is all the feelings we get going through life, and knowledge is how we explain it; they are not the same thing and "Not every encounter with the world results in knowledge."
7. What are Abel’s Four Conditions for propositional knowledge?  Where have we seen this before?  Why does he add a Fourth Condition?
Propositional knowledge has to a true, justified belief that does not have any evidence which might undermine your belief. We saw the first 3 conditions in class, when discussing Plato's conditions for knowledge (Platonic knowledge must be a true, justified belief). Abel adds a fourth condition because even if we have evidence to justify out belief and make it true, if we also have evidence that says the opposite, how can we be sure of what we know? The opposing evidence undermines and renders useless the evidence we were using to justify our claim.
8. What are Abel’s Nine Good Reasons or Evidence which serve as the Basis of Knowledge?  Please give an example for each that is not in the book!
His 9 Good Reasons are: sense perception, logic, intuition, self-awareness, memory, authority, consensus gentium, revelation, and faith. An example of sense perception is "I know that fire is hot, because I fet it." An example of logic is "I know that gravity exists because I can prove it. When I drop this pen, it falls." An example of intuition is "I know it is wrong to kill or harm others because it feels bad." An example of self-awareness is "I know that I am sad, because I feel it inside." One of memory is "I know she said that because I remember her saying that." An example of knowing things through authority could be "I know the meeting is at 2 because Mr. Heiser said so, and he is in charge of it." An example of consensus gentium is "I know that it is cool to wear jeans, because everybody does it." A revelation could be "I know that I shouldn't worry about my life because God revealed this to me." An example of faith is "I know I am going to Heaven because I ahve faith in God's promises." But Abel really doesn't consider faith an accurate basis for knowledge at all...