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Acquaintance is a relation of "direct" awareness, an intentional relation between a person and an object in his or her "presence". Specifically, a person is acquainted with an object insofar as he or she has an acquainting experience that is intentionally related to the object, i.e., successfully of or about that object. And in an acquainting experience one is presented something in one's "presence", something in the immediate context of one's experience, or in contextual relation to the experience, or to oneself. In this sense the mode of presentation is indexical, and the content embodying that mode of presentation is an indexical content. As the chapters above showed, in perception I am visually presented "this object (actually now here before me and affecting my eyes)"; in empathic perception of another person, I am presented "you" or "him" or "her" ("this other person actually now here before me and affecting my eyes"); and in consciousness per se, or inner awareness, I am aware of "this very experience" and also of "I" (of myself as subject of this experience). Accordingly, in successful acquaintance one stands in an intentional relation to something in one's presence, something in contextual relation to one's experience or oneself. In this sense the relation of acquaintance is an indexical intentional relation, and as such it is a context-dependent intentional relation.

DOI: 10.1007/978-94-009-0961-8_5

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