The Problems of Philosophy by Bertrand Russell "Problems of Philosophy" is one of Bertrand Russell's attempts to create a concise and accessible guide to the problems of philosophy. Focusing on various issues he believes will cause a positive and constructive discussion. Russell focuses on knowledge and not on metaphysics. It gives the reader a distinction between "knowledge by acquaintance and knowledge by description", and introduces important theories of Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, David Hume, John Locke, Immanuel Kant, Georg Hegel and others to lay the foundation of philosophical inquiry as readers and scholars. Our knowledge of what is achievable in two ways: knowledge by acquaintance and knowledge by description. Our knowledge through knowledge lead to immediate realization of our own experience. Knowledge by acquaintance is logically independent of any knowledge of truths. Knowledge by description is based on something we are familiar with, thanks to the data to which we have access, and some knowledge of truths, such as the description: "such and such sensory data due to the physical object." Thus, knowledge of description allow us to infer knowledge about things we never had through things with which we have direct acquaintance. Idealism is the philosophical view that "exists independently, or in any case, any knowledge must be in some sense of the psyche." Russell rejects idealism, because he believes that the arguments for idealism based on wrong thinking. Arch-idealist, Bishop Berkeley, refer to two different things, using the same word "idea." One of them is the thing that we know and the other part is the actual act of arrest. Russell says that idealists confused the meaning of the "idea" of restless mental sense. Instead, Russell advocates the theory of knowledge, where there are things independently of our consciousness, and constitute the physical world of matter. - from Amzon