Chapter 10 completes Russell's account of a priori knowledge. The heart of the chapter is his solution to the problem it poses (¶ 10.7), but he leads up to it by completing his account of knowledge by acquaintance (¶¶ 10.2-10.6) and follows it with a series of points about the relation of this knowledge to experience (¶¶ 10.8-10.14), each of which is interesting and potentially controversial. The chapter concludes (¶¶ 10.15-10.16) with a general account of his scheme of knowledge. Here he summarizes things he has said and points towards topics in the following chapters.

Chapter 11 begins the final section of the book, which considers the way our knowledge is built on its foundations. This chapter continues a discussion of intuitive knowledge that Russell begins at the end of ch. 10 and that he will return to in ch. 13.

• The argument for necessity of intuitive knowledge that begins the chapter (¶¶ 11.1-11.2) can be traced back to Aristotle but it has been questioned, especially in recent decades. Views resting on this sort of argument would now be labeled foundationalism and we will consider criticisms of a couple sorts of foundationalism after midsemester.

• After a brief survey of the range of intuitively known general principles (¶¶ 11.3-11.5), Russell turns to intuitive knowledge derived immediately from perception (¶¶ 11.6-11.14). His discussion of this is devoted mainly to a somewhat tentative treatment of two sorts of self-evidence, one precluding error and the other not, that reflects the difficulty of describing the transition from acquaintance with objects to knowledge of facts. The central claim of Sellars, who we will read just after spring break, is that there is a fundamental incoherence in the sort of relation between acquaintance and the knowledge of facts that Russell would like to assert.