by Ana Bazac
Agatha Christie described in a book an art critique who, called for surveying paintings in private houses, just glanced at them and he could already see the difference between postcard-like paintings and paintings with aesthetic value. It’s a peculiarity of those trained to recognise forms, one may conclude. But in the experimented chess players too, first not the calculative power of mind is put to work, but just the finesse to recognise patterns and compare with pattern images. Only after do they calculate, nevertheless on the basis of patterns comparisons and evolutions[1].
This spatial perception was called intuition. Today we know that intuition is a synthesised knowledge – and thus also on the basis of intellectual judgements of division, classification, distinctions, systematisation, discursive definition (διαίρεσις, Plato) – but indeed, the first understanding of reality is just the tableau of forms: whose arrangement as such gives the unique individuals, properties, relationships and determinations in a meaningful whole.
Actually, from old this sensitivity to a coloured – not grey – whole was called wisdom. But wisdom was the result of both the discursive thinking (διάνοια) about the sensible world – discursive thinking that was a purely logical business, ratiocination (ratiocinor, -are, to calculate) aiming at solving problems hic et nunc, knowledge not rising to the “first principles”[2], – and the reflection on this thinking, namely understanding, the highest level of conditions generated by the soul[3] because only it arises from dialectic and is able to comprehend the first principles. In fact, the knowledge from sciences is only a basis for understanding: that knowledge starts from “assumptions” as first principles, while understanding starts directly from the first principles, offering an immediate comprehension. Of course, wisdom is the result of mind’s endeavour and experience: but it itself may be caught as intuition: the topics “could be understood” “with a first principle”[4].
Intuition is not guessing, and lesser is it convention. On the contrary, the formal sciences like mathematics (Plato points geometry, of course) are based on conventional assumptions and thus they can give only superficial properties[5]. While intuition is a sudden, instantaneous understanding of – we say today – the meanings of the whole situation[6]. It is like an X-ray art critique penetrating suddenly in the whole picture, in all of its strata, aspects, angles, shades, matter, forms, temperature, images from near and far, reductions to miniatures and expanding in size and scales.
Intuition is not only a glance, it is also gaze, contemplation. The high importance of contemplation in antiquity was not only the result of the social division of physical and intellectual labour, but also of the grasping of the world of meanings above the order resulted from logical functioning as calculation. Without this order in our representations of the world, we, humans, could not cope with the vortex of existence: our mental order, always expressed, was externalised, transposed into the known universe, κόσμος, since – what a marvel – by looking at it we discovered “its” order and an incredible similitude between this order and our λóγos, a well-ordered discourse, inherently logical, simplifying through analysis and synthesis, triumphally applied on everything shining/so, hitting our curiosity and interest. But just the logical thinking that compares and differentiates – and all of these meaning calculus – and thus substantiates the quickly emerged opinions, giving them an account, means a step-by-step deciphering of the world and, at the same time, a call for its understanding. And this is not easy at all: it takes time, much time that must be free from the everyday chores, but is there a greater reward than wisdom that brings us closer to the first principles? And once things understood, doesn’t this understanding seem easy, suddenly coming from the depth of the mind, from its glance[7]? And doesn’t the intuition of things give us a complete picture of the world, and isn’t this picture a constitution, an arrangement of forms?
In this regard, it’s clear why did the ancient philosophers nurture the idea of levels of rationality, the understanding/intelligence being higher than the calculative reason (and Nicolaus Cusanus and Leibniz took over this scale, while Kant considered that reason is superior, it is able to interpret the intelligent processing of ideas and it is able to arrive to transcendental principles).
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Since what is in mente is necessarily in voce – logic cannot be without being expressed, and there are not expressions outside the logical processing in the mind – and what is in mente is about the world, in re, it’s important to see what is, both the methodological/“formal” and the semantic contents of mental (and discursive) forms. Yes, the mind constructs[8] concepts – mental/ideal entities – which are patterns for the recognition of real, of the coloured forms and the forms of sensible notions. The entire process of construction and recognition involves mental relations.
Explicit judgements inquiring and certifying the identity of things, their semantic contents, through their truth-value – affirmative and negative judgements, both emphasising truth and false –.
But also, implicit judgements (without truth-value) certifying the state of fact of things, of entities which will be posited in judicative relations but which, by their simple reception that they are present, they take place, do involve only the consciousness of their presence according to the intentionality of the consciousness. This state of fact is the “formal” content, if this oxymoron is allowed. The implicit judgements means that the expressed words signal that these entities are. The implicit judgements are epistemic formal conditions for the development of explicit judgements, both stating that the referens is and what does it mean. In logic, these entities are the following: the individual – res, the property – in re, relation – inter rebus, determination – cum re, expression – de re[9]. In other words, when judging/reasoning, people not only put in relations different things, but at the same time, actually preceding the reasoning, assume and acknowledge the things/the what about.
Kant did not see and was not interested about these subtleties, already existing in Aristotle (his theory of ante predicaments in Categories). He discussed only the epistemic formal (and not the psychological and logical) construction in the processes of formation of notions, concepts, ideas, reasoning. But he always explained that: 1) the epistemic entities – notions etc. – are constructed in a very natural way (from senses, logical processing – discrimination, analysis and synthesis of properties, from below and from above etc., 2) that all the ways of construction are transcendental – methodological, internal organisation of the cognitive process – conditions for knowing, therefore for both the first level of intelligence and the second, superior, of reason, and 3) that knowledge involves an essential and constitutive recognition of forms. And, once again, reason is much more than intuition. This one is a primary procedure, linked only to the sensible, to the empirical, Kant insisted. Nevertheless, knowledge means – similar but in no way identical to Plato’s both ἀνάμνησις and δημιουργὸς’ model– a permanent journey of recognition of forms.
Finally, we should retain that the epistemic, the logical and the psychological aspects in knowing are so intertwined that only from a “didactic”, scientific standpoint are they separated. Accordingly, what is cardinal is their presence in the field of consciousness, how do they appear in consciousness in a certain conscious experience. The semantic contents are thus what the consciousness pursues. The formal contents are only methodological structuring subordinated to the consciousness’ goal of understanding a concrete/certain something. In this sense, the formal contents are anterior to the semantic ones, and somehow “recessive”[10], supporting the semanticity and pushing it to unfold. But do the formal condition and conditioning have a superior significance than the semantic contents emphasised in explicit judgements? At the level of what is dominant for the consciousness – they do not. However, the formal and the semantic are not contradictory, neither contrary: but a pair, an indestructible structure “ontic” structure.
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The concept of ephemeral is an example. But is it a concept? First of all, it is, ontologically, a property/quality – a predicate, logically – being in re, in the substance of a certain fact/existent, ontically. As it is known, it describes – as a semantic content – a short-lived existence (of flowers or butterflies). But as a quality, it shows its categoricity, namely its being as a criterion of description/classification/qualification of things. This categoricity is the formal content.
Now, people manipulate the words, and this linguistic manipulation was and is, obviously, context-dependent: the first repeated social experience has transposed into verbs – formally, words expressing action, doing, the res being just the fact/situation of acting/doing – substantives, designating the objects towards which the humans saw relations/directed their actions, attributes as qualities, properties.
However, in order to better express their intentions, therefore the meanings lighting in their consciousness, the humans have embroidered sounds, suffixes and prefixes to the roots of words which rendered the most habitual actions/situations. Rather the verbs gave these roots, but also the other parts of speech. On the one hand, from the common radical/root, the humans have constructed different parts of speech. On the other hand, they performed with increasingly greater flexibility, mutual transformations of some parts of speech into other parts.
Not only properties but also relations, determinations, expressions are criteria of descriptions, thus of categoricity. Accordingly, to pas from a kind of categoricity/qualification to another was and is not formally impossible. The ephemeral is an attribute – having as antonyms long-lived, permanent, perennial, everlasting, while its synonyms (which are never perfect superpositions but a simple overlapping) are temporal, temporally, transient, fleeting.
But is this attribute not a signal of the existence of forms as pre-conditions of entities? May a certain substance/res exist without having just the properties/determinations/relations/expressions about it which give the peculiarity of that substance? The res itself is/exists because it has some attributes, formally – properties: res = res + in re. Different rei (flowers/butterflies) are ephemeral. The fact/situation of ephemeral is the form that subtends some kinds of flowers/butterflies, their existence as such. When naming those kinds of flowers/butterflies, we already imply that they are ephemeral. We equate those kinds and the attribute, ephemeral. Consequently, ephemerality is the quality of these rei.
But only of those rei, those flowers and butterflies? The form and the semantic are inseparable, but the quality/nature of being a form is not tantamount to the sort of form. A thing is a res forasmuch as both being the pattern of somethingness and a certain pattern sine qua non qualifying the things. A certain flower is ephemeral. Formally: it is + is ephemeral. The kind of form according to which we recognise similarities and differences between flowers from the standpoint of their lasting shows itself as giving the differentia specifica of certain flowers.
When speaking about flowers we assume that they are: we speak about them, we assume the pattern of their existence. Even if the flowers do not exist in reality, they exist in mente, thus in voce. And we imagine – still in mente – that they are also in reality, that our evocation is about what is in re. But when speaking about everything we assume its existence in mente: otherwise, we would not speak about, obviously. Thus, not the recognition of (the form of) existence as such is that which is enough when speaking about certain things: but the recognition of patterns of differentia specifica. These patterns of differentia specifica contain in their deep epistemic arrière plan the signal/form of existence as such, but the signal/form of existence as such does not contain also the differentia specifica of the forms of different things.
These patterns of differentia specifica (properties, relations, determinations) prove to be more important for the recognition of forms and things than the formal assumption of existence as such. And it’s normal: because only with the patterns of differentia specifica do we approach at the semantic meanings of the always certain things.
Accordingly, the patterns of differentia specifica autonomise from the pattern of existence as such. And if so, the attribute of ephemeral can legitimately become a substantive, and even a verb.
In this way, the ephemeral also can be a concept: as the specific qualitative feature as such. In a fitter philosophical formula, as ephemerality, as temporariness of things.
The abstract concepts are patterns of recognition, whose supplementary meaning/signal is just the possibility to generalise and to explain the concrete world from the top. And here, the phenomenological sensitivity is not enough: it’s always necessary to make visible how the abstract concepts and the empirical descriptions work and give in our consciousness vivid pictures of the world; but it’s similarly necessary to understand both the stakes of these work and pictures, their epistemic, logical and ontological backgrounds, their causes and, conversely, the responsibility of the human conscience towards the knowledge of all this.
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Notes
[1] Xiaohong Wan et al. (2011). “The Neural Basis of Intuitive Best Next-Move Generation in Board Game Experts”, Science, Vol 331, Issue 6015: 341-346; M. J. Williams, M. Palace, J. C. Welsh, S. J. Brooks, (2025). “Neural correlates of chess expertise: A systematic review of brain imaging studies comparing expert versus novice players”, Brain Mechanics, Vol. 148-150, art. 202516.
[2] Plato (2018). The Republic, Edited by G.R.F. Ferrari, Translated by Tom Griffith (2000), Cambridge University Press, Book 6, 511d, p. 219: “when people are doing subjects like geometry, you call their state of mind thinking rather than understanding, because you regard thinking as a halfway house between opinion and understanding”.
[3] Ibidem, 511e.
[4] Ibidem, 511d.
[5] Ibidem, p. 242, Book 7, 533c: “geometry and the disciplines which go with geometry – we can now see that as long as they leave the assumptions they use untouched, without being able to give any justification for them, they are only dreaming about what is. They cannot possibly have any waking awareness of it. After all, if the first principles of a subject are something you don’t know, and the endpoint and intermediate steps are interwoven out of what you don’t know, what possible mechanism can there ever be for turning a coherence between elements of this kind into knowledge?”
[6] Ibidem, 533c10-11-d1: “The dialectical method is the only one which in its determination to make itself secure proceeds by this route – doing away with its assumptions until it reaches the first principle itself.”
[7] Intuition: in + tuor, -i, -itus, to see, to look. Or, intueor, -ere, -itus, to look at, to consider.
[8] Obviously, it constructs on the basis of empirical information via senses etc., but not this aspect is important here.
[9] Alexandru Surdu (2005). Teoria formelor prejudicative (1989), București, Editura Academiei Române, p. 113 [Theory of prejudicative forms].
[10] Mircea Florian, (1983). Recesivitatea ca structură a lumii, București, Editura Eminescu [Recessivity as a structure of the world].