Intelligence as Representation

Abstract

The development of intelligence from intuition to representation resembles the progression of the psyche to consciousness.¹ Intuition provides a mental prerequisite for representation, just as feeling makes possible habituation and conscious sensation provides the mental precondition for perception and understanding. Unlike these psychologically prior developments, however, the stages of intelligence emerge for mind as transformations wrought by mind’s own activity.² Because intelligence is always aware of its mental content as both subjective and objective, every alteration of its object passes before mind as something connected to a subjective mental movement.