  The more interesting conceptual issue is which operations should be considered as finitary. Since Hilbert was less than completely clear on what the finitary standpoint consists in, there is some leeway in setting up the constraints, epistemological and otherwise, an analysis of finitist operation and proof must fulfill. Hilbert characterized (see above) the objects of finitary number theory as “intuitively given,” as “surveyable in all their parts,” and said that their having basic properties must “exist intuitively” for us.  Bernays (1922, 216)  suggests that in finitary mathematics, only “primitive intuitive cognitions come into play,” and uses the term “point of view of intuitive evidence” in connection with finitism  1930,  250. This characterization of finitism as primarily to do with intuition and intuitive knowledge has been emphasized in particular by  (Parsons, 1998)  who argues that what can count as finitary on this understanding is not more than those arithmetical operations that can be defined from addition and multiplication using bounded recursion. In particular, according to him, exponentiation and general primitive recursion are not finitarily acceptable.