 The core insight of Kant’s epistemology in general, and his transcendental idealism in particular, according to Allison, is the principle that we possess a discursive intellect. A discursive intellect is one that passively receives representations of particular objects (intuitions) and then spontaneously subsumes those intuited objects under general concepts; consequently, a discursive intellect must possess a sensory faculty (through which it receives sensory data and intuits individual objects) and a conceptual faculty (through which it forms general concepts and applies them to objects) (A50–1/B74–5). By contrast, an intuitive intellect brings into existence its objects merely by representing them, and thus has no need to receive representations of objects from  outside.[40]  But that is not all there is to the discursive nature of our intellect, Allison  argues.[41]  Kant’s key insight is that our sensible faculty has its own epistemic conditions.