 This same “identity in difference” of original self-consciousness might also be described as an “intellectual intuition,” inasmuch as it involves the immediate presence of the I to itself, prior to and independently of any sensory content. To be sure, such an “intellectual intuition” never occurs, as such, within empirical consciousness; instead, it must simply be presupposed (that is, “posited”) in order to explain the possibility of actual consciousness, within which subject and object are always already distinguished. The occurrence of such an original intellectual intuition is itself inferred, not intuited.