 For Auriol, in contrast to Scotus, intuitive cognition is possible whether the object of cognition is present or absent. Likewise, an abstractive cognition of an object that is actually present is possible. The distinction between intuitive and abstractive cognition does not depend on the object at all; the very same object can be cognized in both an intuitive and an abstractive way. According to Auriol, whether we are having the one type of cognition or the other depends exclusively on the characteristics of the cognition that we are having, how the object appears to us. Auriol says explicitly that intuitive and abstractive cognition are in fact simply two fundamentally different ways that the esse apparens created by the cognitive faculties can appear to us: “abstractive and intuitive cognition differ … for there are two modes of formal appearance … by which things appear objectively” (trans. Pasnau 2002, p. 201, n. 111). In order to illustrate this, Auriol claims that ocular cognition, i.e. the sense of sight, is fully intuitive, while imaginary cognition, i.e. cognizing something through the internal sense of the imagination, is fully abstractive. This is the governing metaphor in Auriol’s attempt to distinguish the two types of cognition: sight is intuitive, imagination is abstractive. Thus, describing sensory cognition, Auriol gives four traits that together enable us to determine whether any particular cognition is intuitive or abstractive. First, an intuitive cognition is characterized by being immediate or direct, as when we see an object before us. Not so abstractive or imaginary cognition; it is mediate, requiring some type of discursive process. Auriol gives the following example: an astronomer sitting in his room can predict an eclipse through calculation, and he can even imagine it on that basis, but this is something entirely different from seeing the eclipse directly. A second characteristic of ocular or intuitive cognition is the presentness of the object. The object of an intuitive cognition seems to be present (whether it actually is or not), whereas the object of an abstractive cognition does not have this appearance of presence. Take the astronomer again. He can imagine the eclipse, but in the very act of doing so he knows that the eclipse is not present before him. The third and fourth characteristics that Auriol mentions are roughly equivalent: an intuitive cognition carries with it the actualization and existence of its object; not so an imaginary, abstractive cognition. The astronomer can imagine an eclipse, and even imagine an eclipse taking place right now, but again, the very fact that he is imagining the eclipse bears with it the recognition that it is not in fact actualized and existing. Auriol sums up: