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1. Concept. The basic mode of human knowledge is the act of integration accomplished by the judgment, in which the multiplicity of the data is reduced to synthetic unity. The word synthetic here indicates that this unity is not the first moment in the whole act of knowledge. It is based on the indistinct unity of simple intuition, which for its part is articulated by concepts. In the concept, therefore, the immediate unity is dissolved, but dissolved into unities (of distinct components). This pr…

1. Consciousness, literally the state of knowing, of knowing well in one’s own mind, is the spirit’s awareness not merely of the objects of its experience, but of this experience as its own and hence of itself. Consciousness includes, as well as the immediate moment of experience, the memory of past experience — based, on experience — and a more or less general anticipation of its future. At the most primitive level it is not a matter of two or more different acts, which might then perhaps give …