Copula is an intuitive predicate of consciousness on fulfilment of knowing and judging acts

The paper addresses how the fulfilment of knowing and judging is grounded in the interplay between signification (empty intentions) and intuition within Husserlian phenomenology, and how the copula in predicative judgements (e.g., “A is p”) reflects an intuitive, perceptually grounded synthesis. It motivates the study by noting gaps in systematic accounts of the relation between knowing and judging, despite notable exceptions (Kant, Husserl), and by the increasing interest across philosophy and cognitive sciences. The purpose is to reconstruct Husserl’s notion of categorial intuition from Logical Investigations VI and relate it to knowledge origination as intuitive fulfilment of signifying acts, thereby clarifying how perceptual synthesis supports judgemental sense and evidential knowledge.

The study engages primarily with Husserl’s sixth Logical Investigation (LI VI) and Analyses Concerning Passive and Active Synthesis (APAS), situating categorial intuition within debates about its epistemic role. It reviews contributions on categorial intuition and related themes by Sokolowski (1981), Lohmar (2002), Moran (2005), Benoist (2008), Mohanty (2011), da Silva (2017), among others, and references discussions in Formal and Transcendental Logic, Experience and Judgment, and analyses of passive/active syntheses. It notes interpretations that locate the grounding of judgements in perception (Welton, Mohanty, Staiti, Sato) and criticisms or alternative readings (Bobrova & Pietarinen; Staiti; Theodorou). The review also considers Husserl’s claims in LI §§62–63 that the realm of meaning exceeds that of intuition and that pure thought is independent of intuition, raising tensions about the genesis and operation of categoriality that the paper addresses via perceptual analyses.

This is a theoretical-phenomenological analysis. The author reconstructs and interprets Husserl’s accounts of categorial intuition and perception by close reading of specific sections of LI VI (§§45–48, 62–63) and APAS (§§1–10 and related passages). The method traces the intentional structures underpinning knowing and judging: foundational acts (simple sensible intuitions) versus founded acts (categorial intuitions), the synthesis between signifying intentions and intuitive fulfilment, and the ‘covering synthesis’ between partial perceptual intentions and global perception. The analysis adopts Husserl’s genetic phenomenology to explicate passive and active syntheses, temporal flow of appearances, object-identity through varying modes of givenness, and the role of attention and cognitive interests in constituting objects and judgemental sense. No empirical data are collected; instead, argumentative reconstruction and phenomenological description are used to articulate the epistemic roles of perception, categoriality, and the copula in predication.

• Evident judicative knowledge depends on a twofold foundation: simple sensible intuition and a higher-level categorial intuition that provides intuitive fulfilment to signifying intentions in judgements (e.g., “A is p”).
• Categorial intuition is not reducible to simple intuition; it arises through a covering synthesis that unifies explicit partial intentions (e.g., the aspect p) with global perception of the object A, yielding perceptually grounded categorial articulation.
• The copula in predication reflects this intuitive synthesis of consciousness: the predicative structure (subject–copula–predicate) expresses a fulfilment relation between signification and intuition that secures evidential knowledge.
• Although Husserl (LI §§62–63) maintains that the realm of meaning exceeds intuition and that pure thought is independent, perceptual analyses show a genetic continuity: intuitions can confirm and guide categorial articulations via selective attention to partial aspects shaped by signifying intentions.
• APAS reframes perception as a knowledge-acquiring process: object-identity is constituted across temporal modes of appearance through passive and active syntheses, integrating both intuitive and co-intended (non-given) horizons.
• Judgements and categories operate within the perceptual realm as founded acts requiring intuitive foundations; categorial articulations are not external to perception but are grounded in its synthesizing operations.
• Knowledge formation proceeds genetically from undifferentiated global apprehension, through attention-driven explication of parts, to categorially articulated judgement, evidencing a continuous flow from sensibility to higher-order knowing.

The analysis clarifies how the fulfilment of knowing and judging is achieved through perceptual syntheses that connect signification with intuition. By explicating the covering synthesis between partial intentions and global perception, the paper shows how categorial relations (expressed via the copula in predication) attain intuitive givenness, thereby addressing the tension between pure thought’s autonomy and intuition’s evidential role. This reframing situates the genesis of categoriality within perceptual processes—both passive (fusion, temporal horizons) and active (attention, cognitive interests)—demonstrating that judicative essence is phenomenologically grounded. The findings emphasize the significance of perception as an epistemic base that both guides and confirms categorial articulations, contributing to debates on how judgements acquire evidential force and how language structures mirror underlying intentional syntheses.

The study argues that knowing and judging follow a genetic, perceptually grounded structure of synthesis in which categorial forms (intentions, intuitions, articulations) are fulfilled. Categorial intuitions should be understood through perceptual explication processes and covering syntheses that connect partial aspects with global apprehension, establishing a continuity from sensibility to knowledge in judgement. Signification can direct intuition toward higher-level acts, but the fundamental structures emerge from unrevealed sensibility made explicit through synthesis. The paper opens avenues for further work on how covering synthesis and categorial intuitions ground one another within active perceptual activity and which categorial forms are inherent in intuitive synthesis shaped by cognitive interests, with future extensions proposed toward subsequent levels of perceptual activity.

The analysis is confined to reconstructing Husserl’s accounts in LI VI and APAS and does not offer an exhaustive treatment of all perceptual or logical structures. It leaves unresolved questions about the precise grounding relations between covering synthesis and categorial intuitions in active perception, and about which specific categorial forms are inherent in intuitive synthesis under cognitive interests. The approach is theoretical and phenomenological, with no empirical validation.