ABSTRACT
The implication of the prefix is not that meta-thinking is thinking about thought, but that it is thought about things to which our primary and prior access was secured by some other means than thought. Freedom, spirit and God are, for example, experienced, though not sensibly experienced, just because they are 'in [our] consciousness', that is, in this case, thought about. Finally it means sense-experience which has been moulded by thoughts, by the 'determinations of universality and necessity'. Despite such occasional confusion, however, Hegel has separate arguments for the objectivity of thought in each of these senses. Perceptual experience, unlike thought, depends directly on one's spatial location, so that it will differ qualitatively from person to person. But if our pre-scientific conceptions are already objective, it is hard to see what advance is made by the sciences in this respect; even if they introduce more thought, this does not necessarily involve more objectivity.
