Plato still allowed the empiricist the power of pointing a finger at things, but the truth is that even this silent gesture is impossible if what is pointed out is not already torn from instantaneous existence and monadic existence, and treated as representative of its previous appearances in me, and of its simultaneous appearances in others, in other words, subsumed under some category and promoted to the status of a concept If the patient is no longer able to point to some part of his body which is touched, it is because he is no longer a subject face to face with an objective world, and can no longer take up a 'categorial attitude'.