Sentence examples for existence of external objects from inspiring English sources

Yogācāra Arguments The core argument in support of the only mind thesis is the impossibility of the existence of external objects.

Dharmakīrti's position regarding the reality of external objects is highly ambivalent depending on whether he operates from a Sautrāntika perspective, which admits the existence of external objects, or from a Yogācāra perspective, which denies their existence (for detailed discussions of this aspect of Dharmakīrti's thought see Dreyfus 1998, 83, 99; Dunne 2004, 53 and passim).

What we know is the content and structure of our own ideas (epistemological idealism), although we have no reason to deny the existence of external objects (thus to assert ontological idealism) and even assume that in some regards external objects resemble our ideas of them (in the case of primary qualities).

It is evident that they appear due to the force of mental impressions … All texts that supposedly demonstrate the existence of external objects are provisional [descriptions of] their appearances".(Mipham 1977: 159 60ff) Consequently whatever appears to exist externally, according to Nyingma, "is like a horse or an elephant appearing in a dream.

For the Yogācāras in particular, the denial of the existence of external objects may be interpreted simply as a rebuttal of the tendency to assign ontological status to empirical objects outside, or independent of, the cognitive events in which they are instantiated (cf. Lusthaus 2002, 121), a view reminiscent of Berkeley's likeness principle.

This becomes clear when we think about the other question mentioned earlier: why does Śāntarakṣita, distinguish between perceptions on the one hand and love and hatred on the other hand based on the existence or non-existence of external objects?

While the argument about the difference between perception and love does not show that love requires previous experience, it raises, (at least) two interesting questions about the Buddhist account of the emotions: i) why does Śāntarakṣita draw a distinction between perception and feeling on the basis of the non-existence of external objects in the case of love, hatred and desire?

Phenomenalism is the theory that representations (or sense data) of external objects are all that exist.

They claim that in the Viṃśikā Vasubandhu uses the argument from ignorance, according to which, the absence of external objects is derived from the absence of evidence for their existence.

Here are three possibilities: (1) we are aware of external objects directly by perceiving representations of them, ideas; (2) we infer the existence and nature of external objects by perceiving ideas of them; or (3) there is no distinction between external objects and ideas, and, thus, when we perceive ideas we are perceiving external objects.

One can affirm the existence of one's soul from direct consciousness of one's self (what one means by "I"), and one can imagine this happening even in the absence of external objects and bodily organs.