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It is well known that the Nyāya advocates an extreme form of direct realism and maintains that what we directly perceive are physical objects and not some intermediate entities called variously by philosophers "ideas', "contents' or even "sense-data'. Gotama's sûtras 2.1.31 - 2.1.36 and Vātsāyana's commentaries on them contain arguments which may be regarded as constituting a very effective defence of what has come to be called the physical object language as against the sense-datum language. Gotama's, as well as his commentator's, direct interest however is twofold. In the first place, they are out to refute the suggestion that perception is not an independent source of knowledge but a variety of inference. In the course of this refutation, they are led to their second point: they try to show that the object of perception, that is to say, the physical object, is not a mere assemblage of parts but a true unity of some unanalysable kind. Our task in this paper will be to bring out the relevance of these arguments in the light of contemporary discussions of the problem of perception.

DOI: 10.1007/978-94-010-3252-0_17

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