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THE DEFINITION OF PERCEPTION
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Later Bauddha logicians like Dign盲ga, Dharmakirti and
others reduce perception to a mere sensation free from all con-
ceptual determination. This, the Naiy膩yikas think, is logically
indefensible and arbitrary. None of our ordinary perceptions
is a pure sensing of the given datum. On the other hand,
perception is the interpretation of sensations by associated
images and ideas. It is now a commonplace of philosophy
that "perception contains not merely sensuous and revived.
images, but a large element of meaning as well." Perception
is not, as the Buddhists think, an unmeaning sensation of an
indeterminate real called svalak峁�a峁嘺. It has a definite meaning
and refers to a determinate object as that is revealed through
sensations. It is only because the Buddhists arbitrarily deny
the meaning element in perception that they are forced to exclude
the complex cognitions of a jar, tree, etc. (samv峁泃ij帽膩na), from
the range of perception. As a matter of fact, these are as
good perceptions as any other. If, however, we allow with
the Buddhists that perception is a matter of pure sensation, we
do not understand how it can at all be conceived or logically
defined. A pure sensation is an unreal abstraction and not a
psychological fact. We cannot point to any of our actual ex-
periences as a case of pure sensation without any element of
ideation in it. Such an experience, even if it were real, can
hardly be described, far less defined. The Buddhist definition
of perception is self-contradictory (vy膩hata) in so far as it tries
to define and determine what is undefinable and indeterminate.
Just as what is perfectly unknowable cannot even be known
as unknowable, so we cannot consistently determine a perfectly
indeterminate experience as perception."
1 Essays in Critical Realism, p. 91.
2 NV. & NVT., 1. 1. 4; NM., pp. 92-93, 97-100; SD., pp. 38-39.
The notion of an ineffable sensum, like the Buddhist's svalak峁�a峁嘺, has
also been repudiated of late by some eminent Western thinkers like Whitehead,
Heidegger, Rickert, Bosanquet, Dewey. 'Whitehead speaks of it as the sensa-
tionalist fallacy and Heidegger as the illusory notion of mere givenness, un-
tinged with the "concern" which he holds to be constitutive of experience
throughout. See Charles Hartshorne's article on "The Intelligibility of Sensa
tions" in The Monist, July, 1934, pp. 161-85.
16 (O.P. 103)