Essentially you’re arguing that statements about objects are reducible to statements about actual or possible perceptions. This is phenomenalism.
Phenomenalism claims that only appearances/experiences exist, but if there is nothing mind independent that fixes truth conditions or distinguishes correct from incorrect accounts of those appearances, then the claim “only appearances exist” cannot be a determinate truth apt position rather than just another appearance, which collapses phenomenalism into self undermining incoherence.
This is a nonsense position when we note that if you cannot know anything beyond the adamantine veil of perception then you also cannot know if anything or anyone else exists at all. You also cannot know if your own words make any sense, or if they are transmitted by the computer, or even when spoken allowed that they reach anyone’s ear, or anything at all.
The claim that “we only know sense data” is self undermining because it relies on inference and conceptual structure that it simultaneously denies can yield justified knowledge beyond raw appearance.
The points are:
Only immediate sense experience is verifiably accessible
No justified inference beyond immediate experience is allowed (such as kalapas being verifiably real and mind independent)
Therefore only immediate experience (mental appearances) can be affirmed
There is no justified distinction between “experience” and “external world”
Therefore only experiential contents are epistemically available
If taken ontologically, this collapses into solipsism.
All of your reality and experience stop before any of it ever leaves your own little inner world. You’ve zero reason to believe anything makes it in or out. All you sense when you see the computer or phone screen right now is your own eyes and consciousness and NOTHING outside of that, ever.
Now all that’s left is you inside of a tiny little solipsist world. From here arguing against the Classical Theravada position, that kalapas is objective and mind independent, in favor of phenomanlism, where kalapas are purely perception, is incoherent and a huge waste of time.
In other words, if you really believed that phenomenalism was fact and followed this logic all the way through we wouldn’t be having this conversation because you would see it as a silly thing to discuss. It would make more sense to just think over things in your own mind since that’s verifiably real, while any conversation with other people is beyond the veil of perception.
Once there in solipsism, which is the full extrapolation of phenomenalism, we note that solipsism itself is incoherent and self refuting. This is because if nothing is real but your own mind then you’ve no reason to believe that your solipsistic position is real either. All your positions have no more validity than a passing thought about a unicorn.
Put another way, if nothing is real and mind independently true, since all is your own mind, then the position, “Nothing is real but your own mind,” isn’t real, and certainly isn’t true. It would just be another flight of fancy.
If you push the other way and claim that, since the position is part of your mind, which is real, then the position is real, then everything you perceive or even think about is real. Now you transmute solipsism into realism. “Mind,” instead of delineating things that are unreal, now means “real.” Your mind simply thinking about or perceiving anything whatsoever magically grants it truth and reality.
No matter how you slice it solipsism is nonsense. And solipsism is inherent in phenomenalism, whether proponents of either understand that or not.
If the claim is made that things can be indeterminately “mind” in some vague way that somehow ostensibly keeps the position valid against all attacks (read: eel wriggling) then we’re in skepticism masquerading as knowledge where the position boils down to suspension of judgement.
So you end up with no position whatsoever and would have to retreat to something like Ajnana or Pyrrhonism. These are, of course, inferior to the dhamma, but they are at least meant to lead to a peace of their own, like ataraxia.
Further, the Classical Theravada tradition considers the notion of the senses sensing themselves, which is inextricably bound up with phenomenalism, to be utterly incoherent. This phenomenalist notion is likened to thinking that when you cut with a sword you cut the sword with the sword. The eye seeing seeing is like the sword cutting cutting. Nonsense. See Kv 5.9.
@gregk Show me a text where the Buddha spoke about supernormal perception?
In the suttas it talks about it regularly. It is called “Divine Eye” and/or other divine senses. But this specific issue about the Buddha using his divine senses for seeing paramattha dhammas specifically is from the commentary tradition as is the entire dhamma theory system that is under discussion. The commentaries are considered authoritative on this forum, as is the abhidhamma.
There is no validity to, “But he didn’t say it in the suttas! So it doesn’t count because it’s only from the commentaries!” arguments here.
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Now, as to the elements in the suttas. The Buddha did NOT strictly talk about the body and senses when it comes to teaching the elements. This is a common and often repeated misrepresentation of the dhamma.
In actuality he spoke often about the senses and body with the elements because much of what he said was to help people practice the dhamma and this practice is done with the sense and body. However, he also described the elements as objective, external things. For example in MN 28 he explains that the water element can destroy cities. This is taught specifically as an external contrast to the human body and experience which is much shorter lived.
It would be absurd to claim that his teaching on explicitly stated to be external elements destroying cities contrasted against the localized human experience is somehow restricted to being an inner, phenomenalist teaching.
“Now there comes a time when the external water element is disturbed. It carries away villages, towns, cities, districts, and countries. There comes a time when the waters in the great ocean sink down a hundred leagues, two hundred leagues, three hundred leagues, four hundred leagues, five hundred leagues, six hundred leagues, seven hundred leagues. There comes a time when the waters in the great ocean stand seven palms deep, six palms deep…two palms deep, only a palm deep. There comes a time when the waters in the great ocean stand seven fathoms deep, six fathoms deep…two fathoms deep, only a fathom deep. There comes a time when the waters in the great ocean stand half a fathom deep, only waist deep, only knee deep, only ankle deep. There comes a time when the waters in the great ocean are not enough to wet even the joint of a finger. When even this external water element, great as it is, is seen to be impermanent, subject to destruction, disappearance, and change, what of this body, which is clung to by craving and lasts but a while? There can be no considering that as ‘I’ or ‘mine’ or ‘I am.’
-MN 28
