The Doctrine of the Upanishads : 3 Swami Krishnananda

11/05/2019
3. NAIVE REALISM :

There is a theory which is generally termed naive realism. According to it, what is perceived through the senses is the true nature of the object thus perceived. The datum of experience is identical with the reality that is presented to the perceiving consciousness in the form of the external object. There is no difference between object as perceived and object as it is in itself. The universe of objective perception is really in the very form in which it is experienced through the senses. The universe is material in nature, diverse in form and even mind which is the perceiver is a kind of modification of cosmic matter. This is, in other words, the materialistic view of reality. The great defect of this view is that it cannot account for the fact of error in perception.

What is meant by erroneous knowledge?
What is wrong perception?
Why is it that sometimes we are unable to know things as they are, but are made to take a phantom as the given in experience?
How can the perception of water in a mirage be explained, if what is experienced through the senses is the same as what is in fact externally in the world?

The theory that reality is material and is as it is experienced individually is untenable for various reasons. That which is really material cannot be assimilated into one's consciousness, and what is thus not assimilated cannot be known by the consciousness on account of there being a gulf between the experiencer and the experienced.

If mind and consciousness are products of matter, they must be inherent in matter. What is not in the cause in some form or the other cannot be produced as the effect. If the cause is matter, the effect also would be matter. If mind and consciousness are facts of experience, and if they are said to be effects, they must have a conscious cause, too.

How can something arise from nothing?

The attempt to merge the entire individual experiencer in a material universe is bound to end in failure. Epistemologically and metaphysically the theory of naive realism is found to be unsatisfactory on account of its inability to explain facts of consciousness and experience of matter by consciousness.

What is the relation between the experienced object and the experiencing consciousness?

Taking for granted that the object is material and is different from consciousness, we would be obliged to fall into a chasm of the unceasing difference between the given in experience and the experiencer.

What is it that exists between the experiencer and the experienced?

According to crude realism, it can be neither matter nor consciousness. For, if the relation is material, it would be indistinguishable from the object; if it is conscious, it cannot be separated from the subjective experiencer. If it is neither, the relation remains unexplained, unless a purely arbitrary and unwarranted neutral stuff is brought forward as the explanation thereof. If the subject and the object are totally different from one another, there cannot be knowledge. Nor can it be said that the subject and the object are of identical nature, and this nature is material, for materiality being not the same as consciousness, there cannot be apprehension of anything on the supposition that the experiencer is material in nature.

Matter is unconscious and it cannot know anything.

To be continued ..