Abstract: This presentation looks at an argument against direct realism attributed to the Sautrāntika school of early Buddhism. This argument shows how ‘momentariness’ (kṣanikatva), the thesis that objects do not persist, entails that our perceptual experiences are not constitutively dependent upon the objects we perceive. I argue that this argument can be generalised, such that its conclusion follows from lighter, and more widely held, commitments about the nature of persistence through time.
