Early Buddhist Theory of Knowledge c7.41.2

c7.41.2

therefore has it been said that "it is difficult to determine (the existence of transcendent) objects by means of inference".' This shows the existence of a school of Materialists who admitted perception and empirical inference but discarded metaphysical inference on the grounds that what was in principle unperceivable was unknowable. For a valid inference to be possible, it is necessary to establish the truth of a universal proposition (vyāpti), which reveals a concomitance between a hetu and an anumeya (==sādhya-, cp. laukikahetūnām anumeyāvagame) and this is not possible unless both are in principle observables. It is difficult to say whether this school asserted that there was a necessary connection between cause and effect or merely held that the concomitance or sequence was only probable and therefore the inference was only probable. It is worth noting that one of the objections against inference brought out by group (1) was that there was no necessity in the concomitance, despite our repeated observation of several instances.