its own truth? When we perceive
anything as blue, it is the direct result of visual contact, and this
visual contact cannot certify that the knowledge generated is
true, as the visual contact is not in any touch with the knowledge

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[Footnote 1: There is a story that Kumarila, not being able to convert
Prabhakara, his own pupil, to his views, attempted a trick and pretended
that he was dead. His disciples then asked Prabhakara whether his burial
rites should be performed according to Kumarila's views or Prabhakara's.
Prabhakara said that his own views were erroneous, but these were held by
him only to rouse up Kumarila's pointed attacks, whereas Kumarila's views
were the right ones. Kumarila then rose up and said that Prabhakara
was defeated, but the latter said he was not defeated so long as he was
alive. But this has of course no historic value.]

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it has conditioned. Moreover, knowledge is a mental affair and
how can it certify the objective truth of its representation? In
other words, how can my perception "a blue thing" guarantee
that what is subjectively perceived as blue is really so objectively
as well? After my perception of anything as blue we do not
have any such perception that what I have perceived as blue
is really so. So this so-called self-validity of knowledge cannot
be testified or justified by any perception. We can only be certain
that knowledge has been produced by the perceptual act, but
there is nothing in this knowledge or its revelation of its object
from which we can infer that the perception is also objectively
valid or true. If the production of any knowledge should certify
its validity then there would be no invalidity, no illusory knowledge,
and following our perception of even a mirage we should
never come to grief. But we are disappointed often in our perceptions,
and this proves that when we practically follow the
directions of our perception we are undecided as to its validity,
which can only be ascertained by the correspondence of the perception
with what we find later on in practical experience. Again,
every piece of knowledge is the result of certain causal collocations,
and as such depends upon them for its production, and
hence cannot be said to rise without depending on anything else.
It is meaningless to speak of the validity of knowledge, for
validity always refers to objective realization of our desir