Again, physicists like to posit a boundary between the quantum scale of existence and our own. It is one thing to say that a vanishingly small particle we cannot directly apprehend exists as dependent on our conceptualization. It's harder to dispute that a normal object such as a baseball has any existence other than the one we usually attribute to it. A Svatantrika would agree that the baseball, due to having an objective mode of subsistence, can appear to two observers as it exists conventionally. On the basis of this common appearance, the two can proceed to 'generate inferential consciousnesses' in each other's mental continuums, that is, produce a train of thought through reason that will bestow a conceptual, not direct, understanding of the emptiness of the baseball.
The Prasangika view is that the baseball can not appear commonly because it has no objective mode of existence. The Consequentialist maintains that the Autonomist's position (that the baseball exists by way of its own character) can by logic be lead to the (absurd) consequence, 'It follows that a baseball is not a dependent arising because of inherently existing', which may generate in the opponent the (correct) understanding that a baseball does not inherently exist due to being dependently arisen.(31)
Copyright © 2005 Dan Haig