Gautama's Definition of Perception

Buddhists offer a battery of objections to this idea, which are rebutted by the Niyayakas. Gautama wants to say that although I can perceive something without classifying it in terms of some concept, I can also deploy concepts to enrich my perceptual experience. Those of us lucky enough to have familiarity with giraffes can perceive them as giraffes, and perceive that a given object is a giraffe. If you put a giraffe in front of an ancient Indian, she would be able to see it, but would have no concept or word for what she was seeing.