Lack of independent existence has already been demonstrated for ordinary objects. That can be found here - Examination of Ordinary Objects
This essay restricts itself to a single question: how ordinary objects continue to function without independent existence.
1. Objects do not exist from their own side
This statement makes no claim about use, transaction, or appearance. Absence of intrinsic substance does not implicitly entail absence of function.
Objects are not established in themselves, in another, in both, or without causes. No coherent ontological or metaphysical ground can be found through examination.
2. Objects persist as stabilized conventional designations
Objects function as designations held stable under constraint. A designation is stabilized when it remains coherent across repeated contexts of coordination.
This stability is conventional. It is maintained through repetition, shared practice, and memory. Nothing intrinsic is located in the object that gives it its object-ness.
An intrinsically existing object would be isolated from causes and conditions. Such an object could not be interacted with, modified, examined, or known.
Causes, conditions, and designation
Ordinary objects are accounted for through three factors: causes (hetu), conditions (pratyaya), and designation (prajñapti).
Causes are the productive factors through which an object arises. Without causes, nothing appears.
Conditions are the supporting factors that allow causes to function. Causes alone are insufficient without conditions.
Designation is the way language and cognition take the assembled causes and conditions to be an object. No object is found apart from being identified, referred to, and treated as such.
Removing any one of these collapses the object. None of them, singly or together, establish independent existence. Objects arise through causes and conditions and exist only as designations upon that basis.
This is sufficient for conventional dependent existence and for the functioning of ordinary objects.
Analysis
Sugar and sweetness
Sugar is said to be sweet. Consider how this sweetness appears. We take sugar here for its sweetness. Its shape, size, or color may vary, yet it is still called sugar so long as sweetness is taken. A crystal or a powder are treated alike on this basis.
Cause: Placing a sugar cube on the tongue for example.
Conditions: Saliva dissolving the sugar. Functional taste receptors. Neural processing of above information. Learned contrast with bitter, sour, and neutral tastes.
Without these conditions, sweetness does not arise.
Designation: The experience is identified and referred to as “sweet” in contrast to other tastes.
No sweetness is found apart from this causal and conditional setup and the act of designation.
Sweetness is not located in sugar itself. It arises through causes and conditions and exists only as designated.
Because sweetness depends on these factors, it can vary, disappear, or be reproduced under similar conditions.
Sickness / Disease
Sickness is spoken of as something one “has”, examine how sickness appears.
Cause: For example, exposure to a virus.
Conditions: Lack of sufficient antibodies. Physiological susceptibility. Environmental and behavioral factors.
Without these conditions, sickness does not arise.
Designation: The resulting state is identified and referred to as “sickness” in contrast to health.
No sickness is found apart from these causes, conditions, and the act of designation.
Sickness is not something that exists independently. It arises through causes and conditions and exists only as designated.
Because sickness depends on these factors, it can be diagnosed, treated, and resolved.
In both cases, nothing is found that exists independently. What appears does so through causes and conditions and is taken up through designation.
Ordinary objects and ordinary states function only because they lack independent existence.
One may stop at “virus” or “immunity” and take it as a final ground. But the same analysis applies there too.
A virus arises from prior biological processes. Immunity depends on nutrition, exposure history, genetics, and environment.
Remove the causes and conditions, and neither virus nor immunity appears.
If one were to stop here and claim independence of any objects, the same errors would follow. The analysis proceeds wherever one chooses to stop.
If sweetness or sickness were assumed to exist independently, then they would not depend on causes and conditions.
What does not depend on causes and conditions cannot be accessed through them.
Sweetness could not be known through contact and discrimination. Sickness could not be known through symptoms and diagnosis.
What cannot be known through its causes and conditions cannot be investigated. What cannot be investigated cannot be altered.
What cannot be altered cannot cease. But sweetness is known by tasting, and sickness is known by examining conditions.
They are changed by altering causes, and they cease when causes and conditions cease.
Assuming independent existence makes knowing, changing, and cessation impossible. What is known, changed, and ceases depends on causes and conditions.
Assume an intrinsic sweetness located in sugar so taken. Assume a sweetness arising in tasting under conditions. If the first establishes sugar as sweet and the second is what is tasted, are there two sweetnesses?
The sweetness that arises dependently in tasting is the only one that is known. A sweetness posited apart from this is not tasted, does not vary, and is not altered. It plays no role in establishing, knowing, or changing sugar.
Similar analysis applies to all ordinary objects taken to conventionally exist. Any posited intrinsic and independent existence is not accessible through the means by which objects are known, investigated, or altered. What cannot, even in principle, be encountered through such means does not function within the conventional domain.
For this reason, claims of independent existence must remain answerable to how something is known, how it is altered, and how it ceases.
What exists conventionally is exposed to failure under examination. It can be shown to arise, to change, or to cease when causes and conditions are altered.
Claims that cannot, even in principle, be falsified through causal inquiry do not qualify as conventionally existent.
Falsifiability is one of the defining constraints of the conventional world.
Ordinary objects function precisely because they lack independent intrinsic existence. Whatever is dependently arisen, that is explained to be emptiness(Śūnyatā).