Within the Charvaka system, direct perception (pratyaksha) functioned as the sole fully valid means of knowledge. Only what could be immediately encountered through the senses counted as real and knowable, and this sensory contact set both the foundation and the limit of cognition. By elevating perception in this way, Charvaka thinkers refused to grant independent authority to inference, scriptural testimony, or comparison, regarding them as unreliable whenever they ventured beyond what could, in principle, be directly experienced.

This strict reliance on pratyaksha gave Charvaka thought its distinctly materialist and anti-metaphysical character. Reality was restricted to what the senses disclose in the present: concrete, observable phenomena rather than abstract entities or invisible realms. Claims about a soul, karma, rebirth, heavens and hells, or any transcendent principle were dismissed as lacking epistemic grounding, since they could not be anchored in direct perception. Even when inference was tolerated for ordinary practical affairs, it was sharply limited and never allowed to establish unobservable realities.

In this way, pratyaksha was not merely a technical epistemic category but a philosophical stance that reshaped the entire horizon of what could meaningfully be affirmed. By insisting that knowledge must remain tethered to immediate experience, the Charvakas undermined the authority of religious doctrine and scriptural revelation wherever these spoke of what no one could actually see, hear, or otherwise sense. Their emphasis on perception thus served as both a methodological filter and a polemical tool, confining thought to the tangible world and rendering metaphysical speculation not just doubtful, but philosophically irrelevant.