 Geluk philosophers argue that this explains the crucial distinction between the Middle Way (Madhyamaka) and the Mind-Only (Cittamātra or Yogācāra) schools of Buddhist philosophy which, on their reading, assigns the mind a privileged ontological status as the truly existent ground of an illusory external world. Rather than claim that the mind is independently real in contrast to unreal external objects, like a subjective idealist, Geluk theorists argue that a proponent of the Middle Way explicitly affirms the interdependency of minds and objects. Künzang Sönam (1823–1905), explains Tsongkhapa’s position as the thesis that minds and external objects are equally conventionally existent and equally ultimately nonexistent, and so of exactly the same ontological and epistemological status. He goes on to show how external objects are accepted conventionally in the Consequence School because the coextensive presence and absence of objects and cognitions undermines the claim that even conventionally there are no external objects. That is, when there are external objects, there are internal cognitions, and when there are internal cognitions, there are external objects; cognitions and objects are paired and thus rise and fall together. He reiterates this point by saying that not only does no conventional analysis negate external objects, but that conventional analysis undermines the absence of externality (Künzang 2007, 706–707). One might think that since Geluk philosophers take the existence of the external world to be affirmed in the Consequence School, that they are committed to external realism, and indeed some of their critics have accused them of this (The Yakherds 2021). But the affirmation of the existence of the external world is simply an affirmation of its conventional reality, and of its knowability using conventional epistemic instruments. So, while Geluk philosophers are not idealists, they are certainly not external realists, either.