 Śāntarakṣita considers that he is fully able to respond to the criticisms of Kumārila with his presentation of exclusions. For example, Kumārila charges that the Buddhist apoha theories are counter-intuitive in that our intuition is not that words and concepts refer to negations or exclusions. Śāntarakṣita argues that Kumārila misunderstands apoha to always be non-implicative negations. He misses the two types of implicative negations that Śāntarakṣita clearly specifies as included among forms of exclusions. For Śāntarakṣita, when we use words, the objects of such conceptual thoughts are the real objects. They are the indirect object of the exclusion that is a form of implicative negation, which includes negative aspects by implication. Thus, words can be indicative of positive elements. The external object implies the image plus the exclusion of that which is other. The words or concepts thus take external objects as their objects and imply the conceptual exclusions. Thus when Kumārila mistakes all exclusions to be non-implicative negations, he misses this key component to the psychological functions at work and mistakes apoha theory to be counter-intuitive.