  It is important to appreciate the extent to which Kumārila’s epistemology involves essentially phenomenological considerations about the credibility of cognition. He says in this regard (at codanā verse 53) that “the epistemic reliability of cognition is obtained just by virtue of its consisting of cognition”—that, in other words, it is simply in the nature of contentful awareness to make an epistemic claim on the subject thereof, and that these claims are to be suspended or set aside only when specifically countervailing cognitions are forthcoming. Moreover, one typically does not go seeking knowledge that one’s first-order cognitions are false; rather, it is only when presented with overriding cognitions—cognitions, Kumārila says, typically brought about “effortlessly,” i.e., without any ostensibly justificatory search on the part of the subject—that one sometimes finds it necessary to revise one’s judgments. Kumārila does not propose, then, that one must first consider and rule out all possible defeaters before arriving at conviction; the point, rather, is that one’s judgment is justified until and unless some specifically overriding cognition happens to be forthcoming.