  It is precisely with the intention of answering critics like  Candrakīrti that Śāntarakṣita identifies the  character of cognition as being contrary to insentient objects:  “Cognitive awareness arises as something that is excluded from  all insentient objects. This reflexive awareness of that cognition is none other than its non-insentience”  (Tattvasaṃgraha 2000). In effect,  Śāntarakṣita simply follows Dharmakīrti's  critique of the physicalist claim that consciousness arises from the  four elements. Dharmakīrti rejects the physicalist view on the  grounds that if the four elements, or a special transformation  thereof, are the ultimate basis of consciousness, then consciousness  ought to arise whenever the elements occur, which is to say  everywhere (see Prajñākagupta's PVBh ad II, 35;  Franco 1997, 171f). Even if consciousness were said to arise at a  particular point in time, claims Dhamakīrti, it cannot arise  from something that is not sentient.