  Knowledge is cognition that has been produced in the right way. Cognitions are moments of consciousness, not species of belief, but we may say that cognitions form beliefs in forming dispositions and that veridical cognitions form true beliefs. A knowledge episode—to speak in the Indian manner—is a cognition generated in the right fashion. Whether this be because it is (as say the realists, Mīmāṃsā, Nyāya, Vaiśeṣika) that it has the right origins in fact, or whether it is because it guides successful action in helping us get our desires satisfied (as say Yogācāra idealists and pragmatists), knowledge is cognition that arises in the right way. There are different theories of truth, but everyone sees knowledge as not only revealing the truth but arising from it. Knowledge episodes form non-occurrent knowledge (it is assumed, we may say), and so an examination of what is crucial to the arising of a knowledge episode is crucial to the evaluations of epistemology. Knowledge cannot arise by accident. A lucky guess, though true or veridical, would not count as knowledge because it would not been generated in the right fashion, would not have the right pedigree or etiology. The central notion throughout classical Indian epistemology is the “knowledge source,” pramāṇa, which is a process of veridical-cognition generation.