 Śaṅkara repudiates rival philosophies such as the Nyāya school which rejects witnessing consciousness and self-illumination in favor of other-illumination (paraprakāśa)—a thesis more akin to contemporary higher order theories. Nyāya argues that a second cognition is required to illumine the first. Śaṅkara’s basic counter-critique is that if a primary cognition requires a second apperceptive cognition to be known, then the second would require a third, etc., leading to a vicious infinite regression fallacy. In that case no perception could ever be known. The self-illumination of witnessing consciousness accounts for the immediacy of cognition without falling into an infinite regress of mental modes (BrSūBh 2.2.28; BṛUBh 4.3.7). There is no need to apprehend the witness because it is self-established. If consciousness cannot become its own object, yet does not require a second, subsequent, or higher order cognition to reveal itself, than an infinite regression fallacy does not arise.