  For the epistemologists, then, consciousness as reflexive  awareness is not just another phenomenon in the chain of  dependently arising phenomena: rather, it is precisely that which has the unique function of disclosing itself in the process of revealing  the other. For as Dharmakīrti declares in the Ascertainment  of Valid Cognition (PVin I, 55): “If ascertaining were not itself [directly] perceived, the perception of objects would not be  established.”