  Similarly, Dharmottara, as an innovative interpreter of  epistemologists’ account of the reflexive nature of awareness,  clarifies the issue by invoking in his Commentary on  Dharmakīrti's Drop of Reasoning  (Nyāyabinduṭikā; hereafter NBṬ) the  intentional character of cognition: what sets apart the occasioning  of a cognitive event is that it accomplishes more that the causal  process by which it arises allows for it—that is, it  accomplishes its goal by revealing the object as the pragmatic  outcome of cognition (NBṬ ad I, 1, 4.1).  Dharmottara contrasts the intentional character of cognitive  awareness with merely causal accounts of generation, such as is the  case with seeds and sprouts: “Sprouts are not established [as  the result] though their production is invariably concomitant with  [causes like] seeds. Thus, even though a cognition arises as  establishing a given object, it has the function of causing it to  arrive as [its object] necessarily, by means of which its goal is  accomplished.” (NBṬ ad I, 19, 14.21). Elsewhere, Dharmottara explains that the relation between cognition and object  cognized is unlike that of elements in a causal chain, which exist as the relation between producer and produced. Rather, it is like the  relation between the establishing factor and what it has established  (vyavasthāpravyavasthāpakabhāva), that is,  between reflexive awareness and the intentional object as intended  (NBṬ ad I, 19, 15.3).