 The crux of Śāntarakṣita’s response, again, relies on his presentation of three types of exclusions, specifically the mental exclusion that is signified by words, a point he feels both Uddyotakara and Kumārila fail to recognize. According to Śāntarakṣita, there is a conceptual image that is an exclusion that is generated in the mind of one who hears the words, “This animal is a cow,” for example, but that this idea is an implicative negation that only implies that this animal is not a non-cow. According to Śāntarakṣita, the problem of circularity is thus avoided by a proper understanding of implicative negations: to understand cow one need not understand non-cow, but rather the mere idea of cow. Like Dharmakīrti, Śāntarakṣita relies on a judgment of similarity in functional efficacy among distinct particulars as conceptually construed to generate the idea. For Śāntarakṣita the emphasis is on similarity among the mental representations of them. Śāntarakṣita and Dharmakīrti both argue that there is not a problem with grouping things as x and non-x. The distinction between similar and dissimilar classes is made and the word merely applied to indicate this understood distinction. For Śāntarakṣita, based on judgments of similarity, the classes of cows and non-cows are established. It is the word that is applied to them which is not established. It is the word that is used to indicate this judgment of similarity at the discretion of the speaker. Thus, for Śāntarakṣita, the perceived problem of circularity by Uddyotakara and Kumārila is due to their misunderstanding of exclusions and negations.