An account of the possible overriding of prima facie justified beliefs turns out, then, to be integral to Kumārila’s epistemology. One might, in this regard, worry that on the view he thus proposes, second-order cognitions of defeaters end up themselves having a privileged status; that is, Kumārila might be thought to credit “overriding cognitions” (bādhakajñāna) with a capacity for effecting epistemic closure such as he does not allow for the initial cognitions thus overridden (which, as with s