SOURCE: "Descartes' Empirical Epistemology," in Descartes: Philosophy, Mathematics and Physics, edited by Stephen Gaukroger, The Harvester Press, Sussex, 1980, pp. 6–22.

In the essay that follows, Larmore contends that Descartes' epistemology uses experimentation within a framework of a priori principles to advance human knowledge.

There is something close to a general consensus that Descartes initiated a search for incorrigible foundations of knowledge that deeply shaped modern philosophy and that we have now learned to reject or even ignore. Characteristic of the Cartesian search for certainty, as opposed for example to some tendencies in Greek thought, was that these foundations must be located in individual subjectivity, in our immediate awareness of our own mental states. It implied that unless we could show how our beliefs about the world could be legitimately inferred from this basis, they would have no more rightful claim to being knowledge than would our wildest fantasies.

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