internal experiences, to deduce the objective features of external reality? How is it possible to proceed from induction to deduction, without diluting the deductive certainty of the conclusion? Descartes found the answer in his criterium veri: clarity and necessity in the perception, and a subsequent clear and distinct intuition.164 However, these criteria lack the presence of a definite material correspondence between subject and object, between internal, subjective certainty and validity, and external, objective existence and reality.165 Figuratively speaking, Descartes’ Cogito failed to bridge the gap between mind and matter, thus only demonstrating the method on how to acquire certain subjective knowledge. Because, if the criteria for truth that Descartes used are scrutinized, then it becomes manifest that these criteria, without exception, are expressions of the subjective certainty that objective reality is constituted in a certain manner, but never the actual expression of objectivity and correspondence to objective reality. To a large extent the epistemological problem formulated by Descartes, but not his solution to the problem, has been accepted by modern philosophy.166 The subjectivism of post-Cartesian philosophy, regardless of whether we are discussing Continental idealism or British empiricism, has expressed itself in the ontological and epistemological dichotomy between mind and matter, more specifically in the conviction that mind is more certain than matter, and that matter is only knowable if inferred from what is known of the mind.167 Regardless of such influences upon philosophy, Cartesian thought forced modern philosophy to attach substantially more importance to the field of epistemology than had previously been done,168 which was a trend that reached its zenith in the philosophy of Immanuel Kant. p a r t i 1 , c h a p t e r 3 86 164 Ibid., p. 49. 165 Hägerström, Selbstdarstellungen, pp. 5-7, cf. 21-22. 166 Russell, History, p. 548. 167 Ibid. 168 Ibid.
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