Davidson, Donald - Problems of Rationality

Starting with Descartes, most philosophers have assumed that all knowledge is based on data immediately given to the individual mind. For Descartes, the starting point was clear beliefs he found it impossible to question; for the British empiricists it was non-propositional presentations such as percepts, impressions, sense-data, sensations, the uninterpreted given of experience. What empiricists share with Descartes is the conviction, or assumption, that only what is in, or immediately before, the mind is known directly and without inference. Whatever other knowledge we pretend to have must be based on what is certain and immediate, the subjective and personal.