This is from an old floppy disk I recently found in my attic, but it appears to be very close to how this paper appeared in the 1992 Pacific Philosophical Quarterly.--KDR Descartes, Epistemic Principles, Epistemic Circularity,

At the very start of the Meditations,(1) Descartes writes that his reason for "making a clean sweep " and "beginning again from the very foundations " of knowledge is that by so doing he hopes to "establish some secure and lasting result in science " (AT, 17; AG, 61; emphasis added). In order to attain scientific knowledge (scientia), or what he calls in Meditation V "perfect knowledge " (perfecte scire), Descartes entertains and seeks to remove what he calls a "metaphysical " reason for doubting all that he had previously thought he knew.(2) This reason for doubt is that perhaps he has a nature so radically defective that he is liable to go wrong about anything, even what seems most evident to him.(3) By entertaining so universal a doubt, Descartes seems to have made an alarmingly clean sweep indeed-- so clean as to deprive him of any foundations from which to begin. Yet, seemingly oblivious to this problem, he proceeds to build away from the (suspect?) foundation of his clear and distinct perceptions until, as part of his superstructure, he obtains the result that a veracious God exists, which, in turn, is used to prove that Descartes's clear an