William of Ockham (Occam, c. 1280—c. 1349) William of Ockham, also known as William Ockham and William of Occam, was a fourteenth-century English philosopher. Historically, Ockham has been cast as the outstanding opponent of Thomas Aquinas (1224-1274): Aquinas perfected the great “medieval synthesis” of faith and reason and was canonized by the Catholic Church; Ockham destroyed the synthesis and was condemned by the Catholic Church.

Antisthenes (c. 446—366 B.C.E.) Known in antiquity as an accomplished orator, a companion of Socrates, and a philosopher, Antisthenes presently gains renown from his status as either a founder or a forerunner of Cynicism. He was the teacher to Diogenes of Sinope, and he is regarded by Diogenes Laertius as the first Cynic philosopher. He is credited with the authorship of over sixty titles, appears

Transcendental Arguments Transcendental arguments are partly non-empirical, often anti-skeptical arguments focusing on necessary enabling conditions either of coherent experience or the possession or employment of some kind of knowledge or cognitive ability, where the opponent is not in a position to question the fact of this experience, knowledge, or cognitive ability, and where the revealed preconditions include what the opponent questions. Such arguments take as

Benedict de Spinoza: Political Philosophy The body of Benedict de Spinoza’s writings on political philosophy in the 17th century should be seen as a paradigmatic species of European Enlightenment Philosophy. Spinoza rejected the teleological account of human nature and its implications to political societies in favor of rational, scientific understanding with its contractual implications. Hence, political societies to Spinoza are not natural organisms but artificial

The Applicability of Mathematics The applicability of mathematics can lie anywhere on a spectrum from the completely trivial to the utterly mysterious. At the one extreme, mathematics is used outside of mathematics in cases which range from everyday calculations like the attempt to balance one’s checkbook through the most demanding abstract modeling of subatomic particles. The techniques underlying these applications are perfectly clear to those