I've recently become a member of Amnesty International and started giving regular donations. I now feel the urge to give all my money away all the time to try to help others. I recently went into town but suddeny felt overcome with guilt about world poverty and gave all the money on me to an Oxfam shop I saw. I'm sixteen and live at home so know that I could give all the money I have away and still manage to get by just fine with the help of my family. I simply can't find any reasons to justify buying new clothes and going to the cinema with my money when I know I could give it to more important things, such as helping people in poverty, helping fight for human rights, and helping combat climate change etc. Should I give away all my savings and everything I earn? Should I sell everything I own to try and raise money to help these causes? Where should I draw the line? Millie

Is there a specific name for the study of good reasoning or good thinking? I guess that some people call this "logic", but definitions of logic that I find on the internet are a bit different (narrower?). In some areas, "methodology" seems an appropriate word. Has epistemology a significant relation to this?

A state legislator recently came to the local high school recently. Naturally, teenage boys and girls tend to be convinced that the world is out to get their gender exclusively. One of the boys asked why it was okay for the insurance company to charge him three times as much as they charged his sister for car insurance. Apparently she’s a reckless driver and he’s a shut-in who hardly uses his car. The legislator said that it was a double standard but that there was no gain in attacking it. Instead of lowering the price for men the insurance company would simply raise the price for women and then nobody would benefit. Is this justification for what the legislator allowed as generalizing, stereotyping, and straight sexism acceptable in a modern society? What about the feminist movement? Is it possible that instead of placing new value in women it’s simply devaluing men? If so is it acceptable? Should we try a new more idealistic approach to equality?

We can only live in this "here&now moment"...in fact, there is no way we can ever live out of "IT"...is it not?

Having grown tired of reading secondary material in my study of philosophy, I have decided to read primary texts in a chronological, rather than thematic, order. I have started with Plato and have read most of the works I can find online or at my library. Before I move on to Aristotle, I would like your advice. Do you think a chronological approach is a good idea for someone untrained in philosophy? Do you think I should read every work by a given philosopher, or are there 'key' works that serve as their primary contribution to the field? If the latter, are there any lists that you are aware of that state what those key works are?

I'm trying to wrap my mind around the Reformed Epistemology idea of the proof of God, but I am a total novice at this and I can't figure it out. As far as I can tell by the article "Without Evidence or Argument" by Kelly James Clark, the proof is 1) We should believe that God exists only with sufficient proof that God exists 2) We cannot get sufficient proof that God exists, because every argument would have to be justified by another argument infinitely Therefore, we do not need proof that God exists. I am completely baffled by this, and I'm pretty sure I'm reading it all wrong. I could really use a hand. Am I even understanding the premises at all?

I know that there are some serious problems concerning the idea that mathematics is grounded on logic. But computers can perform mathematical operations, and computers use logic, so I think that at least for practical purposes we can use logic to support mathematics. Am I right? My second question is this: can we infer that 2+2=4 from the principle of non-contradiction? Thank you!

Peter Singer has popularized the term "speiciesism." It's the idea that we are biased or prejudiced towards our own species. Therefore, the argument says, we should have equal consideration for animals. However, this won't apply to animals. The lion will still eat the gazelle, the sharks will eat the dolphins, and any carnivore will eat any animal. I can imagine Singer replying that animals don't have the rational capacity to do ethics. The ideas that Singer presents only applies to us humans. But if this is the case, isn't that a form of speciesism?

Suppose that a neuroscientist is studying love, and she discovers that romantic infatuation is caused by high serotonin levels, while attachment is caused by oxytocin. Has she actually learned anything about love? More generally, what is the significance of discovering neural or hormonal correlates to particular human emotions or behavior?

In social, political and economic discourse it is common to hear people discussing a concept like wealth as if what constitutes real, actual, or true wealth was both a clear and a settled matter. Both the term and the concept, wealth, are a close relative to the term and concept, value. In conventional and nearly ubiquitous usage, value and wealth are considered to be measurable or at least determinable in units of currency, or money. Yet careful examination reveals that a person, community, or nation can grow its stash of cash (money) while diminishing other social, ecological, spiritual (etc.) goods in this same persuit. Such goods are treated as "externalities" by economists and societies, and thus-and-therefore some economists have sought to measure these apparently incommensurables in monetary units, in order to gear our economy toward valuing these. My question is, isn't this whole project in a thousand ways doomed?