what is the difference between art & aesthetics?

I am seventeen and dating a boy (man?) who is two years older than I. Our relationship is really going well, neither of us have any secrets and we feel comfortable talking about all subjects. Every moment I spend with him is valuable in a way I find hard to describe. Obviously, this has me thinking about long-term, very long-term. And my question for you wise men and women (who have much, much more experience than I) is this; can you truly know you love someone if you have only ever been with them? Can you even actually, whole-heartedly love someone if they are your only romantic and sexual partner? Especially since we are so young and facing many extended time periods apart. Are we too far from self-discovery, too apt to change to make it? I don't want to be naive, but I also want to have hope that this silly boy to whom I am so hopelessly committed to could someday be the man I spend my life with.

There is a simple reasoning. Which is better, bread or love? It seems love is better than nothing. For sure bread is better than nothing. So bread is better than love. Of course this is a wrong reasoning. But I wonder whatever logical mistake is made here?

Dear Philosophers, I have been dating a woman for one year. She's been away studying at a university in another country for the last few months, but is coming back soon. All the time we've been together, she's had some problems that I think were depression. But now she's become worse, so that it's having a big impact on her daily life. She's getting treatment abroad, but attitudes towards and treatment of mental health problems are terrible back here. Our conversations together are no fun at all - we only talk about her daily problems, which I can't help with at all. I feel like this is all too much for me. But I also feel (1) I have a responsibility to help her through this, (2) she might commit suicide if I left her, (3) that it would be callous to give up faith in her getting better. For my own sake, I think I should break up, but I don't know how much weight to give to the above three concerns.

I'm a psychology student with a question about ethics: Is empathy ESSENTIAL to morality. Could a person without the capacity for empathy still be a morally good person? (Note that I am not asking whether empathy is morally useful.) Psychopaths are often described as lacking empathy, and this is often offered up as an explanation for their immoral behavior, so one might be tempted to use them as evidence that empathy is necessary for morality. This, however, strikes me as a bit fast and loose because in addition to emotional deficiencies, psychopaths also show a remarkable lack or underdevelopment of practical reason. It may also be worth asking whether empathy can be used in immoral ways. A skilled torturer, for instance, might be a more effective torturer if she or he can accurately channel, measure, and thus manipulate the emotional pain of a victim. Or con artists may use empathy to better read a mark, and so on. One might counter that when we empathize, we further react with some degree of care or...

Why are philosophers concerned with the nature of time? Isn't this a scientific subject?

If a person does not believe P, where P is some proposition, is it fair to say that they then positively believe not-P?

It is clear that determinism can give a logically valid account of human behavior; it is a viable theory of human action. But it seems that if determinism, or at least a deterministic account of behavior that precludes free will, is true, much of what we hold very valuable in most if not all human cultures (e.g. love; trust; the value of the person; etc.) is all an illusion. I, for example, do not freely place a value on my wife and love her because of this value; my "love" is a product of my genes, or my psychological history. Similarly, it also seems to me that atheistic accounts of the origin of morality (e.g. a need to survive and get along better to propagate our genes) are plausible, but likewise seem to remove deeper meanings involved in moral behavior (e.g. I choose not to murder someone because I find it violates, in some sense, a universal moral law that I could be held accountable for at some point now, or perhaps even after my death). I am not sure what philosophers who have discussed these...

Hello philosophers, I have a question concerning experience. I have dreamt that I have had a French kiss. Although, I have never had such empirical experience in my real life. However, how have I managed to fell like it tastes in my dream? I mean, how have I managed to understand and feel the sense of it if I have never had it?

Does certainty suggest or indicate truth?