Suppose that once a year, Alice donates $25,000 to a children's hospital, and that this sum allows them to hire a part-time employee to take care of the children. Bob, on the other hand, volunteers for twenty hours a week at an identical children's hospital, which saves them from having to hire a part-time employee that would cost them $25,000 a year. Some people might say that what Bob is doing is more ethically admirable than what Alice is doing, because Bob is dedicating time he can't get back, whereas Alice is "merely" throwing money at the hospital. Is Bob's behavior really more admirable than Alice's? If so, why? Why might we assume such a thing?

What reasons do atheists have for caring about other people or for being socially responsible? Is there any difference other than semantics that differentiates those reasons from reasons derived from religious beliefs? (in other words, reasons to care about others or for being socially responsible seem only to derive from one of two sources: (a) "enlightened expanded selfishness" (if we all do it the world is a better place), or (b) because somehow it is the "right" thing to do, and the only issue in this case is the source that makes it "right"). Whenever I discuss this question with self-professed atheists, their arguments come across as sounding like "I don't like the term 'god'" or "I don't like the bad things that have been done in the name of organized religion". In other words, they also believe in something greater than the individual and are arguing over what to call it or how to describe it or where its justification comes from, yet underneath it all, they spring from a belief that...

What books would serve as a comprehensive overview of philosophical and mathematical logic?

Do artists have a responsibility to ensure that their art does not have a negative impact on society, i.e. that their art does not promote discrimination or violence?

It seems like our society hold a number of bigoted beliefs about children. Even on this website a philosopher made the claim that children have poor impulse control and that they tend to think the world revolves around them. I don't know if there is any good evidence to support such a claim but I have my doubts. Perhaps that is a good description of most adults as well. Have any philosophers addressed the pervasive prejudice against children?

Is it conceivable that an intelligent species could evolve, say on another planet or in the future, that has radically different ethical and moral values and paradigms? Would they be wrong? Or would every possible intelligent species naturally come to similar conclusions about ethics as we have, divide into the same camps and argue about the same issues?

Why do we consider songs by singers who use Auto-Tune (a program that corrects the pitch in their voice) for their music to be of lesser quality than songs by singers who merely use their natural voices? I can see why we might consider the artist to be less talented or worthy of admiration, but isn't a song a song, regardless of how it was made? What about visual artists who produce their art with computer graphics programs, rather than using pencils, pens or brushes? I've heard people say that some of the splendid images on sites like DeviantArt aren't art because the artists "cheated" (i.e. created the images digitally, rather than by hand). Again, what does it matter how the work was produced?

Is the supposition that the future resembles the past falsifiable ?

Many people find the idea of letting a species such as the wolf go extinct to be disconcerting. Many environmental policies are put in place to protect endangered species. Why should it really matter though whether a species goes extinct or not if in the end humans are not harmed? What is the underlying moral reasoning?

Goldbach's conjecture states that every even integer greater than two can be expressed as a sum of two primes. There is no formal proof of this conjecture. However, every even integer greater than two has been shown to be a sum of two primes once we started looking. Is this acceptable justification for believing Goldbach's conjecture? Can we determine mathematical theorems based on observational evidence?