It might be that every sane human being prefers their own happiness over their own misery; alas it doesn't follow from this that every sane human being always prefers other people's happiness over those people's misery. This comes to the crunch if promoting other people's happiness interferes with promoting my own happiness.

Yes, because we can think about our own mental states. Thus I may be thinking about espresso machines, and then wonder why I am doing that. The first thought is about those machines; the second thought is about the first thought. Desires may also stack up in this way. Thus I may desire a new espresso machine, but also wish that I didn't have that desire (say because its immature: I already have a perfectly good espresso machine).

There are three main options here that philosophers have developed for properties like sweetness: sweetness is a sensation, it is a disposition in some things to produce a sensation, or it is an intrinsic property of sweet things (presumably to do with their molecular structure). On the first view, the same thing may be sweet to one person and sour to another (because it isn't really the thing that is sweet or sour, only the varying sensations). On the third view, what is sweet is sweet is sweet for everyone (because it isn't determined by people's reactions). One difference between the first and the second view is that only on the second view are things sweet when they are not being tasted.

I suppose the biologically hard-headed answer is that creatures who have an inclination to care more about their own offspring than anyone else tend to do better at spreading their own genes. Fortunately, that natural selection explanation does not make the love you feel any less real. It means you didn't choose to love your daughters so much, but whom ever thought you did?

I'm not sure that philosophers are the best people to answer this question, but my own view is that it is more a matter of bio-rhythms than of counter-suggestibility. Even if your Mom did not nag you, you probably would want to stay up late and to sleep late.

People who believe that science is a social construct do not deny that there is a world independent of ourselves, with real causes and real effects. What they emphasise is something consistent with this, namely that the theories that scientists invent to account for the world are strongly influenced by social context.

Even if you expect the unexpected, you may still be surprised. I took my Swiss Army knife along, because I expected the unexpected, but I was still surprised when I had to use it to free a hedgehog that got itself locked in the glove compartment of my car. People who believe that life is full of suprises are often right.

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I doubt that professi0nal philosophers are on average more contented that every other group, though many of us do feel extremely lucky to be paid to engage in such a stimulating and satisfying activity. But our contentment does not derive from having chosen problems that we find easy to answer!

If determinism is true then you are a direct result of events that preceded you, in the sense that everything about you is entailed by the laws of nature plus the state of the universe before you were born. If determinism is not true, as the most popular interpretation of modern physics suggests, then there is no such entailment; but even here it is not as if you are the result of anything else. Either way, the causes that made you, whether deterministic or probabilistic, are all among the events that preceded you.