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Philosophy

I've read various explanations of what philosophy is, but what is "A philosophy"? When a philosopher sits down to write "a philosophy of . . . .," what is s/he trying to do? Thank you!!!

good question. you know the degree 'Ph.D.', the hghest degree you can obtain in many fields, is a 'doctor of philosophy', so presumably what one gets in completing a PhD in say literature, language, art history, physics, etc., is 'a philosophy of that field' -- and that in turn indicates something like a 'highest-level mastery of the field', which in turn typically includes two levels of accomplishment: mastering all/the major knowledge and principles of obtaining knowledge within the field (eg how to be a good physicist) but also mastering perhaps some of the phiosophical elements of any given field ... a good physicist knows how to create/evaluate good theories, but a good philosopher of science knows what counts generally about a good theory and whether good theories should be construed about truth or something else (like usefulness) ....
Existence
Time

People are often amazed that we exist. For example, I have heard on numerous occasions people say something like: "How crazy is it that atoms have aligned in a particular way to produce you and I, in the circumstances that we're currently in, as seemingly conscious beings?" Is the answer to that: "It's not crazy, it was bound to happen at some point!" ? Isn't time so long that every possibility of life, every permutation or combination of every event is bound to occur? For example, sometime eons in the future or the past, another me could be sitting here writing this exact question, only to make a miniscule typo, and that be one of the only differences between then and now? Is the fact that I am alive and conscious as I am right now a certainty given how long time is?

You clearly hang out with interesting people. These issues are much discussed amongst proponents/critics of various forms of 'telological' or 'design' arguments. You can find in Aquinas the idea that if time stretches back to infinity then eventually every logically possible outcome occurs, which he uses to argue that not every existing being exists contingently, at least one exists necessarily. You see the response (eg in Hume against Paley's biological design argument) that for all we know the alleged design in nature occurred via a very long series of random permutations, some of which are bound to be ordered, and obviously any one which includes us would be an ordered one so there's certainty that if we are doing the investigation we shall discover the order -- Nietzsche famously argued for the 'eternal recurrence' suggesting that an infinite time not only does everything happen but that it happens over and over again an infinite amount of time ... but you're raising the question in terms of...
Perception

Asking this as a self-described masochist: Is pain purely physical, or is there a psychological component, too. And is it inherent in pain that it is avoided/disliked? Is it possible for a person to truly enjoy pain, or is a masochist's experience with pain transformed by the fact that they enjoy it that the experience can't really be called "pain" at all?

great question -- though it's not like there is 'an' answer here, though there is much to be debated as you formulate your own anwer. For one thing one must try to separate 'the 'experience from the language we use to speak about it and focuse on the experience. And anecdotal (incl medical) evidence seems to suggest it's no uncommon for people to report things, under anesthetics of various sorts, that they are having terrible pains but somehow don't mind them. That prima facie suggests that that very experience, the painful one, doesn't have to be a cause of pain, so to speak -- which suggests it is NOT inherent in pain to be avoided/disliked. (Lnguage complicates this b/c we might choose to use the word pain in that restrictive manner and thus claim those un-minded experiences do not earn the label 'pain' -- that's a semantic choice but it doesnt seem to effect the ontological conclusion.) hope that is helpful ...
Science

Scientific skepticism seems to be on the rise in the past few decades (postmodernism, the climate change debate, controversy surrounding genetics & cognitive sciences, creationism, alternative medicine, etc). Some say scientific discoveries are relative; others say they are false; others say they are a conspiracy by special interest groups to sway public opinion, or keep people in the dark. This has raised a question I think we need to answer, as a society, if we are to draw the line between science, pseudoscience and charlatanism, and to move forwards into the future: what good reasons are there for trusting in scientists and their theories? What makes trusting what a scientist says about his or her specialty, or trusting a scientific journal or article or experiment on some specific theme, when we know little about it from experience, any different from trusting a member of the clergy or a holy text? All this, of course, from the point of view of a person who is neither a scientist nor knows...

fantastic question, and one I struggle with as well. I don't have a very good answer to offer, but can recommend a couple of things which might help you formulate your own answer. A new book called "Voodoo Histories" is a study of conspiracy theories, and while it's not specifically about science it discusses many relevant questions (and provides some analysis of why people pushing 'bizarre' theories find them more credible and hold them to lower standards of evidence than the 'official' theories they're claiming involve conspiracies); and an article by Larry Laudan from a few decades ago called something like "A Confutation of Convergent Realism," which shows how science past was very successful despite having many/almost all false theories, which undermines the claim of contemporary Realists about science that contemporary science (with all its successes) has a very good claim on the 'truth. For my own two cents, you sound a little too dismissive re (say) "the peer review system," since if that...
Education
Logic
Mathematics

I have been reading discussions on this site about the Principia and about Godel's incompleteness theorem. I would really like to understand what you guys are talking about; it seems endlessly fascinating. I was an English/history major, though, and avoided math whenever I could. Consequently I have never even taken a semester of calculus. The good news (from my perspective) is that I have nothing to do for the rest of my life except for working toward the fulfillment of this one goal I have: to plow through the literature of the Frankfurt School and make sense of it all. Understanding the methods and arguments of logicians would seem to provide a strong context for the worldview that inspired Horkheimer, Fromm, et al. So yeah, where should I start? Do I need to get a book on the fundamentals of arithmetic? Algebra? Geometry? Or do books on elementary logic do a good job explaining the mathematics necessary for understanding the material? As I said, I'm not looking for a quick solution. I...

lucky you, with so much time on your hands and with such interesting interests! there are numerous secondary expositions of Godel etc. -- I personally love Douglas Hofstadter's way of explaining it (in Godel Escher Bach and also his more recent Strange Loops) ... but Rebecca Goldstein has a recent book on it (haven't read it, can't speak to its quality) -- http://www.rebeccagoldstein.com/books/incompleteness/index.html good luck ap
Knowledge

If we apply nihilism to all knowledge, how is the paradox it creates overcome, as to deny an existence of knowledge is to stand by something known to oneself? Wittgenstein's idea to kick away the ladder seems to some what fill the void but it isn't exactly a satisfying filler!

hm. why can't we methodically critique the possibility of knowledge in various domains w/o ever explicitly addressing the question of whether we can 'know' that knowledge (in general) is impossible? or, is it really self-contradictory (a paradox) to claim that all knowledge is impossible, even this -- for when one denies 'knowledge' one typically replaces it with something less prestigious (like belief, maybe) -- and so one can coherently say I believe that no knowledge is possible (and that belief is the most we can get) .....? ap
Science

This is a response to an answer given by Miriam Solomon (http://www.askphilosophers.org/question/3533). In her response Miriam claims that "...in the 16th century, it was against the laws of nature to claim that Earth moves around the sun." Surely this is missing the point. It was not against the laws of nature but against the contemporary "theories" (*approximations* of the laws of nature) in science. Therefore it was not the laws that were wrong (as she claims), but the theories. Furthermore, to develop upon the original question; the existence of ghosts contradicts currently-held theories of science but also the very conception of ghosts is *self-contradictory*. (For example; If ghosts are capable of physically interacting with their environment they are subject to the action-reaction law of classical mechanics. But if they are capable of travelling through solid objects they do not exert force upon their environment and are not subject to said law: a contradiction.) From this perspective isn't asking ...

Haven't read the original exchange, but in response to the contradictions point: sure if you define ghosts that way then they may be self-contradictory, thus impossible. But then philosophers of science talk about cases where you begin with one cnoception of a thing and then as science/theorizing progresses that conception gets revised. So, perhaps, 'common-sense' intuitive conceptions of ghosts may involve that self-contradiction, but of course most people haven't thought too hard about developing a detailed or sophisticated coneption of ghosts, and once they do they may well be willing to revise one or both of the contradictory features -- eg maybe grant that ghosts are 'spirits' in the early modern sense (very fine fluids) which do indeed have causal interactions with the physical world (but perhaps only with such slight effect that they are very hard to detect) ... or, perhaps, if mind-body (spirit-physical) interactions do occur, maybe there are primitive ceteris paribus laws governing them,...
Mind

When I am awake I see up and down and all the three dimensions as a present and irrefutable reality. In a dream I also experience those very same three dimensions but when I reference that experience in waking I correlate it with my physical body(brain) and not with a real independent feature of reality. While the idea that dreams represent the possibility that the world is an illusion is a persistent philosophical question I am more concerned here with how an abstract feature that seems to convey a part of the essence of what we call physical reality, that is to say dimensionality, is undermined by our dream experience. It seems that dreams demonstrate that dimension is not necessarily as commonsensical a feature of physical reality as it appears. Isn't dimension a feature which is central to our modern scientific understanding of physical reality and then don't dreams then call into question much of scientific understanding?

Not sure I fully follow your question, esp your premise. You seem to say that our dreams are 'of', represent, have the content of, the same three-dimensional space of which we're aware when awake; but then you're worried about how we 'correlate' dreams with our bodies/brains. Is your worry that though we dream 'of' a three-dimensional space, our dream is in fact entirely located (if that makes senes) within our brain? (which is of course 3-d but that doesn't seem relevant to your concern) ... But if so, why is waking experience any different, since all our waking experience also 'occurs within' or 'is correlated with' our brain activity? If I've understood you correctly, maybe we should distinguish between 'what are experiences represent or are about' from 'what is their causal source' -- and then we can recognize that both waking/dream experience can be 'about' three-dimensional space even when being 'caused by' brain activity .... (Or if I haven't understood your concern, pls feel free to...
Justice

Bertrand Russell famously said "(1) that when the experts are agreed, the opposite opinion cannot be held to be certain; (2) that when they are not agreed, no opinion can be regarded as certain by a non-expert; and (3) that when they all hold that no sufficient grounds for a positive opinion exist, the ordinary man would do well to suspend his judgment." If I abide by these rules, what reason is there for me voting in elections, or even having a political opinion at all?

Not just political opinions but most opinions probably .... But anyway: who determines who the experts are, within any given field? and most of the self-proclaimed experts would repudiate (3) above: they feel there IS sufficient grounds for opinion, and that those grounds support their opinion, so acc. to most 'experts' #2 is generally the case ... But then the response is: why is "certainty" a requirement for having an opinion, esp re elections? why not say one should simply reach the opinion that seems most reasonable to one in light of the information available, and vote for the person/proposition which seems right or most reasonable, whether or not it's 'certain'?
Rationality

Are there any logically possible situations in which acting in accord with probability would not be logical? Is probability the ultimate logical guideline?

You might want to google 'newcomb's problem' or 'newcomb's paradox' -- one way of analyzing such cases is to conclude that the rational thing to do (in those circumscribed cases) is to act irrationally ... That sounds sort of close to a kind of case, which I gather you have in mind, where it is rational to pursue the less probable outcome .... (re the latter, I gather you have in mind something like this: you desire outcome x, and path A is more likely to obtain x than path B, all else being equal, and yet it is more 'logical' or rational to pursue path B .....) AP

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