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Existence

You can't create something out of nothing can you! And yet, here we exist. Is this not the most relevant question we can't answer?

What question are you referring to? I'll hazard a guess that you are talking about why there is something rather than nothing. Then your idea seems to be that, because something can't come from nothing, there is no explanation for why there is something rather than nothing. But does this really follow from the claim that something can't come nothing? Perhaps there was always something and this allows us to explain why something exists in the following way. There is something now because at an earlier time there was something and it is a physical law that the earlier something developed into what exists now. You might ask, Why was there something at that earlier time? But we could then employ that same style of explanation at this earlier time. You might also ask, Why was there something rather than nothing at the first moment? But suppose there is no first moment to the universe. Would this explanation then have provided an answer to why there is something rather than nothing? After all, for any...
Education

A full-time graduate student, from what I gather, takes three courses per semester. Looking at syllabi for graduate courses in philosophy shows that, typically, every week a student is required to read around 100 or more pages a week. As I'm sure you're aware, we're not talking uncomplicated reads here, either. I don't think this kind of typical reading-quota per week allows a student to develop a deep understanding of the texts they are reading. And I think it goes against the reasons for studying philosophy at the master's level, one of which I take to be learning the material to the point of being able to teach it (if only to oneself). Part-time study is always available, one might say; but that usually means no funding (which is a no-starter for many). So, what do you think: is the typical reading load for a full-time graduate student in philosophy reasonable given the purposes for studying philosophy at that level? I'd really like to see as many responses from the contributors here as possible...

I haven't looked into this, but suppose you are right about the typical required reading for a full-time MA student in philosophy. I'm not sure that 300 pages per week is an unreasonable demand. If you read a page every three minutes on average, then it should take you 15 hours a week to complete the reading. Taking 3 classes, you should be in class a maximum of 9 hours a week. That's a total of only 24 hours a week you are spending on school work. How long were you thinking students should spend on the reading?
Ethics
Knowledge

Is disregarding normative claims (epistemic like "you ought to believe true things" or moral like "you ought to donate to Oxfam") with full knowledge and understanding of them irrational? Is rationality grounded in other way than that we just all seem to participate in "rationality project" from the get-go (question of "why be rational" seems to be self-defeating as we look for reasons to be rational..)?

For the first question, let's focus on the practical claim. Suppose you judge that, all things considered, you ought to donate to Oxfam today but you experience no motivation to do so. You never form the intention to donate or form a desire to do so. A version of what is called "motivational judgement internalism" holds that this psychology would constitute a rational failing. This version maintains that it is a rational requirement that whenever someone judges that they ought to A, they experience at least some motivation to A. I won't take a stand on whether this thesis is true, but this should give you some terminology to search for. Your second question asks what explains rational requirements and why we should follow them. One strategy is to try to show that all rationality just is instrumental rationality. Since it seems unproblematic why (all else equal) we should take the necessary means to our ends, showing that all rational requirements amount to this would be progress. How would this...
Knowledge

A typical response to global skepticism (skepticism which claims that we can know nothing), is that such a position is self-defeating. However, couldn't the global skeptic respond by stating that such an objection relies on the objector having knowledge of the truth of the law of non-contradiction, which the skeptic claims we don't know? Thus, the skeptic could argue that they know nothing can be known while having the privilege of also incoherently claiming that they still know certain things. Would it even be possible to even intelligibly respond to such a claim, since it seems when one begins to reject things like the laws of logic, then intelligible discourse becomes impossible and were left with assumptions?

Fascinating questions. The view that no one can know anything does not seem self-defeating to me. You think this version of global skepticism defeats itself because it implies that the view itself is unknowable. But why does this defeat the view? Even if we cannot know the view to be true, there still may be sufficient reasons to believe it. Nevertheless, suppose you are a global skeptic who wishes to maintain that you know the truth of global skepticism. You believe global skepticism and its implication that you do not know the truth of global skepticism. Does the fact that you do not know the law of non-contradiction give you a reason to affirm that you also know global skepticism is true? I do not see why. To be consistent in your global skepticism, you should admit that you don't know whether there are any true contradictions. But that doesn't give you a positive reason to believe that when you say "I know no one can know anything," it is both true and false.
Existence

I was reading an argument for Metaphysical Solipsism and while most of the premises were ultimately meaningless, one of them store out to me and I still am unclear about its value. “Occam's Razor This is a form of ontological parisomony which deems a competing theory a priori most likely if that theory has less ontological commitments than the other theory [4]. If two theories X and Y have the same ontological commitments, but X is ontologically committed to Z and Y is not, it would deem Y as more parsimonious than X. Thus, this argument is frameworked by the fact that metaphysical solipsism posits the fewest ontological assumptions. To promote an alternate ontology would be to assume that qualia represents a physical reality, external to the mind. It has been shown that such a fact is dubious and unjustifiable via the Trilemma, thus metaphysical solipsism ought to be deemed a priori most likely. ”Endquote Is it true that Occam’s razor seems to support Solipsism, or does it reject solipsism on the...

The version of Occam's Razor quoted above seems to support solipsism, the view that only one's conscious experience exists, over a view which also admits the reality of the external world. After all, solipsism is committed to fewer entities than the latter view, which also countenances the existence of stars, atoms, and rollercoasters. I'll interpret the quote that explicates Occam's Razor as holding that the following is a priori: if we have two theories, X and Y, and Y says that fewer kinds of things exist than X does, then Y is more likely to be true, on some given some body of evidence, than X. This principle does indeed indicate that we should take solipsism to be more likely to be true than realism about the external world. The problem is that the principle isn't quite right. As it stands, the above principle says that the theory on which nothing exists is more likely to be true than any other theory, given our current evidence. No matter what you take our current evidence to be, even if you...