A philosopher, according to the dictionary, is a seeker of wisdom and enlightenment. Anyone may be a philosopher. There are lots of seekers of wisdom and enlightenment, in a variety of cultures. Relatively few, however, are trained philosophers, those trained in the academic discipline of philosophy.

Trained philosophers are hardly icons of popular culture, but the Internet appears to be bringing them more into the public view. There are web sites devoted to philosophy and philosophers, and there is a forum for contemporary philosophers, “The Stone,” in the online edition of the New York Times. The first question examined in “The Stone” (May 16, 2010) was, “What Is a Philosopher?"

In his response, Simon Critchley contrasts the lawyer, “who has no time, or for whom time is money,” with the philosopher, “who takes time.” “The freedom of the philosopher,” he writes, consists in either moving freely from topic to topic or simply spending years returning to the same topic out of perplexity, fascination and curiosity.”

For an unusual example of an “untrained philosopher,” in an academic sense, see Thinking in Pictures: My Life With Autism, by Temple Grandin. In the final chapter of this extraordinary book, Ms. Grandin writes about how she came to define her purpose in her life.

It was in connection with her first large design project, for a facility for humane slaughter of cattle. She named the facility the Stairway to Heaven, after a Led Zeppelin song, and writes that after its construction was completed, in 1974, “I felt I had learned the meaning of life – and not to fear death.”

In her diary three years later, at age 30, she wrote that she had discovered God at the top of the Stairway to Heaven, a statement that is not at all implausible to a reader of her account of how she thinks and sets her goals in pictures. She also wrote in her diary that “If a black void truly exists at the top of the Stairway to Heaven, then a person would have no motivation to be virtuous.”

Ms. Grandin began to doubt her beliefs about an afterlife when she read scientific works suggesting that the experiences described in popular books by individuals who had died and been brought back to life were hallucinations triggered in a brain deprived of oxygen.

But the biggest blow to her beliefs, she writes, was her discovery of the effects of biochemistry on her own brain. In the summer of 1978, she agreed to a publicity stunt requiring her to swim through a “dip vat,” a long narrow swimming pool filled with pesticide through which cattle move before being slaughtered. Her exposure to the pesticides in the vat made her very ill, and to her “horrified amazement,” she found that they had blocked her need for religious feelings.

The effects of the exposure gradually wore off, and her feeling of religious awe returned, but her belief in an afterlife was shattered. Were feelings about God and the afterlife a matter of brain chemistry? In any event, the possibility that a void exists after death motivated Ms. Grandin “to work hard so I can make a difference – so that my thoughts and ideas will not die.” “Maybe immortality,” she writes, is the effect one’s thoughts and actions can have on other people.”

These were not Ms. Grandin’s final thoughts on the matter. As a “totally logical and scientific person,” she develops her views from “the existing pool of knowledge” and adapts them when she learns more. Quantum physics helped her to believe in God as a kind of consciousness for the universe.

In the “Update” section of the chapter, she writes that changes in her religious beliefs are too complex for a brief update. Instead, she gives recommendations for teaching right from wrong to children “on the autism/Asperger spectrum.” Whatever her beliefs in God and an afterlife, Ms. Grandin tries to “make a difference.”

To check out the thoughts of trained philosophers on death and immortality, God and the existence of evil, free will, and any other that comes to you in a philosophical moment, click on www.askphilosophers.org.

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