Of taxation and Philosophy 101
You may send those little brown Inland Revenue envelopes to my mailbox all you like. I am a poor student. I earn less than £1000 a year; I pay well over five times that amount in tuition fees, and you, my dear, faceless, brown-enveloped tax collector, are not getting one penny of it.
(If anyone so much as mentions the National Health Care service...)
A battered-looking philosophy paper was perfunctorily deposited on my desk this afternoon. Stapled to it was a medical certificate explaining that I was too incapacitated to attend class, and an innocuous blue sheet declaring a first class honours grade.
An odd combination, I thought.
It struck me today, the depth and clarity of mind required to make a statement as uncomplicated as "That is a chair". One requires an understanding of matter (the subtance of chair) and an instantaneous association with the mental idea of a chair, and the linguistic connection of the word "chair" to the substance "chair". Even if one only sees the back of a chair, one is required to possess in their mind a complex idea of a chair, to which anything that performs the function or possesses the shape and potentiality of a chair may be subsequently associated with the appropriate sensorial input. There is even a linguistic connection required to understand that "chair" represents all objects possessing such-and-such function/potentiality/shape/physical qualities. One needs an idea of space and distance, to be able to use "that" over "this", or even use "this" or "that" at all. One needs an idea of time, to be able to view that chair as existing in the present. One needs to possess the belief that input from one's senses translates directly to necessary existence of the source of that input in the external world.
And all this, grasped intuitively from birth.
And they say kids are dumb...:)