Philosophy

especially #1.

And yet, proving the existence of something as ubiquitous as a chair, in a place where people are being trained to consider the ramifications of such things, simply asking "What chair?" seems too clever by half.

Years ago there was a local celebrity in Memphis who called himself "Prince Mongo". He was featured on the first reality show Real People. At one point he stated plainly that he could become invisible whenever he wanted to. Sarah Purcell said, "Then do it." He replied, "I don't want to."

It seems to me that not acknowledging that chair is the same thing. While clever and technically correct, it flies in the face of what the class is all about. It seems to me to be a sort of flight into ideology. I don't think I would want philosophical thinking to be reduced to such clever retreats into a description of one's own perceptions.

At some point, the rubber has to meet the road. One of the great failings of Post Modernism is a retreat into subjectivity at the expense of rational thought. We all have interior lives, but in the end we have to make something of them, even if it is thirty pages of trying to prove something that is obviously there does not exist.