Dear John,
My comments are below,
-Rich
Sincerely,
Rich Cooper
EnglishLogicKernel.com
Rich AT EnglishLogicKernel DOT com
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Rich,
The word 'reality', like
nearly all words in nearly all languages,
is used with a wide range
of meanings.
RC
> I go further and
state that reality, experienced differently
> by different people,
is different for the two people.
There are people who use
the word 'reality' in that way.
But there are some German
words that make finer distinctions:
1. The Umwelt is the
species-specific perceptible environment of any
species ranging from
bacteria to humans.
2. The Innenwelt (inner
world) is the private, subjective way of
interpreting or
modeling the world by any individual of any
species.
3. The Lebenswelt (life
world) is the specifically human way
of using language and
other symbols to organize, think about,
and talk about our
Umwelt, Innenwelt, and Mitwelt (social world).
Various German
philosophers and psychologists have coined words
for related variations:
Merkwelt, Eigenwelt, Überwelt.
Jakob von Uexküll coined
some of these terms, and his work is
a good starting point.
For the English version, see _A Foray
into the Worlds of Animals
and Humans: with A Theory of Meaning_,
available for $20.75 from
Amazon or bn.com.
You can browse the WWW for
much more. Wikipedia has some short
definitions and pointers
to related material.
John
Thanks John, but you’re
right, people use the word differently. I use it in at least two ways. The
common sense physics way based on popular standard sizes of parts, d=r*t, and
those many other facts and rules which apply to the physical world. But I don’t
expect a physics ontology to be used by the vast majority of web users. And
remember that the German philosophers also came up with words like Nazi, among
others. So ontologies are not always benign any more than ontologists are always
benign.
Then there is the
ontology of all those social things, what’s on Amazon, when are the
grandkids coming to stay overnight, which grocery store has the products I want
today, how do I get WordNet to explain some linguistic phrase, and so forth.
These daily facts and rules are the ones that most people use. They are the
ones that can leverage our time most effectively in getting done a day’s
worth of love and work (leben und arbeiten) which is the real business of
life. This is the area of true opportunity for growth of ontologies that
address common everyday situations.
Even in the physics
ontology(?) where property edges are likely sharper, there are contested points
of physics, experiments which are not often successfully duplicated (cold
fusion) and many other spurs off the ontological physics trail. But if it is
physics you are doing, you have the easy version.
When you consider the
more widely used ontology – the social ontology – and by far the
most financially significant ontology, we lead different lives and therefore
have different needs at different times. I find it absurd to think that a
single ontology could be used by all people pursuing their individual
happinesses. I don’t even think we live by any one ontology for much
more than an hour or two at a time before moving to a new frame of reference,
and therefore a new governing ontology.
-Rich