John,
Thanks for the reference. It's a three page definition
of Umwelt, but here is a salient quote of what you may have meant:
What UexkuÈ ll uniquely realized
was that the physical environment, in whatever sense it may be said to be the
`same' for all organisms (we are speaking, of course, of the environment on
earth, though much of what we say could be applied, mutatis mutandis, to
biospheres on other planets should such eventually be found), is not the world
in which any given species as such actually lives out its life. No. Each biological
life-form, by reason of its distinctive bodily constitution (its `biological
heritage', as we may say), is suited only to certain parts and aspects of the
vast physical universe. And when this `suitedness to' takes the bodily form of
cognitive organs, such as are our own senses, or the often quite di€erent
sensory modalities discovered in other lifeforms, then those aspects and only
those aspects of the physical environment which are proportioned to those modalities
become `objecti®ed', that is to say, made present not merely physically but
cognitively as well.
For those interested in conversational interfaces, Here
is a free pdf about discourse and conversational analysis:
https://abudira.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/discourse-analysis-by-gillian-brown-george-yule.pdf
There are a lot of discourse analysis papers in pdf on
the web, but very few are really about the ontology within which a
conversational system must operate. Most are more Social Science, or English
or Philosophy in context and don't go to the symbolic level. This is the best book
I have come across so far, unless someone has a better one, also available on
the web in a PDF or a Kindle version, or otherwise available to the casual
researchers. I will invest some time in this one, but only in studying it.
Sincerely,
Rich
Cooper,
Rich Cooper,
Chief Technology Officer,
MetaSemantics Corporation
MetaSemantics AT EnglishLogicKernel DOT com
( 9 4 9 ) 5 2 5-5 7 1 2
http://www.EnglishLogicKernel.com
-----Original Message-----
From: ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of John F Sowa
Sent: Monday, July 13, 2015 5:21 AM
To: ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] Ontology based conversational interfaces
On 7/11/2015 10:48 PM, Rich Cooper wrote:
> Since you are so persistent about insisting that
every observer sees
> the same objective reality as the next one, I will
concede the point to you.
That's not what I said.
Everybody knows that different people (and animals) have
different views, opinions, and ways of perceiving, thinking, and acting.
For example, your pet dog, cat, or whatever may live in
your home.
But you and your pet have very different experiences and
ways of perceiving and acting. But it would be misleading to say that you and
your pet live in different houses.
If you want a technical term that has an associated
theory that has been explored in some depth, I suggest 'Umwelt'. The 'Welt'
component means 'world', but the theory of the Umwelt
focuses on the way it's experienced. See the article by John Deely:
https://manoftheword.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/umwelt-deely.pdf
An excerpt:
> an Umwelt is not merely the aspects of the
environment accessed in
> sensation. Far more is it the manner in which those
aspects are
> networked together as and to constitute 'objects of
experience'...
> Jakob von Uexküll ... saw that the difference
between objects of
> experience and elements of sensation is determined
primarily not by
> anything in the physical environment as such but by
the relation or,
> rather, network and set of relations that obtains
between whatever may
> be 'in fact' present physically in the surroundings
and the cognitive
> constitution of the biological organism interacting
with those
> surroundings here and now.
John