The Integral Aperspectival Strikes Again

As a few of you know, in our ontology building class we use an example of building an ontology that can determine which flights are international (from a US perspective). We use this example at least in part to show how solving the generalized problem (international flights from any counties perspective) requires unbound variables, and therefore rules. But one of our students suggested this “USA” centric thing was just a point of view (which it is). This reminded us of some work we’d done some time ago on “the Integral Aperspectival” which is a Ken Wilbur term for a world view that both recognized that everyone has their own point of view or perspective, and at the same time attempt to see the world as if you could integrate all those points of view. We invoked Ken Wilbur as a way of explaining how, for instance in a multi-company organization, the only real difference between accounts payable and accounts receivable is which company you logged in under. There really aren’t two applications there is one with two points of view. As you study this you realize that many of our systems have this built in “us” centric view to their apps. And so, we rebuilt the International Flight exercise in a neat way. We created a generic definition of what it means to be domestic or foreign, and then you identify what country (or region) you are at commit time, and everything resolves.

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