I guess, first of all, i wouldn't be asking someone to "display some Fi".Originally Posted by Rick
I'd instead ask them how they felt towards a few objects, a few concepts, a few thoughts, and/or a few scenarios.
The ease or difficulty they might have in answering those questions would give me some information as to their ease or difficulty involving "Fi".
If I ask someone how two objects could be connected, and I get an answer like "they're about 1 meter apart", that leads me in a different direction than an answer of "well, they're kind of close together", or "they are both symbols of X", or "this object seems to be chasing that object", or "they are both made from the same material and date back to Y time period", etc
If I ask someone to tell me what this item is, and they give me a list of descriptions, that tells me something different than if they tell me some of the ways the item could be used, or if they give me one or more labels for it, or even if they say "who cares what it is?"
as for real world applications, i believe that the implicit/explicit, field/object, etc do have real world applications, particularly in trying to communicate with others
If I have a tendency to talk about the implied connections of something, and I'm talking with someone who wants to talk about the defined connections, then I could work towards talking about the connections that are actually there to be experienced rather than what may also be there. Thus making attempts to bridge a communication gap.
Or if someone i'm in a conversation with is talking about some specific concept, and gets irritated with me when I keep bringing up how that concept is related to other concepts, knowing the object vs field thing can help me to recognize that I could help our communication by trying to focus on the specific concept itself instead of the connections. That doesnt mean that it'd be easy for me to do. But at least I'm putting in effort towards either understanding what this person is saying instead of insisting he talk about what i want to talk about....or effort towards creating mutual understanding.
I've used my understanding of the implicit/explicit, field/object, continuous/discrete, and involvement/abstractment to create a better communication environment with my daughter, to help in explaining some school related concepts to her, and to aid me in some of my studies. So of course I see these as applicable in the real world and beyond "mere theory".