Interpreting the Ficts fiction

The Ficts fiction is intended to highlight a wide range of issues concerned infuences on our construals of behaviour. These include:

• our cultural prejudices - whether we can conceive a sense of humour etc
  [e.g Alians don't have a sense of humour, so can't imagine attributing behaviour to joke-telling ceremonies]

• the nature of the artefacts we can build - what technologies are available to us?
  [e.g. photographs, videos and computer simulations supplant drawings]

• our level of scientific advancement - what established theories have we developed?
  [e.g. Alians know about magnetic fields and solar cycles]
• the historical setting - when are we making observations?
  [e.g. alignment to the magnetic field would not have been observed prior to adoption of social conventions about quiescent conficts in C13]

• the location and scope of the observation - how many examples can we seen?
  [e.g. Bians have never seen the red varieties of fict on Alias]

• our perspective for observation
  [e.g. Bians can see individual ficts]

• the possible contexts for observation we can access
  [e.g. Bians can't observe active conficts because of interference]

• the nature of the instruments we have for observation
  [e.g. Alians have no mechanism for observing smell]

• the characteristics of our sensory access
  [e.g. contrast the 'actual' explanation for active conficts with the metaphors projected on to them by the Bians and the Alians]

• the boundaries around the integrity of what is being observed
  [consider e.g. the dispersal of an active confict in the presence of a Bian observer, the Alian's perspective on whether a confict is one entity or a collection, and the problematic nature of confict observation near power cables]