Dear Bob ... I just finished reading your Keep the Joint Running article titled Coping With Realists. I have been doing a lot of thinking the past 24 hours about facts vs. opinion, and your article showed up at just the right time. It caused me to think even more. What exactly is reality? Michael Moore's reality is definitely not the same as George Bush's reality. If it is raining outside, then that is a r Dear Bob …I just finished reading your Keep the Joint Running article titled Coping With Realists. I have been doing a lot of thinking the past 24 hours about facts vs. opinion, and your article showed up at just the right time. It caused me to think even more.What exactly is reality? Michael Moore’s reality is definitely not the same as George Bush’s reality. If it is raining outside, then that is a reality. If it is miserable outside because it is raining, then that is an opinion. How does reality relate to facts? Facts are definitely different than opinions, but so many people these days claim that opinions are facts. Is reality black or white; true or false? Facts are, right? But if facts are black or white, then how can facts be disputed like they are so often?I apologize for rambling on. You may have no interest in this stream of thought, but your article has helped me to think even deeper on this subject.So how does this relate to business? Reality for low-level employees is definitely different than reality for the executives. Reality for the IT department is probably very different than reality for the business departments. How can we resolve all these differences in reality? Is it good to have differing realities, or should a business strive to have one common reality?Well, I’m not sure where I’m going with this. I guess I just wanted to share some of these thoughts going through my head and get some feedback.– Diogenes Dear Diogenes …While I’m not a professional philosopher, I play one on television …No, that isn’t it. Anyway, while my philosophical training is limited, I know just enough about epistemology to be dangerous, to myself if nobody else. With that in mind, this might be at least vaguely helpful … I divide ways of knowing into four categories: Facts, opinions, feelings, and beliefs.Facts are externally verifiable. If I look at a firetruck and tell you it’s red, and other people look at the same firetruck, they’ll also tell you it’s red, unless they’re colorblind, of course, at which point they’ll say, “I don’t know because I’m colorblind.”Opinions are the result of applying logic to a set of facts and identified premises. It is, by the way, because premises sometimes differ that two different people can reach two different, equally valid conclusions when applying logic to facts. Part of the process of consensus-building is, in fact, figuring out where different people are starting with different premises. Feelings are emotions. They’re how people respond to events, independent of facts and opinions. The feelings of another person are generally facts from the perspective on everyone else: My feeling of disgust for (for example) Ken Lay isn’t something you can argue with, as opposed to my opinion that he behaved illegally and unethically, which you could (I suppose) argue with. Not that it would do you any good. As a generality, when someone feels strongly about something, they they work backward from that to an “opinion” that justifies the feeling, twisting logic and changing premises as necessary to reach the “right” opinion that justifies the feeling.Beliefs are premises – they’re accepted as true without supporting evidence. Everyone has beliefs – Euclid demonstrated the necessity of establishing premises for any logical system when he first established formal geometry. Relatively few people are honest enough with themselves to acknowledge that their strongly held beliefs have no more validity than their decision to believe them.This all matters a lot in a business setting. Understanding the difference between postulating something – establishing it as a core operating principle or assumption – and deciding on a course of action because that’s where the evidence points you is significant in how leaders go about the choices and decisions they make every day. It also matters in everyday life (of course). To take just one, minor example: You might have a teenaged offspring. If you’re like me, you find teenagers whose faces look like they fell into a tacklebox to be unpleasant to look at.If you find yourself in this situation, the difference between commenting, “Gawd, that person looks awful!” and “Gawd, I find that look awful – how about you?” is quite significant.– Bob PS: I sometimes link to editions of Keep the Joint Running, my weekly opinion column. Regrettably, you can’t just click on the link, due to a glitch in my website. The workaround is to first go to www.issurvivor.com and login. Once you’re logged in, clicking on the link should work fine. ——– Technology Industry