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It's hard to talk about anything when we don't define our terms. 

That was maybe the issue with getting the discussion rolling during Tuesday's class.  When presented with the question: "Do we all live in the same universe?" (or, even more simply, "do humans and animals live in the same universe?") we failed in defining what we meant by universe.  This was immediately clear in the sort of vaguely confused and unsure answers that the question elicited.  Some took it literally (Yes, we all exist here, our feet are on the same ground), and others kept the question contained to "the mind" (which also really needs some defining).  Of course that is part of the fun -- contemplating what are meant to be (and are, largely) thought-provoking questions, and perceiving those questions differently from perhaps everyone else in the classroom -- but I can't help but wonder if the abundance of teeter-tottering, unsure answers isn't a result of the elephant in the room: we don't know exactly what we're talking about.  And maybe that's OK, but should we not have the starting point of knowing, at the very least, whether we are talking about (for instance) our physical universe in which we all live and breathe --- or the universes we have constructed in our minds?  If terms like this were clearer, wouldn't our answers be, too?  Shouldn't we start from the same place -- grounded in common definitions of the terms we are using -- in order to understand each other more fully, and use time more efficiently?