> Mental concepts have a high degree of correlation with the real world, otherwise we could not explain how we are so capable of navigating and manipulating the world to the degree that we do.
This is obviously a strong association from human mental concepts to real world objects. The question is if the opposite mapping exists as well - there could well be infinitely many non-human concepts that could map onto the physical world. They could have some level of similarity, but nertheless remain significantly different.
For a trivial example, in all likelihood an alien race that has some kind of eye would perceive different colors than we do. With enough text and shared context, we may be able to understand that worble is some kind of shade of red or green, but never understand exactly how they perceive it (just as they may understand that red is some shade or worble or murble, but never exactly). Even worse, they could have some colors like purple, which only exists in the human mind/eye (it is the perception we get when we see both high-wavlength and low- wavelength light at the same time, but with different phases).
Similarly, alien beings may have a significantly different model of the real world, perhaps one not divided into objects, but, say, currents, where they perceive moving things not as an object that changes location, but as a sort of four-dimensional flow from chair-here to chair-there, just like we perceive a river as a single object, not as water particles moving on a particular path. Thus, it may be extremely difficult if not impossible to map between our concepts and the real world back to their concepts.
> Fear, for example, correlates with states in the world such that some alien species would be expected to have a corresponding concept.
Unlikely, given that most organisms on earth have no semblance of fear. Even for more universal mental states, there is no reason to imagine completely different organisms would have similar coping mechanisms as we have evolved.
> Machetes, for example, are mostly used in the context of "hacking", either vegetation or people, rather than precision cuts of a knife or a scalpel.
Well, I would say hacking VS cutting are not significantly different concepts, they are a matter of human-specific and even culturally-specific degrees, which would be unlikely to me to be uniquely identifiable, though some vague level of understanding could probably be reached.
This is obviously a strong association from human mental concepts to real world objects. The question is if the opposite mapping exists as well - there could well be infinitely many non-human concepts that could map onto the physical world. They could have some level of similarity, but nertheless remain significantly different.
For a trivial example, in all likelihood an alien race that has some kind of eye would perceive different colors than we do. With enough text and shared context, we may be able to understand that worble is some kind of shade of red or green, but never understand exactly how they perceive it (just as they may understand that red is some shade or worble or murble, but never exactly). Even worse, they could have some colors like purple, which only exists in the human mind/eye (it is the perception we get when we see both high-wavlength and low- wavelength light at the same time, but with different phases).
Similarly, alien beings may have a significantly different model of the real world, perhaps one not divided into objects, but, say, currents, where they perceive moving things not as an object that changes location, but as a sort of four-dimensional flow from chair-here to chair-there, just like we perceive a river as a single object, not as water particles moving on a particular path. Thus, it may be extremely difficult if not impossible to map between our concepts and the real world back to their concepts.
> Fear, for example, correlates with states in the world such that some alien species would be expected to have a corresponding concept.
Unlikely, given that most organisms on earth have no semblance of fear. Even for more universal mental states, there is no reason to imagine completely different organisms would have similar coping mechanisms as we have evolved.
> Machetes, for example, are mostly used in the context of "hacking", either vegetation or people, rather than precision cuts of a knife or a scalpel.
Well, I would say hacking VS cutting are not significantly different concepts, they are a matter of human-specific and even culturally-specific degrees, which would be unlikely to me to be uniquely identifiable, though some vague level of understanding could probably be reached.