One of things I do to intentionally drive my wife crazy… She will ask me to scratch her back, so I’ll stand behind her and start scratching. She’ll say “More to the right.” I’ll say “My right? Or your right?” 
What hump?
Could be.
Related to this, which side of the bed is which? Is the left side the side on the left as you look at it from the foot of the bed, or the left side as you lie in it looking at the ceiling (you lucky person you)?
When you wake up in the morning, the side that you roll off of is the side that was left.
Cut your bed in half and throw one half out the window. Whichever half is still in your bedroom is the one that’s left.
Don’t worry about the possibility you picked the wrong half to throw out the window. You threw the right half out the window.
Just be careful when you throw it to not hit Moshe Dayan in the (remaining) eye.
What if you saw that Moshe Dayan was wearing an eye patch on his left eye while you were standing on the west side of the international date line and he was standing just to the east of it - would one say they saw him with wearing an eye patch yesterday or today?
…and then if you’re on a treadmill…
And where do you bury the survivors?
What if he’s standing astride the equator? - one eye is his clockwise eye, the other, his widdershins eye.
And the eye with the patch is the one that she hit widdershins.
I am happy you are all having fun with my little suggestion. I would point out that what we are talking about has no bearing on how we regard our own anatomy, or what we tell the doctor when we describe where the pain is. It’s rather a convention, one applied frequently in photo captioning, a way of doing things you might see in a newsroom style guide, but no more carved in stone than the way Americans call the first floor what those in the UK call the ground floor. It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that this convention is not a universal thing, that some other languages don’t hew to this particular hidebound prescription but use a more fluid one which I (for one) would prefer. (Fluent speakers of other tongues are invited to chime in.)
“Moshe Dayan porte une cache-oeil sur l’oeil à droite.” Mebbe? Mebbe not.
[QUOTE=Clothes]
It’s rather a convention, one applied frequently in photo captioning, a way of doing things you might see in a newsroom style guide, but no more carved in stone than the way Americans call the first floor what those in the UK call the ground floor.
[/QUOTE]
You are simply dead wrong.
What, more anatomical stuff? I guess I won’t convince you. Has nothing to do with lateral/dorsal/transversal gubby gubby. Maybe if we remove the humans from the equation, my point will be clearer.
Take a photo of three trees. Write a description of it. “The larch (center) is flanked by an elm, to its left, and a maple, to its right.” Can you see where a reader might be find this puzzling? Does a larch have a right and a left, from its own deciduous vantage point? Can it face forward or backward? Surely the answer is no. Simplify by declaring that we shall always describe things in a picture as they appear, as the camera sees them, not as solid objects but as images on a flat plane. Clarify by using “to the left” (side of the picture) or “to the right” as the standard descriptors. Don’t worry about whether the object is a larch or an eyepatch on Moshe Dayan’s face.
But you’re missing the point I and other people have made. Your system is far more arbitrary than the conventional one.
Go out and face somebody. Now hold up the hand that’s on the northern side of your body. And the person that’s facing you does the same.
Depending on the facing, you might now think, “The arm I’m holding up in on the right side of my body. Therefore it’s my right arm. The person facing me is holding up the arm on what, from my point of view, is the same side as my right. Therefore, I declare that he is holding up his right arm as well because that’s how it looks to me.”
But the person opposite you is thinking, “The arm I’m holding up in on the left side of my body. Therefore it’s my left arm. Clothes is holding up the arm on what, from my point of view, is the same side as my left. Therefore, I declare that Clothes is holding up his left arm as well because that’s how it looks to me.”
Both of you are applying the same system and coming up with a consistent answer. But your answers are in opposition. The only way your system functions is if one person is arbitrarily defined as the center of the universe.
If for some reason you need to objectively define directions, use the system I used above; drop references to left and right and describe directions by north, south, east, and west.
Correct. The words “right” and “left” apply only to entities that have inherent orientation with a front and back as well as a top and bottom. It thus makes sense to refer to the right and left sides of a planarian but not say of a starfish or a tree. Moreover implicit in your statement is the idea that we apply “right” and “left” to entities that we consider somehow have a vantage point (or are defined by their use by those with a vantage point, so a sports jacket for example has a clear right and left side whichever direction we are looking at it from and even if we turn it upside down) … the concept is called “theory of mind” and the degree we apply it to inanimate objects that have inherent orientation similar to our own they also have “right” and “left” sides even though we do not really think they have minds.
Clearly though when referring to a picture of Moshe Dayan we reference his laterality as viewed through his eye.
What are objects that have inherent orientation with front/back and top/bottom that do not have the convention of using “left” and “right” from the imagined perspective of the object and why not those while yes to other inanimate objects?
That is at least a more interesting question.