And the philosopher Jacob represents is... by LampPostInitiative

His work established biosemiotics, and basically the ideas and themes about reality, ethics and reason that were a philosophical starting point for the program (Locke Hume, et al) were summed up in his theory of Unwelt. This theory concludes that all biological organisms are consisting of their own worlds--others see it other ways--but when we interact our unwelt combine. His work was used later by Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, etc. Meanwhile the philosopher I'm speaking of, Jakob von Uexküll, is all but out of print.

Look at the wikipedia page and there's an interesting idea printed about some of lost's motifs‘.

Now there are two proofs I want to use to describe the evidence. Unwelt deal with a sort of circuit, we affect reality, reality then affects us-anyone who has had a college philosophy class probably spent half a semester on those ideas as a paradox- Uexkull believed they were a dichotomy that was interrelated, or at least the thought tree that his ideas were the genesis of.

Now these ideas are expressed as motif's in lost through the usage of visions or hallucinations of the dead and the idea that "what happened happened" isn't a certainty. Even if the visions are of supernatural origin that doesn't mean that it doesn't affect the unwelt of hurley, and that was expressed by his decisions to rationalize his gift(a lockean idea) and go back to the island. Whereas when Jack decides to affect the incident-which would be a good term for understanding unwelt, incident-he has escaped the tyranny of his father-figure conditioning and reasoned for himself that he could be faithful to faraday's rationale of a multiple stream of time.

One question, or detraction of the idea remains. The idea of a "reality Tunnel" or a sort of world you experience, which presupposes on track of time, can also be attributed to the affect of the incident on time. Alternative reality or not all things must converge because of the nature of the universe our reality would reconnect from multiple timelines.

I don't know if the theory has any connection to the character, but studying Eco & Prometheous Rising I was drawn in to semiotics and after that was pulled into Unwelt.