Hi Jon Lynch,
I join elephant in apologising and welcoming you, if a bit late... it seems you
dropped in while everybody was very busy in one of the two main things going on
- or both, in my case.
Just like you, and more than a few others, when I read ZAMM it was much of a
revelation for me. I think I began reading philosophy with it, and have being
doing that a lot since then (relative to the time I have left from work and
other basic living).
About ZAMM's and Lila's value, I think they have value within a tradition, and
my guess is that the right tradition to look into is science or common sense
rather than philosophy.
When I was very young, I used equate science with truth. Something like a
logical positivist? Not really. I think this equation just belongs, implicitly
in part, to western common sense.
But, I was a moral person too. And I found it sad that morals had nothing to do
with the truth at all. Do you know that Kurt Vonnegut's quote (I have to
translate it from italian back to english, so words may be a bit different from
the original): "I used to believe in scientific truth. What happened when I was
18 was that we dropped scientific truth onto Hiroshima".
What ZAMM did for me was opening my eyes to see that attributing no "reality" to
value was simply a prejudice. This first crack in the wall was later broadened
as I kept reading (from ZAMM to Lila to "true" philosophy) and new ideas and
concepts passed in. But I think that was the beginning: RMP gave me a good way
to welcome back morality into my intellectual world, where I always felt it
belonged. And it did this by working from *within* my prior system of (standard
western) beliefs.
I am ready to understand that those who like RMP this much do so because they
haven't read or haven't understood enough "real" philosophy, which happens to be
a position that surfaces now and then in this list. In this respect, I find it
comforting that some subscribers are well-educated philosophers. :)
All the best...
Andrea
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