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Originally Posted by davem

I think the point is that, in effect, all philosophies, religions, worldviews begin as 'secondary worlds'. They may be in intention models of the primary world, but they all begin as fantasy worlds, same as stories.

I'm with you. I would just want these models to be not only explanatory but reliably predictive if they are used in certain arenas. If you always got rain after sacrificing a virgin to the volcano, then maybe you have something there I can use.

Of course, a 'secondary' world may (as in the case of Middle-earth) have always been intended to be a 'secondary' world - though its possible that some mad dictator may attempt to make the primary world like M-e through genetic engineering & landscaping, etc.

Dagnabit, davem, quit spying on me! Engineering elven ears is hard enough without having Monday morning geneticists telling me that they're not pointy enough (or too pointy) or should look more like cabbage leaves. Shhh!

The point being, a 'secondary world' can be the model of the primary world which you have in your head at this moment. If my model of the Primary does not match yours then effectively we do not inhabit the same, 'primary', reality, do we? Hence, all our 'primary' worlds are a step away from reality & are therefore 'secondary', inventions that are either unique or shared with a few others ('living shapes that move from mind to mind'). In other words, LMP's 'primary' world (Christianity) is, to me, a 'secondary one' as it is one that is only 'real' in Tolkien's 'secondary' sense, no more rooted in the primary than is M-e.

I'm no philosopher or deep thinker, but think that we all work with a projection of the real world within our heads. You and I see the same wavelength of light and think 'orange' - even if I see it as grey and you see it more yellow than red. We have our own pretty little universes between our ears, and it's amazing that when they bump up against each other that there's any congruence. But we've worked that out for some things and not for others.