If humanity is as integral to our reality as you describe, then I am confused why our beliefs about how reality works don’t totally control how reality actually works. That is, I would expect human beliefs to have as much causal effect on objects as external forces like gravity and magnetism. You are study of the world shows that this isn’t so. In short, many people think it is a fundamental physical law that objects in motion eventually come to a stop. That’s their ordinary experience, but it is easy to show that it is totally wrong.
In general, scientific predictions about what will happen to physical objects in the future is not related to the consensus people have about what would happen (in other words, people are scientifically illiterate). Despite how unintuitive it seems, nothing can travel faster than light, and humans are descended from monkeys.
Improving humanity’s ability to make predictions about the future is the empirical project in a nutshell. That’s the source of the pushback in this post. If it turns out to be the case that there is no objective reality, external to human experience, it follows pretty closely that the modern scientific project is pointless. In short, if the world is not real (existing external to humanity), what’s the point in studying it?
If humanity is as integral to our reality as you describe, then I am confused why our beliefs about how reality works don’t totally control how reality actually works.
Wouldn’t you say oxygen is integral to the current reality of earth? That does not mean that the current reality of earth is shaped by the will of oxygen. Saying that humanity is integral to the constitution of our reality is different from saying humanity consciously defines the constitution of its reality. Right?
If humanity is as integral to our reality as you describe, then I am confused why our beliefs about how reality works don’t totally control how reality actually works. That is, I would expect human beliefs to have as much causal effect on objects as external forces like gravity and magnetism. You are study of the world shows that this isn’t so. In short, many people think it is a fundamental physical law that objects in motion eventually come to a stop. That’s their ordinary experience, but it is easy to show that it is totally wrong.
In general, scientific predictions about what will happen to physical objects in the future is not related to the consensus people have about what would happen (in other words, people are scientifically illiterate). Despite how unintuitive it seems, nothing can travel faster than light, and humans are descended from monkeys.
Improving humanity’s ability to make predictions about the future is the empirical project in a nutshell. That’s the source of the pushback in this post. If it turns out to be the case that there is no objective reality, external to human experience, it follows pretty closely that the modern scientific project is pointless. In short, if the world is not real (existing external to humanity), what’s the point in studying it?
Wouldn’t you say oxygen is integral to the current reality of earth? That does not mean that the current reality of earth is shaped by the will of oxygen. Saying that humanity is integral to the constitution of our reality is different from saying humanity consciously defines the constitution of its reality. Right?