That said, I have no idea whatsoever how human consciousness shapes not only the present, but the past as well. — Bitter Crank

I don't know about the past and present, but human consciousness shapes what exists. I'm not talking about anything mystical or supernatural. It's the most normal, every day, thing in the world. There are no trees until someone says "tree." There are no atoms until someone says "atom." Do you think that before consciousness, the universe went around saying "tree" and "atom?" I can see that it's hard to shift perspective to look at things this way, but it shapes my whole understanding, experience, of reality.

Before we came along there were large megaflora growing in the dirt, quite happily, thank you, with rough bark and green leaves. The leaves fell off at some point and then later regrew. Some of these megaflora produced nuts and fruits and whirly seeds. These megaflora have been around so long before us that sometimes we find them petrified -- fossilized.

Around 25,000 years ago some modern human speaker of crypto-proto-Indo-European went up to one of these big megafauna and spoke the crypto-proto-indo-European words "Oh Tree, you are so tall, and strong, and so very nice. I think we will cut you down for firewood." The tree frowned it's wrinkly bark and thought, "Tall enough and strong to shake you off my branches and break your bloody neck, I am."

If there were no atoms unless somebody said "atom" then there would be no atoms composing the brain and tongue required to utter the word "atom". So atoms would never exist, and neither would we.

The universe does not require our services to exist. We require the universe to be nice to us so we can exist for a little while.

human consciousness shapes what exists — T Clark

What isn't it the case that what exists shapes human consciousness? That makes more sense to me than the other way around. Matter makes the man.

Take a practical example: (let's assume that Earthly beings are truly alone in the Universe)

We are all here. We observe the Universe. To our current knowledge - it exists. Period.

Humans disappear.

Only sentient and conscious beings (bears, birds, whales, tapeworms, ETC) exist on earth.
They are not aware of the concept of the Universe, or even what they mean on Earth for that matter. But they still exist, do they not? And the Universe they live in still exists, does it not? Just because they have a (very) tiny fraction of understanding of life and its complexities compared to what now-extinct humans had, this doesn't mean they are not contributing the Universe's functions.

Every animal dies. Except one Blue Jay.

The Blue Jay looks around and suddenly gains 100X the intelligence that humans once had. He thinks he knows (nearly) everything that could be known about the Universe. But he has no one to share it with. Does the universe exist still? Yes, of course, it does. Our Blue Jay exists in it. He thinks. But also breathes. And flies. And eats. And poops. DOES.

The Blue Jay dies.

Is the Universe still there as the bird dies? What about the very second its body ceases life functions. Does the Universe simply fade away? No, it exists. But nothing sentient or conscious is alive OR aware of it.

There is nothing to say that one rock on some distant planet in some distant galaxy on the other end of the Universe exists any less than your brother Timothy does. It just doesn't think, breath, fly, eat, or poop. But it DOES. Does what? Exist.

It is careless and fallacious to think that that one aspect of existence (consciousness) is the sole factor for justifying the grander, MUCH larger process that makes that very aspect (as well as many others) EXIST in the first place. In fact, it's so careless that it's a personal insult. (Not to me, but to the Universe)

It's amazing the pretentious nature of humanity. Life exists without you going "Hey where's my carmel macchiato". It's sad that google knew how to spell check that and I didn't.

Understand infinity and that the definition of it isn't tied to the ph level of your blood and perhaps you can understand the irrelevance of our existence. The only thing we are contributing is our perception and a rudimentary command of language we use to communicate with other

The universe revolves around me, so should I not exist, it'd stop revolving. Yes, a revolving universe. That's what I said. — Hanover

The word is revolting. The universe is revolted by you.

To call something a universe would be an act of description. So without us, there would be nothing that you can describe as a universe.

If no thought would entail that the thought is a contingent component in the world, and not identical with the world, therefore the idealist position which denies difference between thought and the world cannot hold. The only necessary absolute is contingency, it is the only thing that is not relative to thinking, which entails that the world exists separate from it existing for us. [Meillassoux]

If there were no atoms unless somebody said "atom" then there would be no atoms composing the brain and tongue required to utter the word "atom". So atoms would never exist, and neither would we. — Bitter Crank

I am not a good spokesman for the Taoist position on anything, so, I'm only painting my own picture inspired by my reading of the Tao Te Ching. If you believe, as I do, that the idea of objective reality is not the best way to understand the nature of existence, then the world is a mixture of what is inside us and outside us. This is a metaphysical, ontological, position. It's not true or false, it's an underlying assumption that I find helpful. In the same way, the existence of objective reality is not a matter of fact, it's an assumption you apply, whether or not you ever consciously examined it.

What isn't it the case that what exists shapes human consciousness? That makes more sense to me than the other way around. Matter makes the man. — Bitter Crank

So there were trees before there was a word for trees. The splitting up of the universe into categories such that one category is "trees," has been established by ...well, who? What about "green things." Is that a self-evident split? The splitting is a human, or at least conscious, act. Taoists that that act is what brings things into existence.

If you believe, as I do, that the idea of objective reality is not the best way to understand the nature of existence, then the world is a mixture of what is inside us and outside us. — T Clark

Please keep looking at the universe in whatever way you find useful and satisfying.

Even though I never thought of myself as this kind of person, I found myself wanting to see the world objectively for... maybe the last 30 or 40 years. Probably around 1983. That year I got fed up with the god business and decided that I wanted to live in a knowable world where (as O'Connor put it), "The blind don't see, the lame don't walk, and the dead stay dead." Clear out the miracles, please.

What makes the world knowable (to me) is the decision to look at it objectively. I wasn't all that well prepared to be objective, having messed around with a lot of mystical stuff for a decade or so.

Nature, of course, didn't name those big green things trees and the little green things grass, and the medium sized green things bushes, but nature none the less made very big, very small, and many intermediate sizes of green things, and they are all discrete, unique, separate. Nature made us too, not for any particular purpose that I know of -- history and nature have this much in common -- they don't have a destination. We did not come into the world to name trees, even if we did.

The other day I was reading about Ernest Rutherford's experiments to determine the nature of the atom. He was shooting helium atoms through a piece of thin foil and capturing the 'scatter' on a screen. He was also counting. He noticed that some of the expected scattering wasn't happening. By some maneuvering with the equipment he discovered that about 1 in 8000 atoms were bouncing off the foil. Why would 7,999 (figuratively speaking) go through but have their path bent, and why would 1 in 8,000 bounce back toward the source (more or less)?

After ruminating on the matter, he realized, "the interior of the atom isn't solid like a billiard ball -- which is what they all thought. It's mostly empty, though there is some forces at work inside it. There has to be something very hard, or strongly charged, at some particular place in the atom, which a few atoms hit and bounce off of.

What Rutherford discovered was the nucleus -- the neutron and the proton. The helium atoms were bouncing off the proton. (How he knew that his 'rays' were actually helium atoms is another interesting story.)

Well, Rutherford discovered quite a few things about atoms in fairly short order, because he assumed there was order and structure to the universe, and to the atoms which make up the universe. I like that. It takes nothing away from the world to know that matter is ordered and structured.

What makes the world knowable (to me) is the decision to look at it objectively. I wasn't all that well prepared to be objective, having messed around with a lot of mystical stuff for a decade or so. — Bitter Crank

I've gotten in this discussion before. There are times, maybe most times, when I take no issue with an objective view of the world. I believe the sun will come up tomorrow, yada, yada, yada. I make my day to day decisions based on interacting with a physical universe which has, and has had for hundreds of millions of years, green trees and grass.

On the other hand, there are times when such an understanding can be misleading in a fundamental and important way. This is in no way a mystical or supernatural view of the world. To me, who comes from science and engineering, it is completely consistent with Newton, Einstein, and Schrodinger, although I'm sure they wouldn't think so.

nature none the less made very big, very small, and many intermediate sizes of green things, and they are all discrete, unique, separate. — Bitter Crank

Yeah, well, no. Nature piled all that stuff in a big lump together and we separated it out. That separation is the act of creation. The Taoists talk about how we broke the Tao into "the 10,000 things," a metaphor I love. That is what brought them into existence. It is a human act.

Well, Rutherford discovered quite a few things about atoms in fairly short order, because he assumed there was order and structure to the universe, and to the atoms which make up the universe. I like that. It takes nothing away from the world to know that matter is ordered and structured. — Bitter Crank

And of course he also knew that to know one atom is to know all atoms. This is not the case of white swan/black swan. Good god.

This is not the case of white swan/black swan. Good god. — Caldwell

What does that mean?

What does that mean? — Bitter Crank

The reductionist explanation of the world. You do not need to look at every instance of the most fundamental thing in order to explain reality. That's the job of the empiricist -- it's all white swans until we find a black swan. Then 'all swans are white' is false.

The word ëxist"only exists, if we did exist. So with none of us, no one could have asked that question.

Do you imagine Lao Tzu and his buddies were unaware of that? It's one of things I like best about Taoism, it's funny and it knows it's funny. Speaking about the unspeakable. LOL. — T Clark

That's why I particularly like reading the "Zhuangzi". Well, the "inner chapters at least. :)

there couldn't even be a universe in the first place because the concept of a universe is a human invention. — Purple Pond

You are placing the 'concept' before the fact, yet it is perfectly obvious that the fact, in this case has to precede the concept.
Thus, you have your headline question completely backwards. "How can we exist without the universe'.
We are of little or no significance in the universe we understand to exist.

Without us, nothing is describable because descriptions require a set of conventions called language and is invented by human society. If humans never existed, then everything would be completely indescribable. To call something a universe would be an act of description. So without us, there would be nothing that you can describe as a universe. — Purple Pond

I think agree with this! You are talking about being. It seems you're not denying the universe's independent metaphysical "existence" only it's being. If you loosely replace your "describable" with "being" then what you wrote makes sense not as a subjective idealism or metaphysical idealism, but as an ontological idealism.

How can the universe exist without us? As you rightly say it cannot precisely because it exists through us. This is not a metaphysical or epistemological claim but an ontological and phenomenological claim.

And hey - we’re called ‘beings’. Crazy coincidence, hey?

Berekeley's argument for the existence of God seems apt here:
1) The relativity of perception proves that metaphysical idealism is true - the perceived world depends for its existence on being perceived.
2) The perceived world cannot depend on being perceived by any merely finite intellect.
3) Therefore, since the perceived world does exist, there must be an infinite intellect (aka God).

"Subjective idealism, which appears to be what you are proposing, is refutable on a number of levels." — jastopher

By subjective idealism do you mean the idealism of Berkeley? Who refuted it? I know Samuel Johnson thought he did so by kicking a stone, but he was just an overweight and overrated lexicographer.

The ‘argument from the stone’ has formed many a long forum thread. My view is that Johnson simply demonstrated incomprehension.

Kant thought he had demonstrated the fallacies of Berkeley’s philosophy in a section that he added to the second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason. This was added because much to Kant’s annoyance, many critics compared his work to Berkeley’s after the initial publication. See here for a précis.

Myself, I think Berkeley makes a profound and valid point, however I take issue with his nominalism. But the meaning of his ‘esse est percipe’ - which I read recently is actually incorrect Latin - is easily misconstrued from a realist viewpoint.

Wow - just read that precis (thanks for the link): if Kant needed to get that complicated to try to refute Berkeley, that seems like some evidence that Berkeley was on the right track.