Q&A: Yuval Noah Harari and the Existence of Non-Physical Entities
Yuval Noah Harari and the Existence of Non-Physical Entities
Question
Yuval Noah Harari argues that concepts like corporations, nations, states, human rights, and so on are things that do not really exist, but are inventions of human beings; and that the ability to imagine and think about things that do not exist is one of the abilities of Homo sapiens that caused it to become the undisputed ruler of nature. According to his materialist view, that only matter exists, this is fairly understandable overall. But according to your view, that there are other entities in the world in an objective sense, such as spirit and so on, do things like morality, nationhood, and so forth exist in some objective sense?
Answer
I tend to think so. I wrote about this here as well. See Column 456 on moral realism, for example.