The World and the Social Layer
Everything that exists is part of one physical world. Mountains, atoms, bodies, and brains all belong to that world. Yet human life also includes money, marriages, governments, universities, and borders, and these do not seem to exist in the same way that rocks or rivers do.
The key difference is between brute facts and institutional facts. Brute facts exist whether anyone believes in them or not. Institutional facts exist only because people collectively recognize them. A mountain would still be there if people disappeared, but a passport, a tax system, or a presidency would not.
Even so, institutional facts are not illusions. They are real in everyday life because they shape what people can do and what they must do. A bank account, a contract, or a citizenship may depend on human agreement, but once that agreement is in place, these things have real effects. They organize behavior, create expectations, and give society a stable structure.
This social layer becomes hard to notice because people grow up inside it. A child usually sees a bill as money, not as colored paper, and sees a car as transportation, not as metal and plastic. Social reality feels natural because human beings are trained into it from the start. What is learned becomes familiar, and what is familiar starts to seem obvious.
Underneath all this is a simple picture of human beings. Humans are biological creatures with consciousness, intentions, and the ability to act together. Those abilities allow them to build a social world on top of the physical one. The result is not a second universe, but a humanly created layer within the only world there is.
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