| Depends on why you believe those things. If you believe the Earth is round because someone you view as an authority told you, and you never asked for any reasons or evidence, then yes, you're conforming/obeying. If you believe the Earth is round because you understand the extremely strong evidence we have for that, then no, you're not conforming/obeying. > Perhaps a bunch of people picking "the same bundle of labels and beliefs" is… simply them recognizing/accepting reality? For something like "the sky is blue", sure--we can confirm it by our own observations and us all using the same word to describe the color we see the sky as being. For something like "the Earth is round", it's more complicated, because it's not obvious just from observation, at least not the kind of observation that ordinary people today are going to be making in their daily lives. But if, for example, you have enough experience on oceangoing ships, you're likely to have made observations that were part of what convinced certain ancient Greeks that the Earth was round. Or if you've observed enough lunar eclipses to see how the shape of the Earth's shadow appears on the Moon. Or if you've observed the Sun's angle above the horizon in the sky at enough different latitudes on the summer or winter solstice. But how many people have made those observations? Or understand what they tell us about the shape of the Earth? And of course people, even very large numbers of people, can also pick "the same bundle of labels and beliefs" about things that aren't reality. So no, you can't rely on that as an indicator. |