Does the subconscious mind create reality?

Scientific studies have shown how thoughts can impact one’s physical state

Question: Does the subconscious mind create reality?
Position1 of 2›: Yes, the subconscious mind creates reality
Argument1 of 2›: Scientific studies have shown how thoughts can impact one’s physical state

The beliefs that we hold and the emotions that we experience have been shown to affect and shape our physical state and consequently, our reality.

The argument

Thoughts cause neurochemical changes. For instance, a grateful attitude caused a surge in rewarding neurotransmitters like dopamine, which is associated with feel-good emotions such as pleasure. The placebo effect is a testament to how powerful thoughts are. As states by Atasoy, our immaterial expectancies, such as the expectation that your actions will result in certain health benefits, can yield tangible physiological and cognitive outcomes. There are other examples in which thoughts cause change at a cellular level. Each cell in our body has thousands of receptors which are specific to either one protein or one peptide. Emotions release neuropeptides which connect with receptors which in turn changes the cell structure. This happens whenever we experience feelings such as joy, anger, or grief. When a cell is increasingly exposed to peptides that correspond with attitudes such as anger, it produces more receptors that match this peptide when the cell divides. So, whatever one feels on an emotional level will cause cell changes that reflect, accommodate and prioritise the feeling of this emotion in the future.

Premises

[P1]Thoughts cause neurochemical changes, as a grateful attitude surges feel-good dopamine. [P2] The placebo effect shows immaterial expectations yield real physiological and cognitive outcomes. [P3] Emotions even change cells, as repeated exposure to a peptide makes a dividing cell produce more receptors for it, prioritising that emotion in future. [C] Therefore, because scientific studies show thoughts can shape one's physical state, the subconscious mind creates reality.

Counter-arguments

The argument equivocates on 'creates reality'. The evidence it cites — that thoughts produce neurochemical changes, that expectation drives the placebo effect — establishes only that mental states affect the thinker's own body, which is uncontroversial. But the position it supports claims the subconscious 'creates reality' in a far stronger sense: shaping external events or manifesting outcomes in the world. That an attitude of gratitude releases dopamine, or that expectation eases symptoms, shows the mind influencing its own physiology, not the mind altering the external world, and the gap between the two is exactly where the position's claim lives. Some of the cited mechanisms are also overstated: the picture of cells producing more receptors to 'prioritise' an emotion derives from a speculative reading of peptide signalling that mainstream cell biology does not endorse as 'thoughts rewriting cells'. Genuine mind–body effects are real; they do not license the leap to the subconscious constructing reality itself.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P2] The placebo effect shows expectation influencing the thinker's own physiology, not the mind shaping external reality, which is the position's actual claim. [Rejecting P3] The picture of emotions making cells 'prioritise' a feeling by multiplying receptors is a speculative overreading of peptide signalling, not established cell biology.