I agree with what Maya said, although my guess was that the original quote was referring to something different.

Maya asked:
> What do these suggestions of alienated human observers' selfish
> "formulation" of the natural world mean?

and the original quote was:
> "In the last analysis, can a satisfactory description of the
> physical world fail to take explicit account of the fact that
> it is itself formulated by and for human beings?"
>
> - A.J. Leggett

I had the impression that Leggett was referring to the "anthropic principle", that if the universe was much different from how it is now, intelligent life wouldn't have developed and thus nobody would be around to ask questions about the meaning of the universe, or any other questions. I once read a nice article (I forget where) discussing several fundamental constants of physics, and how if they were slightly different, the universe wouldn't have expanded, or suns never would have formed, or planets wouldn't have formed, or ... all sorts of things that preclude almost any form of intelligent life we can imagine, not just humanity.

So, the anthropic principle would say that of course these constants are within their proper values, because if not, then nobody would be around to notice. Nobody meaning humans, or any other form of intelligent life.

I've always found the anthropic principle intriguing although my impression is that serious philosophers don't think highly of it. One counter-argument I heard is that if we walk along a beach and find a bunch of grains of sand all formed into a sand castle, we could ask "how did this sand castle get built?" Obviously we wouldn't be asking such a question if we hadn't found a sand castle. On the other hand, the answer "we found a sand castle because if we hadn't we wouldn't be wondering how we found a sand castle" is not the only explanation for why we're seeing a sand castle.
--Eric