What is a fact?

Kinfonet Discussion
21

Yes - this is the challenge presented by people who claim to have had a psychological insight. How is one to know that what they are reporting about themselves is true or not?

With external insights (such as in science) we can at least test out empirically (through experimentation) whether or not those insights hold up against the ‘real world’ (of matter).

But with internal (psychological) insights it is impossible to get inside someones’s skull to find out if what they are saying is true (although the neuroscience of meditation is trying - perhaps ineffectually - to do something along these lines!).

However, if someone has genuinely had a psychological insight (that is, their brain has been materially and physically altered by some actual perception) then we should expect it to show up somehow in the way they live their lives. For instance, are they more compassionate, are they more free from fear, jealousy, suffering, etc - are they humble and considerate of others?

There is no definitive way of knowing whether or not someone else has had an insight, but these are the most obvious tests that such a person might be subject to as soon as they claim to have “got it” - don’t you think?

1 Like
22

Why do we want/need to know if someone else has had an insight into what they are talking about?
I’m implying here that there may be an issue of authority happening.

2 Likes
23

Remember that the topic thread is ‘What is a fact’? It is not an issue of policing people here on the forum, but asking ourselves whether certain statements can be called facts or not.

So, for instance, take the Buddha’s so-called 4 noble truths (or we might say here, his 4 noble facts!):

The first fact he talks about is the fact of suffering. I think most people would probably accept that there is a fair amount of suffering or at least difficulty with our lives.

The second fact he mentions is the cause of this suffering. This is more tricky (as rickScott points out), because

Then take the third fact, the fact that suffering can end (while living). For whom is this a fact? It is surely only a fact for people like the Buddha who have had a deep insight into suffering - but it isn’t a fact for almost any of the rest of us, right?

So if someone comes along and claims to have ended suffering (i.e. claiming that the third noble fact is indeed a fact), then what would be our way of ascertaining whether or not it is in fact a fact?

One view is to say, either accept it or ignore it, because no-one can know for certain either way. But another view is to say, if this person truly has ended suffering, wouldn’t it show up somehow in the way this person lives, their behaviour, how they treat the people around them, etc?

As for the fourth noble fact (the path leading to the end of suffering) - well, let us just say that for Krishnamurti this wasn’t a fact at all, and the Buddhists just made this part of it up!!!

24

Yes - you would think so - I certainly feel the same
I think this means we want a conclusion/strong image about the other person?
I am the first in line when it comes to discussing self (or insight and theories about self)

As far as I can see : inquiring into our beliefs is key/fascinating - making up images about our interlocuter is also part of our psychological habits. Wanting our interlocuter to participate honestly in the inquiry is also a part of it (which could mean that we consider ourselves the authority in our projected relationship - they not acting as they “should”) - so much going on.

Did K not imply that it cannot be called a path, because a journey that only takes “one step” doesn’t fit the definition of a journey. (A path that goes no where, a journey that takes no time, no method apart from understanding, acceptance and no choice but surrender?)

25

A fact is in the eye of the beholder?

A fact is a fact, period?

1 Like
26

Do we want a strong image or conclusion about the other person? Remember that the topic rickScott (the artist formally known as nobody :wink:) began with was

After some discussion, he further elaborated that while some facts may be relatively straightforward for us to agree on - “all human beings suffer” - other facts (or supposed facts) are more elusive, such as the statement

How does one ascertain whether or not this is a fact? For the Buddha, or K, it might have been a fact; but the problem is that

So how do we know it is a fact?

There are many statements that Krishnamurti has made that fall into this category, for instance

So how does one go about ascertaining whether or not they are facts?

External facts - such as whether or not there was a moon landing in 1969, or whether there is a war going on presently in Ukraine, can be ascertained through the empirical method (of sifting through photographic evidence, witness statements, testimony of others, corroboration from outside sources - and, if possible, by going there oneself, although this is tricky in the case of going to the moon!).

But internal facts can only be discovered directly by oneself. Right?

But if one has not been able to do this, and someone else comes along claiming to have done this, then is there any test for their assertions of these ‘facts’?

Some people say no: you can only accept what they say on faith, or reject what they say (also on faith).

But I think there is at least some way of testing it out (we are not absolutely black boxes to each other). I’m not a bible kind of guy, but there is a phrase in their that seems to be somewhat on the money: You shall know them by their fruits (have you heard that phrase?).

So if someone claims to have no ego, we would naturally expect this to show up at some level of their actual lives, no? If Donald Trump were to claim that he has no ego, wouldn’t his narcissism and spite be a kind of red flag?

It is not a matter of trying to arrive at certainty, it is just a matter of common sense. If someone is acting like a selfish person, they probably are a selfish person - no?

The nature of paths and pathlessness may need its own thread. But my point was simply that there is a whole group of people - orthodox Buddhists - who believe that it is a fact that there is a path to enlightenment. And for K - at least if we take him at his word - this was clearly not a fact in his mind. - Hence the discussion (of what we, on this forum, mean by ‘facts’).

[Sorry btw if I take too long in explaining. I try to be as clear as I can, even if it needs more words to make it clear. I have yet to find a way to be more concise…]

1 Like
27

That’s inference and inference introduces distortion into the assessment, so we shouldn’t rely on it if we are interested in getting at the truth of the matter, the real ‘fact,’ right?

Also, feeling utterly certain that X is a fact doesn’t make X a fact. I feel certain that everything uttered/thought is a story. For me it’s a fact. But I could be wrong!

You see where I’m going with this. :slight_smile:

Yet several million Buddhists will agree that the Eightfold Path is real, for them a fact.

All of this makes it seem (to me) that a ‘subtle fact’ (as opposed to an obvious one no-one would argue with, like there is violence in Ukraine) is, to an extent, a matter of how convincing and authoritative the person who says “This is a fact!” is. (And how ready to believe the audience is.)

?

28

Let’s take a physical example (it is only an analogy, so it won’t perfectly match in all details).

Say that you have been into outer-space, and that you have seen with your own eyes, without hallucinating, that the earth is a round sphere (not perfectly so of course, as there is no such thing as a perfect sphere in nature). This is then a fact for you, right?

Now you come back down to earth, and tell me that the earth is a sphere. But all I presently see is the earth looking pretty flat from horizon to horizon. So it is not a fact for me in the same way it is for you. Right?

But if I hear your words, and if I don’t reject them, if I am willing to investigate them, then they are a pointer for me. If what you have said is actually true (i.e. that the earth is a sphere) then I will be able to find this out either directly (by going into space myself) or indirectly, through all kinds of empirical phenomena that only make sense if the earth is a sphere. - And then ‘your’ fact is a fact for me too. Because facts are facts - they don’t belong to anyone, they are just ‘what is’.

Doesn’t this make sense?

29

I was responding to the points/questions raised by Inquiry and macdougdoug about whether and how we could test someone else’s claims to know a fact.

Of course, as we mentioned near the beginning of the discussion, the only true way to test this supposed ‘fact’ of the Buddha’s would be to end suffering for ourselves. That is:

A psychological fact (of the kind pointed to by K’s ‘mahavakyas’) can only properly, directly be discovered by oneself.

30

It does for what I called ‘obvious facts’ above. The problem is with subtle facts. To stay on the material level, 200 years ago it was a fact that bodies in space exert a gravitational pull on each other. I’d call this a subtle fact because it could only be ‘seen’ by scientists. Now we have a different ‘fact,’ it’s not a force between bodies rather a bending of spacetime. 100 years from now, who knows?

When what is deemed to be a fact changes, was it ever (in fact) a fact? And doesn’t everything change?

The story gets more interesting when we move to the psychological realm. :slight_smile:

31

Therein lies the rub! We humans are eminently, brilliantly, preternaturally(!) gifted with the ability to fool ourselves. That’s perhaps why I keep coming back to Krishnamurti, even though I’m quite critical of him. He is a voice of sanity reminding us that the brain is not to be trusted when it comes to the realm of the subtle: psychology, metaphysics, ontology, love, usw. That it is apt to glom onto authority, in any of the zillion forms it takes. Including the form of Krishnamurti! That’s a ‘fact’ for me.

32

This is all I was meaning. Of course, if you seek to stretch the analogy beyond its limits to take in the whole complexity of our current scientific worldview (with all the “subtle facts” that abound in it), then naturally the analogy no longer holds. It is an analogy (i.e. something that shows a correspondence with some other thing, according to certain parallels that have been abstracted for the sake of observation - for if they were exactly correspondent in all details, then they would in fact be the same object).

As we said, even with so-called obvious facts, such as the one I mentioned (about the earth being a sphere), one can always find loopholes for doubt. This is how most philosophers (who are really little more than metaphysical lawyers) make their living!

There is no such thing as certainty outside of truth - if truth exists. This is why facts always require a context, a background of some kind. Truth requires no background, because it just is what it is, definitionally.

Now, when it comes to psychological facts, there are the obvious ones we have already pointed to: suffering, egotism, etc. No-one (usually) will dispute this.

So what you are calling “subtle facts” are the ones we are trying to address here - correct?

What do you call a subtle fact (psychologically)? The noble 8-fold path of deliverance?

33

I just realized one of the reasons this discussion of ‘facts’ is so impassioned: It goes to the heart of an egregious crisis, the difficulty we’re having (politically, culturally) distinguishing truth from non-truth.

1 Like
34

I only get riled up with the difficulty that other people are having with distinguishing truth from non-truth. :innocent:

I’m also hearing that it is impossible to ascertain (via discussion) whether someone who says : “I have seen that the death of the self means an end to suffering”, actually experienced what they think they experienced - even if it was somebody as lovely and polite as me that told you their story.
To me this also implies that it is impossible for the person telling the story to know whether what they believe they experienced, was actually what they experienced.

35

Yes. The assertions which are not obviously, self evidently true.

How about: Seeking pleasure brings pain.

36

Oh - I thought we were going to go with one of the mahavakyas, such as

This is why I used the analogy of the man (or woman) going into space and having a clear picture of the earth that we do not have from living on the surface. He (or she) has seen clearly that the earth is a sphere, and this what they communicate to me.

Just so, someone like Krishnamurti has had a deep insight into the world, and comes to tell me (or you or another) that You are the world.

This isn’t immediately obvious to me because I feel separate, my feelings and responses seem to take place in the unique space of my mind, meaning that I can suffer and another does not, I can be happy and another is not, I can die and another does not. And so on.

But if I remain open to this thing that has been communicated to me - namely, that I am the world - then perhaps I begin to see that everyone goes through periods of grief and periods of happiness, everyone dies, and so perhaps my consciousness is not completely separate from everyone else’s. I begin to question the apparent fact - that ‘I am separate’ - and begin to be open to a new fact - that ‘I am the world’. Do you see what I mean? I perhaps begin to have a feeling for this new perception, and even grasp it in intuitive flashes (of partial insight). In such flashes I may feel very deeply (and very genuinely) that I am the world - and this may not be an invention of my own.

However, to fully inhabit this new fact (that I am the world) requires total insight. Only then am I truthfully able to say with full confidence that I am the world. Until then it remains a pointer that I seriously consider and investigate into, and even sometimes perceive momentarily, but not an absolute truth.

The same situation most likely applies to the ‘subtle fact’ you have brought up - i.e. that

Someone tells me this, but it is not a fact for me to begin with. It is just a pointer. I may be aware on some level that life is a series of peaks and troughs, and that perhaps the peaks are in some way correlated with the troughs. But to see the connection between them so immediately that it changes my behaviour completely (so that I no longer seek pleasure) probably requires insight - no? So, until that time, I cannot call that statement (in my heart of hearts) an absolute truth. But I can be open to the possibility that it is true, if I trust on some level that the person saying it is not entirely bogus. :slightly_smiling_face:

37

Yes. Insight would free one from K’s teaching…which was K’s intention.

2 Likes
38

We’re already living with distortion, so inference doesn’t “introduce” it.

It’s reasonable to assume that someone who says or implies that they are no longer self-centered, would exemplify it in the way they live. This is not to say that a self-centered brain can know what a brain with no self-center will or will not do, but it is to say that the free brain would be radically different from what we know, and the difference would be the absence of the kind of behavior/response that we know.

39

It introduces a kind of distortion that might not have been there before that. There are many different ways that the truth can be distorted, right?

I’m surprised to hear this from you, you’re usually unwavering about not buying into assumptions and speculation about spiritual truths and achievements.

Added a few hours later: Wha’m saying is why assume anything about the free brain? It’s all just speculation, right? ‘Informed speculation’ maybe, but speculation all the same.

40

So to you K’s teachings has been a hindrance, a cage to be free from.
If you seriously wanted to be free from the teachings why come to a place that is about and around the teachings?
So we are still playing hide and seek like five year olds.?