What is a fact?

Kinfonet Discussion
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Yes, this is culture, right? Culture is part of reality. In some cultures one has to be careful how one dresses - especially if one is female - so as not to cause offence. In other cultures no-body cares how you dress, but they may be offended if you have the wrong political or religious opinions. All cultures have their customs, their expectations of appropriate behaviour, their standards of right and wrong.

One has to be sensitive to the culture one finds oneself in. But - at the end of the day - culture is only a reality created by us, by human beings, correct? So we can change it if we want to, if we have the energy to do so.

And if we can’t change it, then we learn to live alongside it - but without being false to ourselves. Right? But if my culture wants me to hate people of a certain religion or race, or kill animals, etc, then I may have to take a stand, or leave that culture behind.

But it is more difficult to leave behind the psychological world that thought has created inside of us - no? Because we are so closely identified with our inner reality. I think that is what K is wanting us to look at.

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Yes, we have to be honest to ourselves.

I see that my conditioning has not completely unconditioned even after I started listening to Jiddu. It is very difficult to come of all of that conditioning but I can say that my character started to change after listening to Jiddu and that change is constant.

Every time, we are just the reflection of our inner reality. (Thought is the resultant of the content inside us)

I think we had a nice conversation together. Friends if there are any questions on the conversation we had together, please put them in this thread. :slightly_smiling_face:

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145

What is a fact?

Here is a suggestion from David Bohm:

Q: Are truth and facts the same thing?

Bohm - No. A fact is much more limited. The word ‘fact’ is based on a Latin root meaning ‘what has been made or done’, which is also the root of ‘manufacture’. We can establish a fact in various ways, but you have to ask whether it is really a fact or whether it is the truth. People can establish facts which are misleading. So is it a true fact?

Q: Don’t we have to be very careful if we use the word ‘truth’, because we can impose limitations on that, just as people do with the word ‘God’.

Bohm: That’s right. Therefore we have to be very aware of it. People have mixed up the word ‘God’ with all sorts of other things. The word ‘truth’ can very easily encounter a similar difficulty. And then people who believe that they have the truth will not be able to agree with each other.

Truth is being. It is that which is. It is not any particular content. It is true being - the essence, if you want to put it that way. But these are all rather metaphorical ways of talking, and we mustn’t take them too literally. - Bohm Seminar December 1989

**Regarding this earlier comment: “Resurrection is a fact in reality”

That would qualify as an ‘unreal’ fact. As it it doesn’t exist in actuality, or we could point out that whether this is a fact or not it is not currently verifiable. Which means it’s merely a supposition which can’t be verified. Humans can ‘manufacture in thought’ (imagine) that ‘resurrection’ is a fact, and the observation of what is actual can reveal if it’s a ‘real’ or ‘actual’ fact/occurrence, or not.

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Thanks, Howard.

The distinction between ‘real fact’ and ‘unreal fact’ is useful. (It reminds me of the Buddhist distinction between right and wrong conventional truth.)

How do you think Bohm might answer these questions:

Say someone visits a grotto at night, no one else around, and sees, vividly, the Virgin Mary appear in a glowing mandorla. Is the seeing, while happening, a real fact? Unreal? For him alone or in general?

Same, but say there were three people at the grotto and all three saw the Virgin Mary?

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Hello Rick - The “problem” with human beings seeing the same fact is basically always the same “obstacle.” The cultural conditioning creates this fictional “observer,” a.k.a. the ‘me’, the ‘self’, the ‘ego’, through which ‘what is’ is filtered, interpreted, or analyzed. In other words, what most humans call ‘seeing’ is generally ‘interpreting’ in accordance with the conditioning. But let’s suppose it’s Bohm, and there is an awareness without the word, the me, or the observer.
A ‘real’ fact is something two or more people can each ‘see’ as 'actually been made or done (abstracted out of the whole). In this case, something we could call the “Virgin Mary” could have been ‘made’ by two humans having intercourse, and nine months later this ‘created being’ (something actually done) would be available for two or more humans (Bohm and Lee Nichol) to “verify the fact” of an actual being assigned the label of ‘Virgin Mary’.
Given that this is supposed to be a being who lived a couple thousand years ago, there’s no longer any available ‘actuality’ to observe to verify…via observation.
But you’re asking about a ‘glowing mandorla’, versus a human being. So can the ‘glowing mandorla’ be the virgin Mary…no, it’s just a glowing mandorla, not a human. Personally I can only imagine what a glowing mandorla is, as I’ve never seen one.

If three people saw one, it could verify that something appeared, and we could call it a glowing mandorla…perhaps looking much like some painting of the Virgin Mary we’ve seen. But it seems that we would have to personally have seen the Virgin Mary to verify that the mandorla looked the same. But if we actually had seen the Virgin Mary, and not some artists rendering of her, we’d be dead by now and unable to verify anything.

I don’t know if this is what Bohm would think, but it’s how it looks on this end.

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Thanks, Howard, for the step-by-step analysis. :slight_smile:

I am interested in the relationship between facts and subjectivity.

Let’s say Pablo visits the grotto and feels a mysterious and powerful presence there. The words arise in his mind: It is the Divine.

Is Pablo’s feeling of something mysterious and powerful a fact, reality, actuality, truth? Only for him?

Is Pablo’s explanation – “It is the Divine” – a fact, reality, actuality, truth? Only for him?

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It all depends on what actually happens to Pablo.

Did he actually feel a mysterious presence? or did he only experience his own unconscious projection of mystery?

In both cases the feeling of mystery might be a fact to him, right? Pablo (if he is not simply lying about it) is truly experiencing something. But what that something is that he is experiencing, is what is in question here.

So either he is ‘factually’ experiencing his own unconscious projection of mystery, in which case the content of his experience is merely a reality (created by his own thought).

Or he is factually perceiving or sensing the presence of the mysterious, in which case the content of his experience is actual (or true).

If this mystery is the mystery of truth, then it is truth.

The words arising in Pablo’s mind come afterwards, and are obviously man-made. So his words are part of reality (whether they refer to something actual or not).

Is Pablo’s experience only a fact for him? At one level, obviously yes. It was Pablo who experienced this, not Martha.

But if he is telling the truth about his experience, then what took place cannot just be a fact for him.

  1. If the experience was his own projection, then theoretically there must be an after-effect of such experiencing, ‘left over’ (as traces) in in his neurology (discoverable through modern scientific instruments like functional magnetic resonance imaging, etc), and in his body (heightened excitement, adrenaline, etc).
  2. If the experience was actual then another person nearby, in the same vicinity - at least someone who shares the same sensitivity as Pablo - could possibly have had the same or similar experience of mystery. But this is difficult to check after the incident has passed, because the event may not be replicable (unlike the eating of a strawberry by different people, for instance, an event which is easily replicable).
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And therein lies the rub … how can it be established that
X
is or is not
a real or unreal
fact
for one person or everyone
?
It’s hard enough to establish ‘objective’ facts. Establishing subjective facts seems a helluva lot trickier!

Are you saying that these detectable traces make Pablo’s experience a general fact?

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Hello Rick - A feeling, actually occurring in the body, we could call a fact. The story thought makes about the feeling, is a thought-story, a fable. The thought-story is the imagined “reality” in the beings consciousness.
Which aspect of life, the unlimited, is the “divine,” and which aspect of life, the unlimited, is not the divine? And who is Pablo? A thought identity? Is Pablo something separate from life, from the whole? Or is this identity a concoction of thought? Is the actuality ever located in thought-imagery? Are the words and images of thought ever the actual? Or is thought always limited conceptual imagery?

If by subjectivity you mean: the quality of being based on or influenced by personal feelings, tastes, or opinions, then you are referring to “thought-stories.” These are the ‘thought-created virtual realities’ that the conditioned mind confuses for the actual, which isn’t “separate things.” It’s no-thing. The illusion is the “you,” the “identity,” the “experiencer,” that only exists in thought-imagery. A ‘me’ experiencing the divine is a fictional story in thought. This is why K stresses self-knowing.

As long as one is imagining they are a separate identity, “becoming something,” the brain is caught in the illusion of separateness.There is only What Is. The psychological thought-world is illusion. Practical thought is a useful tool for human relationship, psychological thought is dualistic fiction.

Bohm: Everybody can see that a representation is hardly more than a ripple; it doesn’t have much substance - anybody can see that. But when it fuses with perception, then it seems to have all the substance. - Thought As A System

“Words and their meanings are never more than abstractions, which cannot substitute for that which they refer.” – David Bohm, The Negative Approach to Meaning and Language

Bohm: Now is the unlimited. But the now which we experience is limited. It is actually an abstraction, or a representation. - 1992 Ojai Seminar

Bohm: But as we have seen, the show is full of false content, not only about the world in general, but also about itself. This is fairly close to the source of the overall process of creating illusion. Such illusion contains a representation of society, of yourself, of your friends, family, and so on. It is all very “realistic.” But what seems to be the most important as well as the most real is the sense that consciousness as a whole is clearly divided into two distinct parts. One of these consists of the general content that is being observed; the other consists of a separate “self” that is observing the first part. But it follows from what I have said that this is a fictitious division, which constitutes a fundamental kind of fragmentation. This fragmentation introduces a false split in what may be called the very heart of one’s being. Because this division appears to be so important, everything else is divided up in such a way as to support it and to give it the appearance of being secure. You may know abstractly that it isn’t actually secure, but this does not greatly affect the feeling and the sense of reality of this whole experience. - Changing Consciousness

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A neurological fact?

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Obviously. Whatever happens to the brain and nervous system must show up at the level of neurology or physiology - and this is, in principle at least, discoverable by third person (public) science.

It’s not so much “therein lies the rub” Rick, as - “You could have made your question more clear right from the start instead of talking us this wild goose chase with Pablo and his purported experience of something he thinks was mysterious”! :slightly_smiling_face:

All you are really asking is how can I discern whether what I experience is an actuality or not?

This goes back to your more general stated interest; namely:

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After discussing about “fact”, “truth”, “reality” I feel that somewhere inside there is an assumption that I “Know” is hidden in our discussions, which is again holding me inside to some sort of structured way of thinking.

What you people think? if I say belief is also important aspect in our thought process, apart from fact, truth and reality.

What is the role of belief in this conflicted society? Why should we believe in our life? Or why shouldn’t we believe? What is the role of belief, in scientists and inventors life dynamic in past?

This discussion on truth and fact are purely logical, which might sound satisfying to us as we understood something on it. What about the unknown, surrounding our own life?

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I advice you to listen to the complete discussions between David Bohm and Krishnamurt from 1975 which are partly publiced in Truth and Actuality and The limits of Thought but the complete discussions are back than withold by Mary Lutyens.

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Hi sir,
I have seen them an year ago, and recently I have discussed them in this thread. I got a doubt, and I started questioning from a different perspective and shared it in this thread such that someone might give an opinion to them.

Thanks for that.

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How could you have seen them?
There are only audio tapes available.

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Yeah they are audio tapes, as you said :grinning:

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I think we talked about this a couple of weeks ago on this thread, but there is a difference between believing or knowing something to be a fact, and being absolutely certain of that knowledge.

Knowledge can never be absolutely certain - only truth (perceivable through insight) can be certain.

For example, I believe that New York is a city in North America, but I do not know this for certain, because:

  1. I have never been to New York; and
  2. I am not currently in New York myself.

So, in some sense, my knowledge of New York is a belief that I have, based on widespread consensus, video evidence, the independent reports of people I know, etc. All knowledge involves this kind of pragmatic or functional belief.

If something is factual, actual, then it obviously exists independently of what I think about it, what I believe - like the sun above my head as I write this sentence. But I do not have access to all the facts that exist in the world, and so for most scientific, historical, geographic (etc) facts I depend to a great extent on third-person evidence, on consensus, on some kind of reasonable justification for believing something to be a fact.

But such belief is purely pragmatic and functional, it has no psychological significance. I have never looked inside a black hole directly, so I have to rely on what scientists have to say about black holes - i.e. on scientific consensus. That consensus can change as scientists make new discoveries, but I have no strong reasons to doubt my belief that black holes exist. Right?

However, my belief in God, in the Self, in the superiority of my nation, in communism, Jesus Christ, etc etc, is psychologically motivated. Do you see the difference? I want it to be true that my nation is the greatest, because then I feel powerful, I feel safe, I feel secure.

So psychological beliefs are motivated not by pragmatic, functional consensus, by evidence, by reason - but by desire, hope, fear. It doesn’t matter to me that they are actually true or false, it matters only that I - and other people - believe them to be true or false. So the belief becomes more important than the fact.

Do you see the difference?

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I am talking about psychological beliefs purely then, not the functional ones as you explained in the present context.

The kind of beliefs I am talking about is quite near to these kinds of things then, which are purely based on desire and hope, which are the root cause of craziness in human beings.

  1. For example, in a wrestling match, if player A has not lost a single match in his career and player B had some losses in his career. What is the driving force for player B, to play the game? (win or lose is not the matter for our discussion at present)

  2. Consider Elon, when he started the firm SpaceX. What kind of belief is that?

  3. What kind of belief makes a person terrorist?

There are many different situations at which belief either breaks or makes the person’s life, which I cannot talk about in detail but all I want to say is that belief is there in our society and they are having strong impact us directly or indirectly.

When should we believe in ourselves, while living in this conflicted society? Why should we believe and what makes us to go in that direction?

Now, I am having a feeling that belief can make both wonders and disasters. I do not know, Jiddu had talked about these things in his talks. In the present thread we talked about the facts, truth and reality to some extent which sounded scientific to me. I felt that we should also talk about the aspects in us at which our actions doesn’t sound logical when we try to explain it to someone, which is quite opposite to scientific analysis coming from the same mind.

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But small items can make a huge difference, as whith hearing or seeing! One atom out of order creates the atom bomb. So the wording is very important. The whole scientific world is more an educated gues than it is the wording of facts and the wording of the boundery of the so called laws is mostly forgotten to mention. David Bohm is for years banned by his fellow scientists because they did not understand his hidden variables proposal.

Misunderstanding is possible a belief or a fact and time is the greath disturbance in this matter.:rofl:

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Okay, I do not know about this thing. :slightly_smiling_face:

I think, I understood the complication of mind what you wanted to explain and it is hilarious.