Collective Consciousness, Fact, and Objective Truth (with Adam Fletcher and Jim Ashby)

Analytic Philosophy: Is the statement, "there is objective truth" objectively true?

• It may be true, but is it objectively true?
• Or is it only your opinion?

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Adam Fletcher, Interested human.

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I think there could be an objective answer to this question that could depend on two things:
1. If it could be proven a collective conscious exists i.e. if all thought and vibrational information in the universe was somehow connected via a single source, then a truth would be objective and undeniable as it would be true to everything via the single source.
2. If a collective conscious does not exist and everything is not connected then an individual truth would be true to only the individual, as its personal truth could only come through its own experiences and no individual experience could be shared. Hence an individual truth is only how it is seen by the individual. Therefore no objectivity due to individual understanding of any given object or event.  Makes sense?

Jonathan Doolin

Whether there is a collective consciousness or not, I think it should be argued that we do share a common space-time, and some of the events within that space-time are a matter of objective truth.

I just posted a comment under my own answer regarding this very point, I think. There should be a distinction made between "objective truth" and "observer-dependent-coordinates of events"

Just because I do not see an event happen, and you do see the event happen doesn't mean that the event didn't happen for me.  It just means that it happened at a different location, relative to me.

Adam Fletcher

Yes I agree as humans we share a common belief that we exist in a certain space and time. On the grand universal scale you could also call it an individual species common truth. 1+1=2 is an objective truth to us as humans because we have taught ourselves to identify with this set of symbols as a truth by which all else can be measured against.
Would an alien specie born of completey different circumstances agree?. I don't know because we have nothing to compare our human truths with. Hence the dilemma of a truely definate answer.

Jonathan Doolin

Here... Watch this video, if you have time, describing a truly amazing number called Wau.

The question is, do the descriptions of that number, affect its quantity?  You may have a symbol for that number, but regardless of your symbol for the number wau, it's meaning will always be the same.  You cannot change a truth by giving it a different name.

Adam Fletcher

Thanxs will do.

Jonathan Doolin

The first notion I had of what Vi Hart was getting at came with the sight of [math]e^{2 i \pi}[/math] because I know how to  calculate this using Euler's formula ,

Adam Fletcher

Just watched it and all I can say is WOW! Or should that be WAU! I'm struggling  to comprehend what was said but I sort of get it. However, the question still remains,  what if an advanced alien had calculated life according to a different set of rules? What if there was another dimension where everything was opposite? Would wau still be objectively true? I was reading on science alert that matter can escape from a black hole. Einstiens theory states nothing can escape a black hole and this was supposed to be an objective truth.

Jonathan Doolin

There are two dictionary definitions of the word "truth"

**Defintion 1. Truth: **that which is true or in accordance with fact or reality.

**Definition 2. Truth: **a fact or belief that is accepted as true.

The first definition here is objective truth.  The second definition is what I am calling "ironic truth" or "the liar's truth"

The scientific method seeks the truth, but not by making use of Definition 2 of the truth.  Scientists should make a distinction between "Physical model" and "Physical Law"... 

The physical model is our impression of the objective truth.  It is not the "objective truth" itself. 

The scientific method SHOULD be a striving to improve the quality of our impressions of objective truth... not in redefining objective truth to conform to our accepted beliefs.

If Einstein accepted that nothing could escape from a black hole, it was his impression that nothing can escape a black hole*.  If Hawking showed that something can get out of a black hole**, it was his impression that energy could escape a black hole.

But whether their impression was correct is based on the validity of all of their underlying assumptions, and their use of proper logic in deducing their conclusion. 

*I think his reasoning had something to do with the Pauli Exclusion Principle was defeated by gravity... or that time stops at the event horizon of a black hole.

**I think his reasoning had something to do with the second law of thermodynamics.

Jim Ashby 1 vote

 by James Hollomon

It seems to me that your concept of truth, in dependency #2, is subjective. If truth is subjective, it is whatever you want it to be. I think the word for that is 'opinion' not truth.

All else being equal, if something is true, it's always true. Sure, you can use the word in a subjective way (your truth, his truth, etc.), but these 'personal truths' are distinct from truths that can be discovered and confirmed as true.

The X-Files catchphrase: "The truth is out there." is an invitation to discover what it is. In other words, we don't know what the truth is until we discover (verify as fact) what it is. The only objective truths we know of are facts. We may suspect or theorize what the truth is but we never know until we confirm it. This is true in science, philosophy, jurisprudence, child-rearing . . . everything.

An unverified truth is a subjective opinion.

Jonathan Doolin 1 vote

 by Jim Ashby

Jim, what do you think about the existence of events in the future? 

Is an event which has not yet happened always true, or does it become true at the time that it happens?

Can our beliefs and opinions affect whether or not that event becomes true?

Jim Ashby 1 vote

 by Adam Fletcher

What about these future events relate to truth? Their occurrence? You can use the word truth in place of better words but doing so conflates meanings unnecessarily. I can say that it's a truth the sun will rise tomorrow but that's a trivialization of the word, 'truth'.

Jonathan Doolin 1 vote

 by Jim Ashby

Can you give me the two meanings of truth you think I am conflating? 

The fact of an event's occurence makes it true.  If an event never happened, then it is not true to say it happened.

If you say it is truth that the sun will rise tomorrow, we don't know that... There could be a distant hypernova whose neutrino blast could disintegrate our system sometime in the night.  It's unlikely, but we can't know for sure until the event actually happens.

If you say the sun rose this morning, you are giving an "observer-dependent truth"

According to observer dependent coordinates, yes, the sun rose this morning relative to the observer's earth-bound-coordinates.  But according to sidereal (star-bound) coordinates, the sun did not rise, but rather the earth rotated the observer's position toward the sun.

"The sun rose this morning, with respect to my horizon" would be true because it specifies the experience of the observer. 

A more universal truth that "The earth orbits the sun as it rotates on its axis"   but it is true because it specifies a relationship between the earth and the sun, using the most relevant objects in the description (rather than an observer located on the surface of the earth, it uses the whole body of the earth.)

"The sun rose this morning" would be ambiguious, because it implies a universal truth but actually conveys an observer dependent truth.

"The sun will rise tomorrow" would be an observer-dependent prediction of future truth.

Jim Ashby

I didn't say you're conflating two meanings of the word, 'truth', I said you're conflating the meaning of truth by substituting the word for better words.

In your case, you're addressing temporal differences between past, present, and future. So I said that: "I can say that it's a truth the sun will rise tomorrow but that's a trivialization of the word, 'truth'." . . . because the phrase, "it's a truth", has been substituted for 'I'm confident', or "I'm virtually certain", or any other terminology that might confuse the matter with extraneous concepts.

Okay . . . how about this . . .?

Words often have multiple definitions/meanings. A common informal fallacy is to conflate multiple meanings of the same word. The OP question deals with philosophical truth. If you want to relate a future event to philosophical truth, it's not good enough to simply cite a potential event: you need to cite how that event relates to philosophical truth.

Jonathan Doolin 1 vote

 by Jim Ashby

>>I didn't say you're conflating two meanings of the word, 'truth',

But I was (though not intentionally)

>>I said you're conflating the meaning of truth by substituting the word for better words.

But I wasn't.  (Edit:  Or maybe I was... I had no idea that the meaning of the word "truth" was so corrupted,  In any case, I cannot now make the distinction between "conflating two meanings of the word, 'truth' and 'conflating the meaning of truth'.  So to acknowledge one, and to deny the other doesn't make any sense. )

There are two dictionary definitions of the word "truth"

**Defintion 1. Truth: **that which is true or in accordance with fact or reality.

**Definition 2. Truth: **a fact or belief that is accepted as true.

When I said "truth" I meant definition 1: That which is true or in accordance with fact or reality. 

Definition 2 could be ironic, because "accepting" could mean "giving credit on a test. even though it was actually an incorrect answer" or "believed by one individual, even though it is false" or "accepted by scientists to be true, even though they are mistaken."  Definition 2 permits false things to be labeled "true"

I would call the first definition "Objective Truth" and the second definition deserves another name, such as "Our impression of the truth". 

In my opinion, to define "truth" as "our impression of the truth" is not just a trivialization of the word "truth" but a travesty of language. 

This definition allows a liar to make a false claim, and if anyone accepts what they are saying, they get to call it the truth, because if a lie is accepted, it is the truth, according to this ironic definition of truth.

Jim Ashby

Yes, I only speak of truth as objective truth. Perhaps you haven't read my answer, which explains my position more fully. If you have read it, I've since updated it to make it more complete. Jim Ashby's answer to Analytic Philosophy: Is the statement, "there is objective truth" objectively true?

Jonathan Doolin 1 vote

 by Jim Ashby

>>What about these future events relate to truth? Their occurrence?

We cannot change anything in our past by changing our beliefs, definitions, We may or may not have a "collective consciousness" but we do have a "collective past" and this collective past is the objective truth; or objective reality.

There may be other parts of objective truth as well; for instance Physical Law, such as conservation of energy, and momentum.  Newton's Laws of Motion.  Kirchhoff's Laws, Maxwell's Laws.  Or the lambda-cold-dark-matter model of cosmology***. 

Whatever physics we've actually got right are matters of objective truth... Whatever physical laws we've got wrong are not a matter of objective truth, no matter how many people have accepted it. 

Our opinions, values, descriptions, and beliefs cannot affect the past, nor can they affect the physical laws. 

However, my point is our opinions, values, descriptions, and beliefs, can and will affect the decisions we make in the present, and hence will affect the occurrence of events in the future.

So getting back to Adam's "Dependency #2" we don't really need to worry about it***...  His dependency #2 is predicated on "everything is not connected"... 

His dependency #1 was "If all thought and vibrational information in the universe was somehow connected via a single source..." 

All thought and vibrational information in the universe isconnected via a single source:  The past. A shared history.*** 

The past is an undeniable objective truth through which we are all connected. 

Adam described a "collective consciousness" 

One could surely say the "current state" of the universe represents a collective state.  The grand and mysterious "Now" which lies somewhere between the past and the future.  Arguably, given the mystery of quantum mechanics "spooky action at a distance" and "entanglement" one might reasonably hypothesize that "Now" is a collective consciousness.

Jim Ashby

Thanks for the clarifications.

First of all, I'm a novice (if that) with quantum mechanics. So much of what follows might more accurately be described as impressions rather than opinions.

Quantum entanglement ("spooky action at a distance") seems less spooky when you consider that everything in the universe began from a singularity (the Big Bang) at Planck scales. Everything began 'quantum-entangled'. The fact that quantum entanglement still exists after billions of years and the immense expansion of space is mind-bending to me.

The thing about quantum theory is that it's so counter-intuitive because we're not really aware of the subatomic substrate of reality that is the quantum realm. We are aware of only the macro realm of objects (but actually, we do experience the quantum realm: sight, via photons at photoreceptors; smell, via ionic shifts at olfactory receptors; etc.). The macro realm we experience is stable and predictable. The unseen micro realm of quantum mechanics, on the other hand, is chaotic and unpredictable. Although Einstein was the one who, with his proposal of light quanta (photons), laid the groundwork for quantum mechanics, he was never convinced that the future of physics should be built upon it, regardless of its amazing efficacy.

I'm no scientist but I can certainly sympathize with Einstein's reluctance to embrace quantum mechanics: it does seem to lead to wild and nonsensical conclusions. But there's no denying the efficacy of quantum mechanics: we're surrounded by evidence of it in the form of modern communications and computing technologies.

Secondly, I distinguish between truth and fact. I see facts as a subset of truths. They're truths we have verified. Truths, like facts, assert only what's real. But we don't know what's real (true) until we've verified it. In other words, we can't know truths, we can only know facts. We might have a hunch or suspicion or conviction that something is true . . . but we don't know it's true until we've verified it. Until that happens, it's just an opinion, at best. Whatever it is, it either exists or it doesn't. But I'm not sure if this applies to the quantum realm. It seems to have its own rules.

So, when I speak of truth and facts, I'm speaking only about the classical, macro, realm. I don't know how order emerges from chaos: how the macro realm can be fixed, yet the quantum substrate can be random. I am virtually certain there's an objective reality out there that can be known and understood -- but not absolutely -- and that the inanimate universe unfolds in predictable ways.

But we are not inanimate. We are animate beings in an inanimate universe. Until the advent of life, the universe was 100% inanimate. As intelligent human beings who can (within limits) understand, anticipate, and prepare for causality, the future of things within our purview is not as predictable as the inanimate realm outside our purview.

To my thinking, the unidirectional arrow of time means the the past is not a source but is, rather, a history. You used the two words 'source' and 'history' interchangeably but I believe they are distinct, albeit related. And since we're dealing with dependency #2 here (no collective consciousness), the past is a legacy (history), not a wellspring (source).

Yes, human actions in the now will influence events in the future but they won't determine those events. The human contribution is but a small part of our reality. Sure, in some ways, we can determine the future: city planning, for instance, can determine the general layout of the city (if all goes well) . . . but not which companies will move to town or where they'll erect buildings or what products they'll make or which services they'll offer and how these will require changes to the city plan.

Yes, the past is an undeniable objective truth and the future is built upon it. But that doesn't mean the potential of  the future is fixed (not that you said it is). The potential future is constantly changing because of new discoveries. When the unknown becomes known, the natural response is to adapt.

Besides, how can the past represent a collective consciousness when most folk are barely aware of it? I can accept the idea of collective consciousness in the form of trends in popular music, fashion, fads, etc. But as some kind of unifying force or phenomenon based on the past? I don't know . . . why can't it be that the 'now' we're born into is more advanced than was the now of those born before us . . . and less advanced than will be the now of those born after us?

How does collective consciousness enter the picture? How does it change anything? Won't any truth discovered and verified as a fact turn out to have always been true? The only difference being that it's been shifted from the list of truths to the list of facts?

Jonathan Doolin

(1) My impression of spooky action at a distance of quantum mechanics is when you have two particles traveling in different, or even opposite directions, which are in an undetermined state until the time that a measurement is taken.  At the time that the measurement is taken at one end, the state variables become known at the far end.  Whether those variables are actually measured at the far end are still unknown, but you know what they will be if they are measured.

(2) You said "I distinguish between truth and fact. I see facts as a subset of truths. They're truths we have verified."  Your definition of "fact" is dependent on who you include in "we" and how they define "verified."  A jury of 12 may agree that some testimony is a fact, but does that make it a subset of truth?

Only if you use the second definition of truth is it necessarily a subset of truth.  Otherwise truth and fact are overlapping.  Also, "fact" varies depending on who you include in "we"

(3) Is the past a source, or a legacy?  Of course, the past is legacy and history.  But it is *part* of the source, as well.  It leads up to the current state...  I plan, soon on writing a paper about this topic about the nature of the present, past, and future.  You can see the general idea here:

You say "unidirectional arrow of time" but we each have a temporal facing, based on our velocity through space.  The arrow of time is shared, because everyone on earth is moving very close to the same velocity

(4) You say "human actions in the now will influence events in the future but they won't determine those events."  Yes, that is what I am saying...  But this "fact", okay we are both witnesses... 

...  When Jesus said 2000 years ago "with faith the size of a mustard seed, you can move mountains" he did not state precisely how faith should be implemented,  If one desired to interpret Jesus words as true, it would not be hard to do so; but only by giving "faith" a definition of "confidence in what one hopes for" because when the railroads were built, people said "Okay, we're just going to need to move these mountains out of the way," and they had confidence, and they did it...

(5) Collective consciousness is your description of fact.  When a narrative about history becomes accepted by "we" it becomes, by your definition, "fact."  But what about when two "we"'s disagree? 

My idea is that we should seek such a common narrative--A compromise (lose-lose), or transcendant (win-win) narrative of history... where the interpretation of history is analyzed with a rubric of both the scientific method, and by faith.

For example, this is a sample of what I have come up with in regards to Christianity:

If a law said "if a woman commits adultery, she must be stoned to death" and a woman comes before a jury and says, "Yes, I am with child, but this child was not born of adultery, but of immaculate conception" your choices are to accept her testimony as fact, or to have her stoned to death... Which do you do?

The jury chooses to accept her testimony as fact, but not necessarily as truth

"The Torah" established fact by whether the testimony of two witnesses agree.

Between Job's testimony about God,(Job 42:5-6) and John's testimony about Jesus (John 2:23-25) we can see two witnesses that say seeing God makes a man despise himself, and that Jesus does not entrust himself with those who believe in him, because he knows what is in their hearts.

But the book of Job has God betting against Satan that Job will never curse God.  He gives Satan complete power over everything Job owns...  The fact that Job comes to own a whole lot after he says "I see God, therefore I  despise myself"  What, then was the denouement of God's bet with Satan?  Did Job honor Lord God, or did Job honor lord Satan?

In the book of John, "many people saw the signs Jesus was performing and believed in his name."  John says Jesus did not entrust himself to them.  Did Jesus entrust himself to those who believed in his name, or to the people who believed in histeaching?

We have this in our collective consciousness, because these two witnesses, Job and John, seem to have given testimony that God despises us.  But through careful analysis of what our collective consciousness admits as "fact"

"We" are divided then, into two groups.  Those who accept as fact that God despises us, and those who reject as fact that God exists. 

Yet if God were defined as "The currently unknown phenomena that created the universe" it seems difficult to deny that at least this concept exists. To ask whether that phenomena "loves us" may be meaningless, but to believe that that phenomena that created the universe "despises us" is surely worse than meaningless.

"We" do not share a collective consciousness, because "we" do not agree about what are facts.  If "we" shared a common narrative about what the facts are... then we could also claim to have a collective consciousness.