In order for something to be true, how many people are required to believe in it?
In other words, must at least one person believe in an idea in order for that idea to qualify as an idea of truth?
Perhaps it takes more than one person to believe in an idea in order for it to be true. I understand this is one of the illusions of consensus. Ideas are more likely to be seen as true when others believe those ideas.
In the group mind shared by most of society, truth is what the group mind agrees on.
Here's one of my favorite quotes:
To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men,— that is genius. Speak your latent conviction, and it shall be the universal sense; for the inmost in due time becomes the outmost,— and our first thought is rendered back to us by the trumpets of the Last Judgment.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson : Self Reliance
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