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"If a tree falls in a forest ... does it make a sound?"

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Last night I got into a discussion with someone about the classic "if a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound" ? This carried on for much too long. I reasoned "yes". He was undecided for the most part, slightly leaning towards "no". I suppose our disagreement had a lot to do with our definitions of "sound". From my understanding, sound waves exist independently of someone hearing them. Drawn from his definition of the word (Vibrations transmitted through an elastic solid or a liquid or gas...capable of being detected by human organs of hearing), a person would have to be in the forest to perceive the sound. But I think reality exists past our brains. It just is, whether or not someone is there to perceive it. That was the gist.

Anyone like to expound?

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The elements of sound exist apart from a perceiver, but sound does not. "Sound" results from the interaction between the external world and our senses; not from either one of them alone. The concept "sound" refers to the actual experience of hearing, not the elements that make it up.

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The elements of sound exist apart from a perceiver, but sound does not.  "Sound" results from the interaction between the external world and our senses; not from either one of them alone.  The concept "sound" refers to the actual experience of hearing, not the elements that make it up.

Or another way of looking at this:

If there were two men in the forest, one with perfect hearing, the other absolutely deaf, does the falling tree make a sound?

To one of the men, yes. To the other, definitely, no.

As DPW states a falling tree makes a sound wave, not a sound.

Brent

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As the setup of the question already states that no one is present to perceive the sound I interpret the question:

does it make a sound

to mean, does the falling tree produce sound waves. If the question was "is there a sound" the answer would be no.

As stated I think the answer is yes, the falling tree does make the elements required for a sound.

:D

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"if a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound"?

Maybe yes, maybe no. If you had asked "if a tree falls in a forest and no being hears it, does it make a sound?", the answer would be no. The word "no one" implies a human. Animals have auditory systems, so if there is a bear in the woods, there answer could be yes. What a bear is doing in the woods, I shall not say.

Analogously, if a traffic light in the woods is stuck on so-called "green" but nothing is there to perceive it, does the traffic light still give off a green light? Hyper-technically, the traffic light emits EM radiation of a particular wavelength that whacks people in the eye which causes the percept of a color "green" (in some people). If you say that the light "is still green" rather than say "emits EM radiation of a wavelength that would, if seen, cause the percept 'green' in most people", I'd understand what you meant. What's most important to understand is that the percept is quite different from the physical underpinning of the percept. But common usage of words rarely makes that explicit, hence the belief that such and such a book "is red".

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Facts are: there is no "perceived soundwave" but there is a soundwave. Stated differently there is a "potential sound" in the sense that if anyone was near enough, he would have heard a sound. The important philosophical point here is that A = A, irrespective of whether man perceives A, or not either because he's not there or because he's on drugs.

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Ahh...the age-old question that inevitably surfaces whenever someone finds out that you study philosophy. It's actually a very interesting "ice breaker" of a question.

Sound, properly understood, is a form of perception. This is a take on the issue that is quite distinctive to Objectivism so it takes some explaining. Sound is not just "out there" nor is it just "in here"; sound is the interaction between our ears and variations in air pressure. You can't separate one side of the interaction from the other and then ask, "where is the sound"? Dr. Peikoff explains this much more eloquently:

The dominant tradition among philosophers has defined only two possibilities in regard to sensory qualities: they are "in the object" or "in the mind." The former is taken to subsume qualities independent of man's means of perception; the latter is taken to mean "subjective and/or unreal." Ayn Rand regards this alternative as defective. A quality that derives from an interaction between external objects and man's perceptual apparatus belongs to neither category. Such a quality—e.g., color—is not a dream or hallucination; it is not "in the mind" apart from the object; it is man's form of grasping the object. Nor is the quality "in the object" apart from man; it is man's form of grasping the object. By definition, a form of perception cannot be forced into either category. Since it is the product of an interaction (in Plato's terms, of a "marriage") between two entities, object and apparatus, it cannot be identified exclusively with either. Such products introduce a third alternative: they are not object alone or perceiver alone, but object-as-perceived.

This question is a trap that tries to get you to sit on either side of the intrinsicist/subjectivist fence. Instead, one should use this question to present the Objectivist distinction between object and form.

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sound is the interaction between our ears and variations in air pressure.

No, I think that's wrong because it leaves out the mind. The ear is a physical transduction device and only initiates low-end neural activity. Perception does not take place in the ear. Properly, the interaction is in the auditory cortex or, if you want to be more general, the auditory system, but not just the ear.

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Oh my god I hate that Canadian-Cockburn song! How about if the fall occurs in the Amazon, and there is a radio transmitor there so that one can hear it in Toronto?

Sound is sound!

Philosophy, especially today, will undoubtedly say that "yes" you hear the tree falling!

Americo.

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  • 10 months later...
Ahh...the age-old question that inevitably surfaces whenever someone finds out that you study philosophy. It's actually a very interesting "ice breaker" of a question.

Sound, properly understood, is a form of perception. This is a take on the issue that is quite distinctive to Objectivism so it takes some explaining. Sound is not just "out there" nor is it just "in here"; sound is the interaction between our ears and variations in air pressure. You can't separate one side of the interaction from the other and then ask, "where is the sound"? Dr. Peikoff explains this much more eloquently:

This question is a trap that tries to get you to sit on either side of the intrinsicist/subjectivist fence. Instead, one should use this question to present the Objectivist distinction between object and form.

Hello.

I have this to add and I thought u might want to read it since you had the best argument.

Taking into account the new advances in subatomic structure analysis and x-ray telescopes it could be said that the universe is forever becoming more complex and 'objective' in the way we see it, if only through computer screens. But this ever-expanding view of the realm we reside in seems to only enforce the fact that everything we encounter is merely the perceived experience of 'reality'. So if everything is infinitely complex and ever changing how can we hope to define anything. As we have evolved as a species we have been able to develop our senses in order to experience the world around us, but compared to the best animalian senses I.e. Dog's smell, spiders awareness of surroundings we pale in comparison.

William Blake "If the Doors of Perception are cleansed, things would appear as they are, infinite.’ The human mind is a complex information processor and some people are bound by many things that cloud their ability to view anything objectively, like DNA traits and behaviour disorders or when someone tastes something that makes them violently sick and they can never enjoy that food again.

I guess what I’m trying to get at is that people have to view things from all the angles they possibly can, and still we will fall miserably short of experiencing the physical universe as it truly is. So if we already can't see things as they truly are we should perceive things with thoughts that aren't bound or influenced by stupid things like politics, popular opinion, trends, fashion, fads, Big business and ADVERTISING, consumerism, sex, greed.

The list goes on. People will always attempt to define and control theories and ideas. The institutions and government on top of religions and beliefs on top the nature and nurtured traits that help form our early growth form a layer of webs over our consciousness so thick we can only hope to use our insight to see through them as clearly as we can.

Please reply

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have this to add and I thought u might want to read it since you had the best argument.

Taking into account the new advances in subatomic structure analysis and x-ray telescopes it could be said that the universe is forever becoming more complex and 'objective' in the way we see it, if only through computer screens. But this ever-expanding view of the realm we reside in seems to only enforce the fact that everything we encounter is merely the perceived experience of 'reality'. So if everything is infinitely complex and ever changing how can we hope to define anything. As we have evolved as a species we have been able to develop our senses in order to experience the world around us, but compared to the best animalian senses I.e. Dog's smell, spiders awareness of surroundings we pale in comparison.

William Blake  "If the Doors of Perception are cleansed, things would appear as they are, infinite.’ The human mind is a complex information processor and some people are bound by many things that cloud their ability to view anything objectively, like DNA traits and behaviour disorders or when someone tastes something that makes them violently sick and they can never enjoy that food again.

I guess what I’m trying to get at is that people have to view things from all the angles they possibly can, and still we will fall miserably short of experiencing the physical universe as it truly is. So if we already can't see things as they truly are we should perceive things with thoughts that aren't bound or influenced by stupid things like politics, popular opinion, trends, fashion, fads, Big business and ADVERTISING, consumerism, sex, greed.

The list goes on. People will always attempt to define and control theories and ideas. The institutions and government on top of religions and beliefs on top the nature and nurtured traits that help form our early growth form a layer of webs over our consciousness so thick we can only hope to use our insight to see through them as clearly as we can.

Please reply

I can see why you chose your screen name.

If it is true that no matter what we do, "we will fall miserably short of experiencing the physical universe as it truly is", then this statement must apply to you as well. So, if you have "failed miserably" at perceiving reality, how do you know that what you write above is true? By your own admission, you can never know what is true, i.e. you know nothing.

So, I accept your assertion that you know nothing. Fortunately, that implies nothing about the rest of us.

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::dons Moderator hat:: Michael, I shouldn't have to warn you about quoting the entire post directly above yours. Behave yourself. ::doffs Moderator hat::

In the philosophy class that I took in college, which had an amazingly good professor, he addressed this question as an issue of semantics. You can argue about it all day because it depends on you and your opponent having different definitions for what a sound is. So the PROPER response is: if you define sound as being this then yes, but if you define sound as being this other thing then no. Once you've identified that, further argumentation becomes pointless.

You can, of course, argue endlessly over what the definition of a "sound" is and whether the event that WOULD cause an observer to hear a sound constitutes a sound or whether you have to have an observer yada yada yada.

Clearly the term "sound" lacks the adequate degree of specificity to handle this discussion and you just have to specify your meaning with more precision.

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I guess what I’m trying to get at is that people have to view things from all the angles they possibly can, and still we will fall miserably short of experiencing the physical universe as it truly is.

This is total epistemological default. What IS the universe "as it really is?" If we're not perceiving the universe, then what ARE we perceiving?!

The answer is that we perceive the universe precisely as it actually is . . . things "as they really are" is such a completely uselessly redundant and pointless statement that I find it humorous. Chaos Realm, you have forwarded a naive bastardization of Kant and the "two tables" problem, which is thoroughly addressed in Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology and Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand.

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Last night I got into a discussion with someone about the classic "if a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound" ? This carried on for much too long. I reasoned "yes". He was undecided for the most part, slightly leaning towards "no". I suppose our disagreement had a lot to do with our definitions of "sound". From my understanding, sound waves exist independently of someone hearing them. Drawn from his definition of the word (Vibrations transmitted through an elastic solid or a liquid or gas...capable of being detected by human organs of hearing), a person would have to be in the forest to perceive the sound.  But I think reality exists past our brains. It just is, whether or not someone is there to perceive it. That was the gist.

Anyone like to expound?

Metaphysics, the law of identity. If the tree did not make a sound when it fell, where did its kinetic energy falling down go? The energy obviously did not all transfer into friction or heat, but also to sound energy.

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When a tree falls in a forest and no one is there to hear it, does its impact with the ground produce vibrations in the air somewhere in the 20hz-20khz range? Yes; Absolutely everything we know about trees, the ground, and sounds indicates that it would. How is there even any debate over this?

Your professor can say that it can be argued all day when people have different definitions for "sound," but then, by that standard, so can anything. Let's debate: Is the Earth round? I say no, because I define "round" as "dark purple." Discussion is then impossible. The only way for the tree-falling question to be debated is if one side of the debate insists that a falling tree's impact with the ground does not produce vibrations in the air with frequencies in the 20hz-20khz range... in which case the burden of proving so would be on that person, and good luck to them.

I always thought that the "if a tree falls..." question was usually brought up in a philosophical context, rather than a scientific one, or as a way to deliberately trick/confuse people with semantics, as some of the responses here seem to indicate. By this I mean, when someone asks that question, their intention is usually to inspire a debate between the primacy of consciousness vs. the primacy of existence. As we know, primacy of existence wins.

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Your professor can say that it can be argued all day when people have different definitions for "sound," but then, by that standard, so can anything.  Let's debate: Is the Earth round?  I say no, because I define "round" as "dark purple."  Discussion is then impossible.
The one important difference is that nobody defines "round" as "dark purple", whereas sound is often defined as a percept and not just as an acoustic wave. Under the former definition, sound requires a hearer.
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The one important difference is that nobody defines "round" as "dark purple", whereas sound is often defined as a percept and not just as an acoustic wave. Under the former definition, sound requires a hearer.

The important difference is that those who define "sound" presupposing a hearer are using the primacy of consciousness to do so. There is no other way. A "hearer" implies that a consciousness capable of hearing is available, otherwise there is no sound. In other words: consciousness make sound "sound", not the vibration waves that exist in the universe.

It is a good question to ask if you want to know someone's basic epistemology. Any premise they have here will have far reaching consequences for any other philosophic premise they may try to integrate.

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The important difference is that those who define "sound" presupposing a hearer are using the primacy of consciousness to do so.  There is no other way.  A "hearer" implies that a consciousness capable of hearing is available, otherwise there is no sound.  In other words: consciousness make sound "sound", not the vibration waves that exist in the universe.
Not at all. "Sound" is especially defined in perceptual terms by people, like myself, with a professional need to distinguish the psychological entity from the physical cause of that percept. And trust me, I am not a Kantian.
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... distinguish the psychological entity from the physical cause of that percept...

I have no idea what that means. There is no psychological component of sound. There may be a psychological effect caused by hearing a particular sound, but the physchological effect is not the sound itself. One doesn't hear something differently because of psychology. One hears only the physical waves impacting the ear. Anything further interpretation done by the perceiver is just that: an evaluation, and not a component of "sound" as such.

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I have no idea what that means.  There is no psychological component of sound.  There may be a psychological effect caused by hearing a particular sound, but the physchological effect is not the sound itself.  One doesn't hear something differently because of psychology.  One hears only the physical waves impacting the ear.  Anything further interpretation done by the perceiver is just that: an evaluation, and not a component of "sound" as such.
Au contraire, there is nothing but psychological component to sound. Acoustic waves are not the same as sound. Acoustic waves cause sound, when they hammer the ear and cease being acoustic waves. The signal is transduced to the brain as as electrical signal, and what is heard is sound. You don't hear acoustic waves, you hear sounds. And there are no acoustic waves in the brain or even past the cochlea. There are higher level conceptual happenings that may involve "interpretation", but I'm not talking about that level of sound processing. I'm just talking about the sensory level, when the stuff hits the nervous system. BTW, psychology is not restricted to just philosophical ruminations and Freudian sex stuff -- it also deals with the basic brain interface with the real world. I know that the psychobabble people have corrupted the interesting stuff to the point that one might think that all of psychology is junk, but it isn't.
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Isn't the proper term for what happens inside the human ear/nervous system/mind hearing, not sound?

As an analogy, what we do with our eyes is called seeing, while the thing we perceive is called light. One would not say that the eyes and the optic nerve create light.

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Isn't the proper term for what happens inside the human ear/nervous system/mind hearing, not sound?

I agree, I think that the terminology within this post has become a bit warped.

sound is acoustic waves

hearing is perception

The fact that a falling object, on earth, which impacts a surface (given a non-vaccum enviornment, the forces subsumed by motion, and the law of COE) makes a sound, cannot be avoided. This example does not presuppose a 'hearer'.

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