If a tree falls in a forest.......

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
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If a tree falls in a forest, and nobody is around… does it still make a sound?

I remember hearin this question years ago… and i was immidiatly like… of course it does, i mean just because a persons not standing there doesnt mean that there is no sound right? i mean slap a computer there wif a mic or watever and it will hear it…right?

but i dunno i was driven today and i somehow got thinkin about it some more. i mean. is there sound without human beings? of course there is still vibrations of air and stuff… but does the actual sound exist without the human to hear it?

i dont expect to win this argument… in fact with further thought ive even changed my mind about it… but i am curious as to others thoughts.

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If there is nobody around to hear the “sound” then there is no sound…

Come to think of it, this question was in a Simpsons episode…lol. Gotta love it.

Is there ‘time’ without humans? Same thing. I would argue there is not. We have no concept of what we dont know. We cant know something we dont know.

Let the arguing begin

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I agree with both previous posts, since the words used were created by us, so biasely we attribute the meanings universally we usually don’t stop to think of the everyday problematic structures of thinking we get into between concept and reality.

In reference to the example of this tree falling, if a dog hears it does it make a sound? I too would say ‘no’, since a dog is not aware of the concept of ‘sound’, since we cannot know what it is like for a dog to hear - the concept of hearing is applied to both dogs and humans, but we cannot say that the way a human would ‘hear’ the ‘sound’ of a tree falling would also be heard in the same way by a dog ‘hearing’ the ‘sound’ of a tree falling.

Like Frighter said, if we take the words and meanings and apply them universally, then the answer is that the tree does make a sound because a tree falling creates sound waves regardless of whether someone is there to hear it or not.

The answer depends on perception of the question, and the assumptions one takes into account of what is being asked.

What’s your take?

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I think you’re simply delaying the question. The question reposed would be, “Are there still vibrations of air and stuff if there’s no one there to observe it?”

The concept sound and the concept sound wave are both treated “universally” because that’s the way, the only way, they can work. They don’t have any predictive value if they don’t. Whether or not a dog has the concept ‘sound’ is irrelevant to the concept sound, it’s already built-in the same way we can say that a mountain exists even if nobody’s looking at it: The concept mountain already assumes that in order for it to be a mountain it has to have existed before anybody looked at it, before anyone called it a mountain. A dog reacts very similarly to what we would expect if we follow the concept sound so it makes no sense to question whether they actually hear it or not. The concept works because we can predict in general terms how a dog will react to sound.

If you go in the other direction and argue that the concept sound is not mind independent or that one has to have the concept of sound in order to hear, you’re left with quite a dilemma.
There’s no reason to believe that other humans hear the same things you do, there’s no way to ‘know’ what it is they hear. If you say something in English, I may be hearing it in Martian (don’t ask my why. :smiley: ) but if I
react in predictible ways to your English then it just makes sense to assume that you and I are hearing the same thing. The same thing goes for a dog.

When someone doesn’t react in predictable ways, then we start finding reasons for that within the context of the concept sound, we don’t question the concept sound. We still accept that as the norm and then work from there (he doesn’t know my language, he’s deaf, it doesn’t have auditory receptors, the event took place in a vacuum etc.). The deaf may be understandably annoyed by this norm as it manifests itself in their lives, but I see no reason to change the concept sound as a result.

It works.

So the answer to the question is yes.

But someone will immediately respond with the epistemological question, “How do you know?”

The answer to that question is I don’t, I’m guessing.

It’s a good guess though.

5

translation…

we hear and see on the same wavelength, and we automatically assume that others around us experience the same.

i would like for you to elaborate on this, i would think that dogs arent aware of ‘our’ concept of sound (unless my dog started talking in english). we have already assumed that animals dont use a language or don’t have use of identifying objects with words…

maybe the canine word for sound is wooof, but we are still none the wiser…

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The whole point of that question is that there is no answer, yet we think of the answer and so focus. Just like in the simpsons :slight_smile: There can be no proof for either way.
Yes it makes a sound, how do u know. You cant put a microphone there to listen to it. Then there is something to here it.
No it doesnt make a sound, ho do u know. If u were there to hear that it didnt make a sound then there is still someone round to hear it :slight_smile:

No worries

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No.

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another paradox. but if were gonna go WAY into this and define everything again then ill try it now. if nobody is around to hear it, who’s to say the tree really fell? im done now cause soon my brain will explode from thinking too hardand then my brother has to clean it up and thats just not cool.

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Well if I knew what made sounds one could assume easier that it did make a sound by the physics and whatever. But being I don’t know what I’m talking about and being that it would just be an assumption I’ll stop typing.

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I have to add a little anecdote to this post…

Late on a Friday night my family were well through a Chinese take-away and a few beers and we got onto the topic of the falling tree. As there was nothing better to do we picked the question to pieces going into all the “vibration of atoms” details. After my cousin had delivered a quite impressive discourse about the subject, my Grandmother who had remained silent thought looked up and said with a great sense of the occasion “Yes darling…but who cares?” She is not a born philosopher, bless her. :smiley:

Oh and I can’t remember where I saw this but

“If a man says something in a forest and there’s no woman to hear him. Is he still wrong?”

Olly

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Let’s say a person was standing beside the tree when it fell, but it didn’t make a sound. Lets say the tree never caused vibrations in the air…yada yada yada, or that the person was wearing earplugs. That puts a whole new twist to your logic.

And on the first post about a “sound exist[ing] without the human to hear it”. This statement makes it seem like the “human” is the center of the universe. I agree with the others that sound is universally existant regardless of a hearing “response” to the tree sound stimulus.

btw, I think don’t think that proverb was meant to be taken literally. It’s only used to expand someone’s mind. Just like “What is the sound of one hand clapping” is supposed to make someone think of the importance of relations and interdependance.

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Imagistar,

Care to elaborate on that? :stuck_out_tongue:

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Sorry for the delay, Brad. I was not notified of your response.

In my opinion, vibrating air does not become sound until it generates a corresponding vibration in an eardrum. Until then, it is just vibrating air. Hence, the ear does not “hear” sound quite so much as it creates it.

In the same way, the eye creates sight and the nose creates smell.

If the vibrating air of a falling tree does not replicate its motion in an eardrum, how can there be sound?

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Humans are not the only animals that can hear…

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Imagistar,

That’s fine, but I see sound in the same way as I see color. No one today is going to argue seriously that color is an intrinsic attribute of objects, yet when we speak, we often use it as if it were. I don’t think this is a contradiction, just expedient. In the same way that I ask, “Can you get me the green scarf from the closet?” even though, technically, the scarf is not green in the closet (no light, no observer), I think sound, while observer dependent, should be used as if it were not.

It might seem that I’m quibbling over definitions here (I do that.), but if you spin this out a bit, you’ll find that all our senses are in fact observer dependent, so does that mean we ‘create’ the world around us? I think if you alter the definition of ‘sound’ to do that, you have to alter every other description of sense as well and that’s where you end up.

I don’t want to end up there. The trick with the question, of course, is epistemological, not ontological. As Scruff pointed out, it’s not a question that should be answered – though I don’t think it expands our minds any more than realizing that ‘dog’ spelled backwards says ‘god’ does. If you answer the question as you and I have (both legitimate but in different vocabularies), the next step is, “But how do you know?”

Earlier I said, “I don’t, I’m guessing,” but there is another way to answer that question, following Wittgenstein in his response to the question, “How do you know it’s red?”

His answer: “I speak English.”

Brad

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Bravo, very well said Brad. I am in agreement with your statements, but I am not bravoing you because I agree but because you have eloquently described your view.

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Many thanks for the response, Brad.

To me, reality has two polarities, the objective polarity and the subjective polarity. The objective polarity is quantitative; it is described by nouns. The subjective polarity is qualitative; it is described by adjectives.

Reality is unknowable in the absence of either polarity.

Science is objective. It can count the number of words in a play by Shakespeare, the number of notes in a fugue by Bach, the number of brush strokes in a painting by Raphael. Those are quantities, or nouns. But it cannot tell you whether Hamlet is good or bad. Good and bad are qualities, or adjectives.

It is good that science quantifies. It is also good to appreciate Hamlet for the work of art that it is.

A scientist is right when he says that a diamond is pure carbon and the hardest substance in nature. So is a jeweler when he says that a diamond is an object of beauty.

I repeat: Reality is unknowable in the absence of either polarity.

In one breath, you concede the subjective half of reality; in the next, you dismiss it as inconvenient.

To bolster your argument, you extrapolate subjectivity to the other senses, ignoring – quite remarkably – that I had done just that.

You have a flair for ignoring things.

In one post, you answer the question posed by this thread; in another, you say the question must never be answered.

How blithe of one post to ignore the other.

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Really? Quite logocentric if you ask me.

Really? Read it again. I see no need to ask the questions you ask. What is the distinction between quantitative and qualitative? Is it quantative or qualitative?

Here, I disagree. I agree that you have done just that. The point of my earlier comment was to point that out.

Perhaps so. What I don’t understand is why you feel the need for the subjective/objective thing.

Fair enough. I believe it’s intended as a rhetorical question. Nevertheless, I believe it should be answered.

I don’t quite know what to say here. I don’t think I read your post ‘blithely’, I think I read it seriously. I think you said many good things. I thought I said that. I don’t believe in the subjective/objective dichotomy, I find such things obscurantist at best. But so what? I believe in . . . in us.

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Look. Just as a carburetor turns gasoline into a vapor, so the ear turns vibrating air into sound. There is not one biologist in a hundred who would argue with that statement.

There are no ontological earthquakes here. I am not arguing that blue is green, that cats are dogs, or that up is down. I am simply saying that vibrating air is objective, while sound is subjective.

This cannot be new to you.

When I say that two plus two make four, I do so with the understanding that nature doesn’t know what a two is, much less that two of them make four.

Mathematics is a human (subjective) construct, exactly that and nothing more. It does not exist in the natural (objective) world.

Do you disagree with that?

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If 2+2=4 is subjective then so are air vibrations.

Everything we talk about are interpretations. Didn’t you say that somewhere?