And so, I ask again, did the Big Bang make a big bang (or even a little one?) Is this question supposed to be ambiguous?
Thanks for the compliment, although I highly doubt that. Yes, I saw the italicized portion, but left it out so as not to confuse.
Because this is the third on the list, it holds less value than the first and second. Although now that I think about it, you have somewhat caught me off guard as to my most honest response.
How should you handle a situation where the term is ambiguous? Obviously, I have chosen to prove my point using the most common terminology of the word “sound”, but it is that a valid reasoning? Could not the opposition just say that they are right as well, because it is also in the definition?
Ahh, the English language! 
Well, I don’t concede that “sound” is ambiguous. Suppose a detective asks a witness whether the guard dog barked at the intruder, and the witness replies, “I suppose so. The dog always does.” Now suppose the detective asks, “Did anyone report hearing the dog bark?” and the witness replies, “No. There was no one there at the time.” Should we also conclude that no one could have reported a sound because since there was no one present [/i]there was not sound?[i]
Again, it is just a fallacy to argue that since if I hear something, then there is a sound present, that, if I don’t hear something, then there is no sound present. There are a lot of reasons a sound may be present, and I not hear it: I may be deaf; the sound may be too faint, and so on. But one of those reasons is certainly not that I am not present. It is as fallacious to argue that since only sounds are heard, if something is not heard, it isn’t a sound, as to argue that since only mammals are dogs, that what is not a dog is not a mammal.
[/i]
—I think a lot of Easterners would disagree with you. In Eastern philosophy, the perceiver and the perceived are one field, you make very salient points, though.
— I submit that language in it’s very essence is ambiguous. Nietzsche talks about the sentence “lightning struck”, and how the object is posited once in lightning, and again, the second time, in struck. We anthropomorphize everything, giving acts of nature human qualities. Wittgenstein asks, “How do you describe the aroma of coffee to one who has never smelled it before.” Language to be communicated must be dull, mundane, ambiguous. If we’re both talking about a house, we have to have a very general idea of house else you may be talking about a log cabin next to a lake and i may be talking about a condominium in the city.
— Perhaps if we concentrated on the word “make” in the original sentence, sure the tree creates sound waves, but does sound=the sound waves or something entirely different, the perception of those sound waves? I think Skeptic is correct that the most common definitions come first, but it is open to interpretation, and perhaps that is what the Zen masters wished to teach us.
Forgetting about Zen and :The Easterners," (and I don’t see the relevance of the Wittgenstein passage at all- what has the fact-if it is one- that you cannot “communicate” to say, a congenitally deaf person what the sound of a bell is, with whether there is such a sound even if it cannot be heard? The deaf person presumably wants to hear the sounds she cannot hear, and believes that they exist.) what about the fallacious thinking going on? It is simply confusion to argue that because if you hear something, then there is a sound, that if you don’t hear something (because you are not present-mind you) there is no sound! Hearing something is a sufficient condition of there being a sound, not a necessary condition. And it is just as confused to identify hearing a sound with the sound heard, as it is identifying eating food with the food eaten.
It is not a part of the common definition of “sound” that hearing a sound is a necessary condition of the existence of the sound. Quite the contrary. If you informed the detective that since no one was present to hear the dog barking, that the dog did not bark, he would look at you with astonishment. And just try arguing that in a a courtroom!
No the big bang didnt make any sound. There is no sound in space.
Thank you. But the big bang didn’t make a sound because of the additional “reason” that there was no one to hear it. Or do you think so?
Well it would’t matter if there was anyone there,no sound would have been heard, sound travels through air, space has no air, no sound in space. But yea there are no sound without anyone there to hear it, anywhere in the universe. Sound (noise) does not exist outside the ear.
So where does the sound I hear exist? Surely not inthe ear either. Or do you think there might be an instrument that might detect the sound you hear?
How do you know the sound is capable of being detected by human organs of hearing if there aren’t human organs of hearing there to detect it?
(Sorry. 
)
The sound you hear is within the ear though. A tree crashes and it sends sound waves through the air…the waves then hit your ear and cause vibrations within your ear. These vibrations are what you percieve as sound(noise).
Sound: energy of vibration sensed in hearing.
Bill Walton you are confusing our interpretation of sound with its objective identity. We use sound waves in all kinds of ways that do not require our ear to know they are there (ultrasound examinations etc.) I am sure you are aware of these sorts of things I do not intend to talk down. The fact that our ear is involved in the definition is simply the result of its extreme sensitivity to such waves. Sound can be felt physically in ways other than the ear (stand near a sonic boom). The ear as such is only one of many ways to detect the objective thing known as sound. There are many types of sound that cannot be detected by human or even animal ears yet they still exist.
Without mincing words we can simply say: “When a tree falls in the forest & nobody is there to hear it, the tree does EXACTLY what it would do if someone were thereâ€.
Our perceptions are interpretations of reality only. They do not change reality in anyway, shape or form. What we perceive as sound (the related vibrations picked up by the ear & interpreted by the brain) is an EFFECT – caused by reality & not the other way around.
As I said I assume you know all this so my question is; are you saying the word sound should only be used to describe the type of sonic waves that can be perceived by the human ear? Do you include the term sound where it relates to the animal ear? Why would you not characterize all waves of this type (that travel wave like through some medium like air/water etc.), as sound? - Are they not capable of transmitting the same type of energy as each other? Why would the ear be the limiting factor in the search for “objective†sound?
In other words there is a lot more to sound than meets the ear :^)
As sound is just a word to describe a type of wave/energy this is sort of a silly question but it does illustrate an important point & that is how we use words. There is no word sound without the related existence of this type of wave. Saying there is no “objective†sound is to ask if it could exist without the related identity/qualities of these types of waves. It takes the word out of context & turns it into gobbledygook. (fake word intended :^) This whole issue is a low-grade version of the Something/Nothing proposition but in the end they both add up to zip. The first step to answering a question is to decide if the question is logical & doesn’t cancel itself out or require an impossible context. Just avoiding comparing apples with oranges can often clear up the nonsensical questions from the reasonable ones.
Regards,
Hello, everybody ! Greetings from Argentina ! In a very impressive documentary ,a labrador dog caged in for the night,started barking loudly until his owners woken up. As soon as they open the cage, the dog run to a different bedroom where this 3 or 4 months old baby was to be asleep in his craddle.Next to him his little brother was unaware of what was going on. The baby was lacking oxygen and it was found blue for that reason.It turned out that the dog has felt ‘something’, or it ‘heard’ something that the human ear could not pick up, therefore saving the infant’s life. How could it be possible that if that was, in fact,a sharp listening dog, could have picked up the shallow breathing of the child behind closed doors and several yards away ?
Rene
— Even if i consent to the #1 definition of sound, Hume demonstrated, that just because the tree has made a sound 2 trillion times before, this in no way implys that it will again.
— You wish to consider the question, “If a tree …”, but yet you fail to realize the context that gave rise to the question. It was originally mean’t as a Zen exercise, this is roughly equivalent to the stolen concept fallacy.
What on earth so you mean in no way implies? It implies it, but not with certainty, which is what Hume was saying. I have as much reason (or as little) if you like, to think that because trees (and all other objects too, let’s not forget that) make a thump when they fall in a forest or any other damn place, inhabited or not, that I have to think that water is H20, or that the Earth is a sphere. And if you really don’t think we have any reason to believe those things- well, I just am open-mouthed with amazement. What would you call having a reason for believing anything f the reasons we have for believing those things don’t count as reasons. I guess nothing, since I cannot imagine anything else (save, perhaps, the word of God).
What’s the “stolen concept fallacy.” I thought I knew most of them (and even those that are not fallacies) but I have never heard of that one.
— It is extremely useful ( to the point of survival) that we believe the tree will make a noise when it falls, after all when two objects collide they usually make a noise (unless it’s one hand clapping). Hume’s statements must also be understood within the context of differing deductive/inductive reasons. You can never prove that the tree will make a noise, the way you can (given certain propositions) prove that the square root of 2 is 1.41421356… .
— Could God cause a tree to fall and not make it cause a noise? can God square a circle? How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?These things were debated ad infinitum in the middle ages; perhaps i’m too much the pragmatic American (i like my debates to bear fruit), but i don’t usually relish these types of questions.
— The stolen concept fallacy was one of Rand’s few contributions to philosophy. In the words of her literary executor, Leonard Peikoff, “The stolen concept fallacy, first identified by Ayn Rand, is the fallacy of using a concept while denying the validity of it’s genetic roots, i.e., of an earlier concept(s) on which it logically depends.” I don’t think that this means you can’t look at something from a different context, however, it just means that the ideas you use must fit together, they must cohere. My charge may be entirely off base, as a skeptic, i must consider that as a possibility.
I am happy to learn that Rand made any contribution to philosophy, or to anything else. But I still have not learned what this contribution is, since I don’t understand it, and the description you give me is far too abstact for me. You would have to give me some clear examples of it.
The word “lunatic” used to mean “was influenced by the moon to do crazy things.” It no longer means that. Is “lunatic” now a “stolen concept.” If so, I don’t see what is fallacious about it unless one believes that crazy behavior is influenced by the moon.
— “The stolen concept fallacy, first identified by Ayn Rand, is the fallacy of using a concept while denying the validity of it’s genetic roots, i.e., of an earlier concept(s) on which it logically depends.”
Your example is not representative of what the fallacy is talking about. The word “lunatic” does not “logically depend” on the moon or people’s conception thereof, it merely denotes a state of mind within certain deranged individuals. The fallacy must be understood to refer to misusing the constructs of a logico-deductive-heirarchial system of knowledge, somewhat like saying that addition is impossible while saying that 2+2=4.
I’ll just have to do without that fallacy in my quiver of fallacies. I don’t understand it.
Here is a limerick to answer that question.
"There was a young man who said, God
Must think it exceedingly odd
If he finds that this tree
Continues to be
When there’s no one about in the
Quad.
REPLY
Dear sir:
Your astonishment’s odd:
I am always about in the Quad.
And that’s why the tree
Will continue to be,
Since observed by
Yours
faithfully,
God."
So I know when a tree falls in a forest, when no one is around to hear it
still makes a sound, because God is there to hear it.