On Sight and Sound

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
1

If at a given time one is not consciously aware of any sound whatsoever, they may think they are perceiving silence, a complete lack of sound. In this case silence would be an idea you conceive of, not something you hear. It is well understood that the human ear can discern only a small portion of the sounds that exist, so often when one thinks they perceive silence there are, in actuality, sound waves that they are not hearing. So does this mean that the idea of silence as a complete lack of sound probably began as a false conception? Does anyone know if modern science has confirmed the original assumption that there is a state where no sound exists?

Here is a related quote: “The tendency has always been strong to believe that whatever receives a name must be an entity of being, having an independent existence of its own: and if no real entity answering to the name can be found, men did not for that reason suppose that none existed, but imagined that it was something peculiarly abstruse and mysterious, too high to be an object of sense” -J.S. Mills

OK, so if if you close your eyes do you see blackness, or do you conceive of it as an idea? Do you agree with the following analogy: Silence is to Hearing as Blackness is to Seeing?

Sorry to load this up with questions but here are some that kind of sum up what I was trying to say or ask:
Are the senses of hearing and seeing null in the true lack of stimulation?
Is there ever a “true lack of stimulation” for the senses during life? or are the blind and deaf always so only to certain degree?
Please feel free to post anything related, not necessarily just pertaining to the questions.

2

I don’t know if science has confirmed this, but I think your more central question needs some refinement. What do you consider to be ‘sound’? Is it the presence of soundwaves in the air, or is it the first-person subjective experience of hearing? If it’s the former, then you’re right to say that silence is usually only an illusion since there is rarely ever an occasion when the air is not rippling with soundwaves. On the other hand, if it’s the latter, then certainly there can be moments of utter silence and we typically know when that is based on the fact that we don’t hear anything.

I agree with the analogy in general, but there is something more complex, and interesting, going on with vision. If you study color opponency theory, which is a neurological theory of color perception, you see that there is a center in the brain for perceiving black (unlike with silence where there is no discovered center for that experience). It becomes active when no light enters the eye. So when the brain senses that no signals are coming from the eye to the visual cortex, the black center lights up allowing us to see black. I find this interesting because it sort of explains why black, at first blush, seems like a color. I remember being surprised to learn that black was actually the absence of color when I was a kid. It seems like a color because it is the ‘default’ color for when no other color signals are given to the brain from the outside world. The brain ‘invents’ it under those conditions.

There can be potential stimuli in the environment that don’t quite have the power to actually stimulate the senses. The senses, like any neuron, need a certain threshold of stimulation before they fire. So you could have extremely minute soundwaves or lightwaves that don’t quite have what it takes to stimulate our sense of hearing or sight. Whether this counts as the absence of sound or light depends on what you want to call sound and light - the physical state of the environment or your own mental state.

3

Thank you for responding, it really helps to know a little of the science behind these things, which I really don’t know a lot of.

The former. I guess I was just more commenting how the idea of absolute silence as an objectively real condition likely came from our first-person subjective experience of hearing, which we assumed to be more encompassing than it is.

Yes I agree that something more complex is going on with vision. What you said above offered some insight into the perception of blackness. Also, aside from the color of objects, our vision allows us to see their form. Or maybe that is just gathered from seeing the boundaries of the differing colors of different objects?

Anyway, thanks for responding, anyone else have thoughts on this subject?

4

A short quote from my book might be relevent;

Lets look at that blue sky up there for a moment.
Picture a perfectly dark, clean room. There are windows on two opposing walls. Through one window is shined a light aimed out the opposing window. It is a coherent beam of light, not spreading out at all, not hitting the walls, and there is no glass in windows. There is no dust in the air of this clean room to disturb the happy passing of this beam of photons.
In order for us to perceive light, ‘out there’, photons have to enter the eye and stimulate the cells in the retina and associated receptors, sending information to the brain for analysis (for possible action), or storage.
We sit in this room and see no beam of light because no photons are being reflected into our eyes. Our eyes give us information that there is no light in this room. Yet we know that there is! The photons don’t have any kind of magic that makes them glow. Photons are dark! They emit NO light!! But, you argue, we fortunate sighted people all SEE a world of color, light, patterns… ‘out there’!
We just saw, in a simple experiment, how photons are completely dark. They have to stimulate the appropriate sensory receptor, finally having information translated in the brain into light, color, etc… OUT THERE.
Putting two and two together, shaken, not stirred, we find we live in a totally, absolutely blackest of black, dark universe. All those colors, patterns, old familiar faces, …are all in your head. Literally! In front of your nose, despite the information of one of the Original Five senses, is absolute darkness!!!
So much for the “obvious”…

“If a tree falls in the forest, and there are none to hear (goes the old Zen koan), does it make a sound?”
I say NOT! It makes a SILENT shockwave. The silence of the shockwave can be demonstrated in a similar experiment to the one we performed with light. These silent shockwaves must act upon, stimulate, the eardrum, or similar membrane, and be translated in the old reliable brain as sound.
The world around your ears is quieter than the emptiest reaches of deep space. Absolute silence. The place where all sound exists, (thank you Beethoven!), is, again, in the head. As the perceiver and translator of signals from the ear drum, the brain creates a concept of sound and attributes appropriate meaning to it, then stores the data.
Outside your head… absolute silence. Absolute darkness.
Likewise for all of those Original Senses.
There are no deliciously aromatic clouds of fragrances hovering over a summer garden. Something must stimulate our nasal receptors, and, after filtering the information through our whole life history, making various modifications, lots of computing (albeit in a very short amount of time), correlating memories like a “line-up” at the Brain-land Police Station, we perceive an odor, a perfume in the air all around. Ah, lilacs! Sorry, all in the mind. Without, there is “undifferentiated potential”, within, a deliciously fragrant garden, bursting with light and color…

(Proofreeding is an ongoing process…)
Hope that this helps a bit. It is ‘another’ perspective.

5

That sounds like a valid perspective. I had not considered how it kind of boiled down to the old tree falling in the woods bit. As far as photons emitting no light, I hadn’t ever really thought of that either but I guess you cannot prove that they emit light when no one is watching any more than you can prove a tree falling in the woods makes a noise when no one is there to hear it. It is strange to think that all of the light we perceive from the sun is actually contained within in our heads. I want to make a light-headed joke but I’m thinking =;

6

Just let it shine, brother…