I once asked this question to my high school Physics teacher, and later my university Philosophy professor.
Physics teacher says it doesn't, because for it to be scientifically considered a "sound" it needs a recipient, and my Philosophy professor says "Well what do you think?" Make of that what you will
no, i belive not. granted, a tree that falls in a forest makes a sound. but since the question refers to no one being there to see it or hear it, how can you be certain any sound occured. you can only see the aftermath: a fallen tree. your guesses and imagination make you believe that 'it would only be rational if something this big made a noise'. but when you first arrive you wouldn't consider a sound as the tree has already fallen. and hey, lets ask another question: what constitutes as rational thinking? why is it so important to belive what we percieve with our senses? why not look deeper into the meanings of why and how we percieve what we percieve? to ask if a tree made a sound if it fell also askes the question of why it fel, whats the purpose behind the tree falling? why does it spark so much philisophical debate? is it that unbelievable that something happend differently even though we wernt around to witness it? ...
Well, there will still be vibrations, so I think there would still be sound, but as my brother said "If no one's around to hear it, then who cares?" I don't think that we'll ever have a definitive answer to this question.
no, i belive not. granted, a tree that falls in a forest makes a sound. but since the question refers to no one being there to see it or hear it, how can you be certain any sound occured. you can only see the aftermath: a fallen tree. your guesses and imagination make you believe that 'it would only be rational if something this big made a noise'. but when you first arrive you wouldn't consider a sound as the tree has already fallen. and hey, lets ask another question: what constitutes as rational thinking? why is it so important to belive what we percieve with our senses? why not look deeper into the meanings of why and how we percieve what we percieve? to ask if a tree made a sound if it fell also askes the question of why it fel, whats the purpose behind the tree falling? why does it spark so much philisophical debate? is it that unbelievable that something happend differently even though we wernt around to witness it? ...
What does it mean to be human, to be in control of one's own mind?
What is the nature of consciousness, the mysterious property of self-awareness that we all have and yet which no scientist understands?
Is there any such thing as free will, or are our minds at the mercy of some unknown force?
These are the fundamental questions that have perplexed philosophers and, increasingly, scientists for centuries.
Until recently they seemed utterly unfathomable; after all, how do you test for something like free will in the laboratory?
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Mind over matter
Mind over matter: But do we make conscious choices?
But now science is coming up with some fascinating - and deeply uncomfortable - answers.
This week, for instance, Professor John-Dylan Haynes and colleagues at the Max Planck Institute in Germany report the findings of an extraordinary experiment which seems to show that "free will" - the most cherished tenet of humanity, which decrees that Man has total control of his own actions - may, in fact, be little more than an illusion.
For in their experiment, the scientists found that we may not be making conscious choices at all.
Rather, our subconscious minds may be dictating our actions, long before we realise.
It is a troubling suggestion. As Prof Haynes says: "The impression that we are freely able to choose between different possible courses of action is fundamental to our mental health."
If we are not in control after all, then that makes humans little more than automatons.
In his experiment, volunteers were asked to view a stream of letters on a computer screen and told, at some point, of their choosing, to press a button either with their left or right index finger - and remember the letter that was on the screen when they did so.
The volunteers were also connected to brain-scanning MRI machines which were able to monitor and analyse brain patterns.
These "mind-reading" scanners could recognise when the brain had decided on a course of action.
To the researchers' astonishment, it turned out that the volunteers' brains would reach a decision about pressing one of the buttons several seconds before the volunteers actually thought they had made up their minds.
If something occurs, and there is nothing to verify it's passing - nothing exists but this event - did it happen?
If a tree, unobserved; existing in it's own universe hidden from all other matter, falls, how do we know it happened. How can anyone prove that it's falling took place? Did it make a sound? Was there ever a tree?
This is not a question of the physical having taken place - but of something else entirely.
The sound you're looking for is "boom!" [http://translate.google.com/translate_t?hl=en#nl|en|boom]
In this case it represents a funny coincidence of being able to translate a phonetic sound as a word to a suitable word in another language
Back on philosophy.
I usually break it down to smaller bits because i'm too straigtforward to get it with thinking in circles.
My philosophy basic building blocks:
Facts (Safe)
Assumptions (Unsafe)
Common Sense (Extremely dangerous when applied)
Logic (Even more dangerous than Common Sense when applied)
Now, when dealing with facts, we make assumptions on how we percieve said facts. Based on those without the knowledge of cause and effect we end up with common sense that might pass for logic.
Fact: "being hit by a brick hurts"
Assumption: "bricks cause pain."
Common sense: "a brick is an object that transfers pain to a target when it makes contact."
Then you aren't very observant.
Common sense tells ME that "Bricks that touch me with a lot of force hurt."
It ALSO tells me that "Bricks that touch me with little force may be felt, but don't necessarily hurt me (e.g. a wall)."
It's the difference between sitting in a chair and being beaten to death with one.
According to Webster's 2003 New World dictionary, the definition of "sound" is the sensation of hearing something.
So, the only way it wouldn't make a sound is if there were no living organisms on the planet with an earshot in which the tree fell. In a forest, I doubt that that is the case.
So yes, it makes a sound. Unless there's seriously no living creatures that can hear it, in which case it's a fictional forest anyway.
And this isn't the only logic behind it.
You must also think that if it truly is the case that if a human can't hear the tree it doesn't make a sound, that means all forest creatures depend on the presence of a human to react accordingly to their environment. This means that if a tree were to fall without a human to hear it, none of the animals in its vicinity would be able to move out of the way unless they saw it, because they wouldn't be able to hear it. But, you know, animals react to falling trees all the time.
well if I remember right sound is the meaningful interpetation of noise. Noise is simply the vibrations in the air that can be picked up via some auditory organ. So if a tree falls in a forest does it make a sound? no. Does it make a noise. You betcha
Sigh....you know, every time this question comes up, everybody seems to catastrophically miss the point. The issue being investigated here is whether events not significant to the universe at large are significant at all if they are not perceived, or if they can even be considered events, and the reasonable answer to that question is, "Sure, why not?"
We can talk about physics and pressure waves all day and address the question with science, but at the point that you're doing science on the problem you've already perceived the event in your mind.
The proper answer is that the question itself is invalid. At the point that you propose that a tree has fallen, YOU HAVE ALREADY IMPLIED THE PERCEPTION OF THE TREE FALLING. I cannot conceive of a tree falling without making sound in any normal environment (no vacuum allowed), therefore if I understand that a tree is fallen, I understand as a matter of course that it must have made sound on the way down. While it is true that you could say that if I never knew the tree fell my universe, as filtered by my perceptions, would never register the existence of any sound at all, thus allowing for the tree to attain the state of "fallen" without registering the perception of "sound," as soon as I am informed that the tree has fallen, presuming that I am not a blithering idiot and have a basic understanding of cause and effect, I will immediately presume that the sound happened.
Just something for you all to think about. Here are two thing a human (at least currently) cannot intuitively comprehend:
1) Something coming from nothing (Big Bang or God, you still hit the same wall)
2) Ceasing to exist (the attempt to comprehend non-existence is an affirmation of your conscience)
Number one is the most fun, since there is not a logical answer. It's the base of our existence, and yet it is completely illogical. To say the universe is entirely logical stops when you get the beginning of it.
Also, as someone mentioned earlier, there's always the idea of things unobserved will stay in some uncollapsed quantum state (as per Schrödinger's cat). Of course it depends how observation is defined (by a conscience, or by a photon), but it's still interesting to think about. A whole forest (with nothing moving in or out of it) could possibly stay in a quantum state until someone walks into it and it collapses.
Now I don't believe that's what happens, but like I said, it's an interesting thought.
You might consider looking at the question from another perspective:
Usually, humans consider something to be non-existing until you or someone else have seen it and can confirm it. It's just like religion.
Did someone ever hear the tree fall? No.
But did the sound exist? Apparently, yes?
Try and apply this logic to another case:
Have someone seen God before? No.
But does god then exist? Apparently, yes?
It does not work kinda right...
We wouldn't say god existed, but the sound from the tree did. Why do we think like this? It might be because of we're used to the idea of a falling tree producing a sound, because we've experienced it before. God doesn't, because we've never seen him before?
To draw a little conclusion from this one, I'd say that;
For something to exist, there must be someone else to confirm it's existence. If no one is there to acknowledge that 'something', it simply wouldn't exist in human eyes.
How do we know about... for example... that the big bang ever happened? We actually don't know, but we think it as possible because of we acknowledge that theory.
For something to exist, someone has to observe it? So you're saying that if a person doesn't see or hear something happen, it never happened? I generally avoid saying things like this to people here, but that's just fucking stupid.
I mean, by that logic, one could reasonably conclude that the human species has discovered everything in the Universe and have discovered every species on the planet and know everything that is possible to know, because if they haven't seen it, it doesn't exist.
Tree? Log? Falling? Who the f*ck cares? That bullsh*t doesn't even register on the sane radar of significance.
Humanity is the reassembled atoms of a star that exploded and after billions of years has turned, looked back over its metaphorical shoulder and consciously sought to discover its origins. The odds of life even occurring at any point in the universe are incomprehensibly slim, the chances that a living being might develop to the point that we have even slimmer. The sum of our understanding and knowledge has only scratched the surface of the true nature of existence; but that's OK because all knowledge is emergent, our ideas will be improved upon and replaced with answers slightly closer to the truth.
Contemporary physics reveals that in fact everything is one, we are the illusion of ourselves; there is no other, there is only one, only us. Contemporary ecology further demonstrates the completely symbiotic nature of all life on earth, and even with the earth itself.
The sound you're looking for is "boom!" [http://translate.google.com/translate_t?hl=en#nl|en|boom]
In this case it represents a funny coincidence of being able to translate a phonetic sound as a word to a suitable word in another language
Back on philosophy.
I usually break it down to smaller bits because i'm too straigtforward to get it with thinking in circles.
My philosophy basic building blocks:
Facts (Safe)
Assumptions (Unsafe)
Common Sense (Extremely dangerous when applied)
Logic (Even more dangerous than Common Sense when applied)
Now, when dealing with facts, we make assumptions on how we percieve said facts. Based on those without the knowledge of cause and effect we end up with common sense that might pass for logic.
Fact: "being hit by a brick hurts"
Assumption: "bricks cause pain."
Common sense: "a brick is an object that transfers pain to a target when it makes contact."
Why can't rational thinking be part of philosophy?
But your right. I'll take hard evidence over metaphysical ramblings any day of the week.
Nicola Tesla > Friedrich Nietzsche
you're both kidding, right? critical reasoning is central to philosophy... the word itself roughly translates to "the pursuit of wisdom" from Latin...
philosophy is not about "metaphysical ramblings" but the quest for knowledge and meaning in our existence... trying to say that science is more important is really narrow minded in my view... philosophy must be informed by science in order to be relevant; it shouldn't be viewed as opposed to the scientific process...
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