The Falling Tree and its Ideal Noise

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Its a matter of semantics.

You dont hear folks say "if a bolt of lightning strikes and vanishes before anyone or any animal has a chance to look at it then it doesnt emit light".

Light waves and sound waves are real whether they are precieved or not.

A silopsist would argue that the tree didnt make a sound, but he/she would also argue that the tree itsself didnt exist in the first place because no one was around to observe the tree ever having existed in the first place- let alone having fallen over with a crash in one moment of its alledged existence.

Just to add even more, "What came first, the chicken or the egg?" Obviously the egg since the chicken evolved from egg laying reptiles. This is like the dude that was trying to argue that the rationality of an idea is mind-dependent and thus arithmetic is irrational if viewed by a dog.

Why must the perciever be human in order for the recieved waves to be considered sound?

My stand is that "sound" is perceived (sound) waves. If there's nothing around to perceive, then it's just waves rather than sound. The waves still exist even if they aren't perceived, but then I wouldn't define them as sounds. The concept of "sound" is what happens when an organ of perception picks up those waves.

Where I quibble is the idea that it must be a human who does the perceiving. There is no forest completely devoid of life. Even if it were some sort of rare forest where none of the creatures had ears (nothing but insects?), the waves are still perceived as vibrations by those insects.

Even though humans came up with the word "sound" (in all its' languages), other creatures still react to these waves and are perceiving them even if they don't have human language to describe it. Birds will certainly hear it and startle and fly away.

However my stand isn't firm and I am considering also Fnord's position that there isn't any distinction between natural physical actions and those actions being perceived. So I am not saying that the sound doesn't exist if no living creatures perceive it (the good example of the avalanche being triggered by those sound waves even if unperceived). Instead I'm saying that I think there's a distinction between the waves (which are there whether perceieved or not, like any physical phenomena) and the concept of "sound" as describing just the perception of those waves. It's like the difference between light and vision. I am still up in the air about whether that is a real distinction or not. In any case that comes down to the semantics of whether you have separate words for an action and it's perception. With light and vision we obviously do. With sound it's not so clear but I am making a semantic distinction between sound (which needs a perceiver) and sound waves (which don't).

Last edited by Janissy on 06 Mar 2012, 8:47 am, edited 1 time in total.

what about, sounds with no sound-waves, tinnitus for example of auditory hallucinations, are theses sounds then?

I think they are. In my above post I make a distinction between sound (the perception) and sound waves (the actual waves). So if somebody hears a buzzing sound after a loud concert (as I always used to back in the day) it's still a legitimate buzzing sound even if it comes from traumatized ears rather than actual waves.

or rather class them a vibrations.. sound is human made, the vibrations are real..

sound/sound/
Noun:

Vibrations that travel through the air or another medium and can be heard when they reach a person's or animal's ear.

So according to Google, it's only the vibrations themselves that need to exist with only the possibility to have a recipient. If it's good enough for a Google search it's good enough for me

Is sound merely air vibrations or is it the perception produced when an ear responds to the vibrations.

Choose your semantics.

ruveyn

Yes, I hear what you're saying, those that are talking about the sounds perhaps not existing in the absence of a perceiver but the soundwaves nonetheless remaining existant. However, I think point 3 of my OP was to lay down the challenge of a more radical idealism. The point here can be put like this: For who is it that soundwaves from the falling tree exist in the absence of a perceiver of those soundwaves? My answer is: A human. The point is that there is no point outside of our own subjectivity from which we can view the world.

I vaguely recall reading that the human ear does (and probably all animal's ears do) generate some sounds (edit: I mean "emits vibrations"). I don't recall if those sounds correspond to tinnitus and such, though. IIRC, they're called "otoacoustic emissions."

Last edited by Apple_in_my_Eye on 06 Mar 2012, 4:05 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I think you raise an interesting distinction here between sight and sound. I'm not sure of the science but it doesn't appear to me that there are sightwaves that are analogous to soundwaves.

Would those who say that soundwaves exist whether they are perceived or not, also say that something is there to be visually experienced or smelled whether or not it is actually visually experienced or smelled?

I think that a tree bursting into bloom and producing particles detectable to humans as scent, would first of all have to be seen and smelled before it could be said to be available for seeing and smelling.

Not that I think there's anything wrong with 'egoism', but could you not equally say that it was the 'epitome of egotism' to believe that one can take up a view outside of one's own subjectivity from which to assume the reality of objectively existing things?

Trees in the forest. Animals in the forest. Animals with ears.

Connect the dots.

Exactly There is no forest without animals. Trees depend on animal dung as fertilizer. Many trees also require insect pollination and depend on animals that carry their fruits or conifer cones away and thereby help spread their seeds.

Therefore, there is no forest without creatures that can perceive sound, and the question / argument is based on a deeply flawed premise. Take that, Zen monks! PS: One hand clapping does not compute. Clapping involves both hands by definition.

One hand clapping....that's a slap in the face!! Those evil, violent Zen monks!

Ofcourse there are "sightwaves". Though they are not usely spoken of that way.

Thats what visible light is. Vibrations of electromagnetic radiation that are within the range of frequencies that can be detected by the human eye and turned into images. Although most things we hear emit sound ( which is vibrations in the air) and unlike bats we are not very sensitive to echoes. Most things we see reflect light (other people, trees, objects) and only a minority of visages are of things that emit light like campfires and stars, but both vision and hearing are our body's ways of detecting wave phenomena. So the sunlight that bounces off the fabled tree in the woods that hypothetically could be detected by human or animal eyes and precieved as the image of the tree are 'the sightwaves" analgous to the "soundwaves" (ie air vibrations) kicked up when the tree falls over with a crash.

Smell is something else: molecules drifting lazily in the air.
Thats why you get instant silence when you turn off a radio, and instant dark when you turn off a light switch but you have to run the fan for a few minutes after you flush the toilet.

But fragrance is still information being emitted.

So - I think thatthat information would be "smell" whether its smelled or not. Same with sight and sound. Its a matter of semantics. You could say that any or all can not be so labeled if no one precieves them.But I think that kind of thinking is a legacy of premodern times when people didnt know what sound, light, and smell, are.

If a spaceship blows up in interstellar space (contrary to the Star Wars movies) it does NOT make a sound becaue there is no atmosphere in deep space. But an asteroid striking Mars would make a sound because Mars does have an atmosphere though no one lives there to hear it.