Grappling with the big questions because we love wisdom so much.
Thursday, October 21, 2021
If A Tree Falls In the Woods . . .
If a tree falls in the woods and there is nobody around to hear it, does it make a sound? Discuss. You might want to define what you mean by a "sound," by "nobody," and perhaps even a "tree."
A sound is vibrations in the air. But, is it necessarily perceived? I will argue yes, sound must be perceived. If one were to argue that sound is not necessarily perceived, they would have to accept that sound is no different from motion nor color and can be perceived by multiple senses. This is because if sound is not necessarily perceived, it can be said that a vibration imperceptible by the ear is sound. If this is so, a vibration occurring with the frequency of once per year must also be considered sound. On the other side of the spectrum, vibrations occurring hundreds of thousands of times per second are also sound. The former is motion, the latter is color, therefore, if one were to argue sound is not necessarily perceived, they would have to accept sound, color, and motion to be no different. However, one might argue that my examples are too extreme and these extreme frequencies cannot be considered to be sound. My response to this would be; at what point, then, does sound become motion or color? The only way to define the difference without randomly choosing numbers is at the point each property is perceptible by its respective sense organ. Now we have arrived at the conclusion that sound must be perceptible, but not yet that sound must be perceived. In consideration of the original question, I believe the word "nobody" to mean "no perceiving thing". If a sound must be perceptible, but is not perceived, I will argue that it is then unable to be perceived. Any perceiving thing able to perceive the sound must perceive the sound, otherwise it cannot be said that this perceiving thing can perceive it. If the sound is in the perceptible range of frequencies of the perceiver, but the perceiver is maybe not close enough to hear, the perceiver is actually not able to perceive the sound, and thus the sound is imperceptible. This means that in order for vibrations to be considered sound, it must necessarily be perceived. To answer the question, sound must be perceived, "nobody" means "no perceiving thing", and "tree" is simply a plant with a wooden trunk. From these definitions, if the sound is not heard, the tree makes no sound at all.
Berkeley argues that for sound to exist, it must be perceived. Similar to that of color, taste, or temperature. I agree in that "sound" itself is the perception of the wiggly air or the waves that our ears interpret. Therefore, if a tree falls in the woods and nobody is there to perceive it, then there is no sound; however, there is wiggly air or the motion that would turn into sound if someone heard it. This motion exists in the world, but it itself does not have the properties of sound like we perceive it. Therefore, it only becomes sound once we hear and interpret it. It is similar to language in that a foreign language that you do not understand does not have any meaning built inside of it, but hearing a language that you understand becomes something once you interpret it. The wiggly air or the motion that the tree makes that is not perceived is like the language that you do not understand because it is there but it does not carry meaning or become sound once someone perceives and interprets it. There is also the case of "nobody" hearing it because theoretically there will always be something to hear the tree fall in the forest whether its an animal or a microorganism, but if there is truly nothing there to perceive the motion made by the falling tree, then there is no sound and simply the motion in the air. The idea of nobody also makes me think about Berkeley's argument for God and how he argues that there must be God to perceive everything that we are not in the moment. Therefore, according to Berkeley, does God hear the tree fall, and thus the tree makes sound? Personally, Berkeley's argument for God makes me think about what the motion of the air is when it is not perceived by anyone because if it is not sound then what is it? And if it is made of something then there must be some material in the world that is not a product of our perception. On the other hand, if God perceives everything then is that not the same as having a real material world and not only our perception because everything is being perceived anyway.
Precision of language is paramount in interpreting Berkley's Dialogues and accompanying question "if a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?". Berkley's philosophy thus far concerns perception and the sensations which they perceive, and as such the 'person' in this question stands in for a being which perceives things (i.e. has senses). Technically, since a tree is a living thing, one could make the argument that it is a perceiver (taking the role of a 'person' in the thought experiment), and thus that a tree can never fall without there being 'nobody' there to hear it. It seems more likely, though, that its intended role is as a non-living thing which interacts with other non-living things. In order to remove this confusion in the thought experiment it might be easier to think of the tree simply as an 'object,' something which is objectively not a perceiver. Therefore, the question might be rephrased as "if an object falls and no perceiver is there to hear it, does it make a sound?" to more accurately align with the questions posed by Berkley. The only important aspect of this question which remains to be examined is the definition of 'sound.' The philosopher at first explicitly states that 'sound' is simply the perception of air which is in motion. He convincingly sets forth the argument that sound, being something we sense, only exists in the mind, using similar logic as his other idealistic arguments (Berkley 17). However, he encounters the issue that there is another, more physics-based definition of sound: air in motion. Here he begins to play word games to convince the reader of idealism, rather than using persuasive ideas. Berkley simply asserts that the sense of hearing has not to do with motion, as only sight and touch are concerned with motion (Berkley 18). Therefore, he concludes, sound must only exist in the mind. He may well be correct; however, he never proves that hearing is independent from motion, and thus cannot assert that there is nothing outside of one's own mind and the ideals one holds which is responsible for the perception of sound. So does the tree make a sound? While Berkley would definitely say 'no' the answer truly depends on whether you define sound as air in motion, or as that which is heard.
If a tree falls in the forest and there is nobody around to hear it, the tree does not make a sound. This is true since the two possible arguments that it does make a sound are flawed. The first argument for it making a sound attempts to misinterpret the definition of nobody. An individual making this argument would believe that having no humans around does not mean that there cannot be a body around, e.g., an animal or bird, that would be able to perceive sound. However, the word itself “nobody” implies that there is no human, animal, bird, etc., that has a body. Therefore there is nothing present that can hear the sound. Thus, this argument is flawed. The second argument for it making a sound also attempts to misinterpret the definition of sound. An individual making this argument would argue that sounds are simply vibrating air, and thus sound would exist with or without the presence of human life. This is false since the definition of sound itself is a human construct. Therefore hearing is the perception of sound waves, not just the waves themselves. Vibrating air is not sound, and thus without someone to perceive the vibrating air, there is no sound. Therefore, without the presence of human life, there cannot be sound because there is nothing to perceive it. If no one is there to hear the tree fall, then there is simply vibrating air. This dismantles both arguments, and thus the answer is, no, the tree does not make a sound.
If there is a tree in the woods and nobody around to hear it, it does not make a sound. There needs to be somebody or something there to perceive the sound but if there is nobody there the sound cannot be perceived thus the tree does not make a sound. Now, you might be wondering what is sound? For me, sound is vibrations in the air that our ears interpret or much simply as others like Ben have put it wiggly air. Now this wiggly air would be generate from the tree following however, since in this example nobody is there. I ask you, who could perceive it? Nobody. If nobodies there to perceive it then can we truly know if it made a sound? No. Thus the tree did not make a sound. But you might be saying, what if I put a camera and it records the tree falling, I hear a sound when I play the recording. To that I say your camera is capturing the wiggly air and you are perceiving the video that the camera captured. When I say nobody in this example I mean no humans nothing with the capability to hear and perceive sound. Because if something is there and is capable of perceiving a sound then the tree made a noise but then the tree was never really around nobody. For this example to work, lets say the trees in an empty field no animals nothing to perceive the wiggly air known as sound. Just tree in a field with some grass. When that tree falls nobody would perceive the sound thus the tree did not make a sound. If I can't perceive something then I cant tell that something happened. Thus if I wasn't there to perceive the tree falling I wouldn't know if it fell or made a sound.
I think that the tree does make a sound. I define a sound as the soundwaves moving through the air. People can hear certain sounds differently but that is difference in our perception rather than the sound itself. For example, if a paperclip falls it makes a sound, that sound is much larger to ants then it is to us, but it is a sound regardless. If someone is talking in a room but the room is rather large and loud, you might not hear them, does this mean that they didn’t make a sound? Or rather that you were unable to perceive the sound. Furthermore, would you say that there is no sound around a deaf person? Or that they are unable to hear the sound around them. The sound is the waves itself; it isn’t the act of us perceiving it. This means that whenever a large object falls it makes a noise proving that if a tree falls in the forest, it would make a noise regardless of if anyone is around it. However, even if we don’t act as if sound is the waves, I believe that someone would still be there to hear it. The forest is teeming is life, from the wolves and foxes down to the little mites and microorganisms. There is life in every single little millimeter of the forest. For there to be no one around to hear the tree fall you would need all that life to disappear. And you wouldn’t just need it to disappear for a few feet, the tree falling would make such a large sound that you would need everything gone for at least a quarter of a mile. But then everything being gone would make the sound carry farther and you would need to go back even farther. And then by the time you have everything far enough back for nothing to hear it you would also most likely be dealing with extreme environmental problems that would cause you to have other problems then if the tree made a sound. So, in conclusion, the tree makes a sound because sound is the little waves in the air, and nothing can be far enough back for nothing to hear the tree falling.
I think that if a tree falls in a forest and there is nobody around to hear it, then it does not make a sound. According to Berkeley, sound cannot exist unless it is perceived, which I agree with. Therefore, there must be a perceiver to perceive the sound which the tree makes. This is because there simply wouldn’t be sound if nobody perceived it, it would just be air molecules moving around. But since there is nobody around in the forest when the tree falls, there is no sound. In other words, if there were someone to act as the perceiver, then there would be sound if a tree fell in a forest. But since there is absolutely nobody around as the tree falls, there wouldn't be any sound. However, the tree falling does create air waves which can be perceived as sound, but since there are no perceivers in this scenario, there would only be air waves, not sound. This can be applied to other scenarios such as a lightning bolt striking the ground, but there is nobody around to hear it. The lightning bolt creates a shock wave which moves the air around it rapidly, creating what we know to be thunder. Yet if there is nobody around to hear the thunder, then it doesn’t actually make a sound. Without a perceiver around, the lightning bolt simply created a shock wave which rapidly moved the air waves around it, but didn’t actually create ‘sound’. Therefore, I believe that if a tree were to fall in a forest that has nobody around to hear it, there is no sound.
A sound can be thought of as vibrations through the air that go to the ear of a human or animal. When those vibrations go to the ear, they send a message to the brain that allows the brain to make a guess about what is around. For example if a dog barks, then the brain will be able to determine that a dog is nearby. If someone talks to you then you are able to hear what they are saying, understand it, and respond. According to Berkley, sound would be nothing if there was not a mind to perceive it and I agree. Nobody simply refers to an entity or being, someone or something alive that is able to perceive its surroundings. A “tree” in this case can be thought of as any object or just anything that could possibly make a sound. A tree is being used in this example but it can be really any object or thing. I think there are two ways to think about and answer this question. The first is with common sense, we all know that things are still gonna make a sound even if no one is around to hear it. It does not make the sound any less real because if something falls it makes a sounds of some sort. But if we look to the readings and take a philosophical approach then we can say that sound only exists when someone is around to perceive it, if no one is there then the sound was never perceived by anything so no one can say that it really happened or that it was really there. The sound would just float into the air and never make it to the ears or minds of anyone.
As there is no being with a mind to see the tree falling, it would not make a sound. According to Barkeley, sound and feeling are all matters of the mind. We feel the vibrations of the tree and the green color we see are merely neurological, sensible things. They do not exist unless a being with a mind is able to perceive it. Based on this premise, the falling tree does not exist, the sound does not exist. With that said it doesn't mean that the tree isn't real, it just means that in the eyes of sensible beings, it does not exist for the time being.
A sound is vibrations in the air. But, is it necessarily perceived? I will argue yes, sound must be perceived. If one were to argue that sound is not necessarily perceived, they would have to accept that sound is no different from motion nor color and can be perceived by multiple senses. This is because if sound is not necessarily perceived, it can be said that a vibration imperceptible by the ear is sound. If this is so, a vibration occurring with the frequency of once per year must also be considered sound. On the other side of the spectrum, vibrations occurring hundreds of thousands of times per second are also sound. The former is motion, the latter is color, therefore, if one were to argue sound is not necessarily perceived, they would have to accept sound, color, and motion to be no different. However, one might argue that my examples are too extreme and these extreme frequencies cannot be considered to be sound. My response to this would be; at what point, then, does sound become motion or color? The only way to define the difference without randomly choosing numbers is at the point each property is perceptible by its respective sense organ. Now we have arrived at the conclusion that sound must be perceptible, but not yet that sound must be perceived. In consideration of the original question, I believe the word "nobody" to mean "no perceiving thing". If a sound must be perceptible, but is not perceived, I will argue that it is then unable to be perceived. Any perceiving thing able to perceive the sound must perceive the sound, otherwise it cannot be said that this perceiving thing can perceive it. If the sound is in the perceptible range of frequencies of the perceiver, but the perceiver is maybe not close enough to hear, the perceiver is actually not able to perceive the sound, and thus the sound is imperceptible. This means that in order for vibrations to be considered sound, it must necessarily be perceived. To answer the question, sound must be perceived, "nobody" means "no perceiving thing", and "tree" is simply a plant with a wooden trunk. From these definitions, if the sound is not heard, the tree makes no sound at all.
ReplyDeleteBerkeley argues that for sound to exist, it must be perceived. Similar to that of color, taste, or temperature. I agree in that "sound" itself is the perception of the wiggly air or the waves that our ears interpret. Therefore, if a tree falls in the woods and nobody is there to perceive it, then there is no sound; however, there is wiggly air or the motion that would turn into sound if someone heard it. This motion exists in the world, but it itself does not have the properties of sound like we perceive it. Therefore, it only becomes sound once we hear and interpret it. It is similar to language in that a foreign language that you do not understand does not have any meaning built inside of it, but hearing a language that you understand becomes something once you interpret it. The wiggly air or the motion that the tree makes that is not perceived is like the language that you do not understand because it is there but it does not carry meaning or become sound once someone perceives and interprets it. There is also the case of "nobody" hearing it because theoretically there will always be something to hear the tree fall in the forest whether its an animal or a microorganism, but if there is truly nothing there to perceive the motion made by the falling tree, then there is no sound and simply the motion in the air. The idea of nobody also makes me think about Berkeley's argument for God and how he argues that there must be God to perceive everything that we are not in the moment. Therefore, according to Berkeley, does God hear the tree fall, and thus the tree makes sound? Personally, Berkeley's argument for God makes me think about what the motion of the air is when it is not perceived by anyone because if it is not sound then what is it? And if it is made of something then there must be some material in the world that is not a product of our perception. On the other hand, if God perceives everything then is that not the same as having a real material world and not only our perception because everything is being perceived anyway.
ReplyDeletePrecision of language is paramount in interpreting Berkley's Dialogues and accompanying question "if a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?". Berkley's philosophy thus far concerns perception and the sensations which they perceive, and as such the 'person' in this question stands in for a being which perceives things (i.e. has senses). Technically, since a tree is a living thing, one could make the argument that it is a perceiver (taking the role of a 'person' in the thought experiment), and thus that a tree can never fall without there being 'nobody' there to hear it. It seems more likely, though, that its intended role is as a non-living thing which interacts with other non-living things. In order to remove this confusion in the thought experiment it might be easier to think of the tree simply as an 'object,' something which is objectively not a perceiver. Therefore, the question might be rephrased as "if an object falls and no perceiver is there to hear it, does it make a sound?" to more accurately align with the questions posed by Berkley. The only important aspect of this question which remains to be examined is the definition of 'sound.' The philosopher at first explicitly states that 'sound' is simply the perception of air which is in motion. He convincingly sets forth the argument that sound, being something we sense, only exists in the mind, using similar logic as his other idealistic arguments (Berkley 17). However, he encounters the issue that there is another, more physics-based definition of sound: air in motion. Here he begins to play word games to convince the reader of idealism, rather than using persuasive ideas. Berkley simply asserts that the sense of hearing has not to do with motion, as only sight and touch are concerned with motion (Berkley 18). Therefore, he concludes, sound must only exist in the mind. He may well be correct; however, he never proves that hearing is independent from motion, and thus cannot assert that there is nothing outside of one's own mind and the ideals one holds which is responsible for the perception of sound. So does the tree make a sound? While Berkley would definitely say 'no' the answer truly depends on whether you define sound as air in motion, or as that which is heard.
ReplyDeleteIf a tree falls in the forest and there is nobody around to hear it, the tree does not make a sound. This is true since the two possible arguments that it does make a sound are flawed. The first argument for it making a sound attempts to misinterpret the definition of nobody. An individual making this argument would believe that having no humans around does not mean that there cannot be a body around, e.g., an animal or bird, that would be able to perceive sound. However, the word itself “nobody” implies that there is no human, animal, bird, etc., that has a body. Therefore there is nothing present that can hear the sound. Thus, this argument is flawed. The second argument for it making a sound also attempts to misinterpret the definition of sound. An individual making this argument would argue that sounds are simply vibrating air, and thus sound would exist with or without the presence of human life. This is false since the definition of sound itself is a human construct. Therefore hearing is the perception of sound waves, not just the waves themselves. Vibrating air is not sound, and thus without someone to perceive the vibrating air, there is no sound. Therefore, without the presence of human life, there cannot be sound because there is nothing to perceive it. If no one is there to hear the tree fall, then there is simply vibrating air. This dismantles both arguments, and thus the answer is, no, the tree does not make a sound.
ReplyDeleteIf there is a tree in the woods and nobody around to hear it, it does not make a sound. There needs to be somebody or something there to perceive the sound but if there is nobody there the sound cannot be perceived thus the tree does not make a sound. Now, you might be wondering what is sound? For me, sound is vibrations in the air that our ears interpret or much simply as others like Ben have put it wiggly air. Now this wiggly air would be generate from the tree following however, since in this example nobody is there. I ask you, who could perceive it? Nobody. If nobodies there to perceive it then can we truly know if it made a sound? No. Thus the tree did not make a sound. But you might be saying, what if I put a camera and it records the tree falling, I hear a sound when I play the recording. To that I say your camera is capturing the wiggly air and you are perceiving the video that the camera captured. When I say nobody in this example I mean no humans nothing with the capability to hear and perceive sound. Because if something is there and is capable of perceiving a sound then the tree made a noise but then the tree was never really around nobody. For this example to work, lets say the trees in an empty field no animals nothing to perceive the wiggly air known as sound. Just tree in a field with some grass. When that tree falls nobody would perceive the sound thus the tree did not make a sound. If I can't perceive something then I cant tell that something happened. Thus if I wasn't there to perceive the tree falling I wouldn't know if it fell or made a sound.
ReplyDeleteI think that the tree does make a sound. I define a sound as the soundwaves moving through the air. People can hear certain sounds differently but that is difference in our perception rather than the sound itself. For example, if a paperclip falls it makes a sound, that sound is much larger to ants then it is to us, but it is a sound regardless. If someone is talking in a room but the room is rather large and loud, you might not hear them, does this mean that they didn’t make a sound? Or rather that you were unable to perceive the sound. Furthermore, would you say that there is no sound around a deaf person? Or that they are unable to hear the sound around them. The sound is the waves itself; it isn’t the act of us perceiving it. This means that whenever a large object falls it makes a noise proving that if a tree falls in the forest, it would make a noise regardless of if anyone is around it. However, even if we don’t act as if sound is the waves, I believe that someone would still be there to hear it. The forest is teeming is life, from the wolves and foxes down to the little mites and microorganisms. There is life in every single little millimeter of the forest. For there to be no one around to hear the tree fall you would need all that life to disappear. And you wouldn’t just need it to disappear for a few feet, the tree falling would make such a large sound that you would need everything gone for at least a quarter of a mile. But then everything being gone would make the sound carry farther and you would need to go back even farther. And then by the time you have everything far enough back for nothing to hear it you would also most likely be dealing with extreme environmental problems that would cause you to have other problems then if the tree made a sound. So, in conclusion, the tree makes a sound because sound is the little waves in the air, and nothing can be far enough back for nothing to hear the tree falling.
ReplyDeleteI think that if a tree falls in a forest and there is nobody around to hear it, then it does not make a sound. According to Berkeley, sound cannot exist unless it is perceived, which I agree with. Therefore, there must be a perceiver to perceive the sound which the tree makes. This is because there simply wouldn’t be sound if nobody perceived it, it would just be air molecules moving around. But since there is nobody around in the forest when the tree falls, there is no sound. In other words, if there were someone to act as the perceiver, then there would be sound if a tree fell in a forest. But since there is absolutely nobody around as the tree falls, there wouldn't be any sound. However, the tree falling does create air waves which can be perceived as sound, but since there are no perceivers in this scenario, there would only be air waves, not sound. This can be applied to other scenarios such as a lightning bolt striking the ground, but there is nobody around to hear it. The lightning bolt creates a shock wave which moves the air around it rapidly, creating what we know to be thunder. Yet if there is nobody around to hear the thunder, then it doesn’t actually make a sound. Without a perceiver around, the lightning bolt simply created a shock wave which rapidly moved the air waves around it, but didn’t actually create ‘sound’. Therefore, I believe that if a tree were to fall in a forest that has nobody around to hear it, there is no sound.
ReplyDeleteA sound can be thought of as vibrations through the air that go to the ear of a human or animal. When those vibrations go to the ear, they send a message to the brain that allows the brain to make a guess about what is around. For example if a dog barks, then the brain will be able to determine that a dog is nearby. If someone talks to you then you are able to hear what they are saying, understand it, and respond. According to Berkley, sound would be nothing if there was not a mind to perceive it and I agree. Nobody simply refers to an entity or being, someone or something alive that is able to perceive its surroundings. A “tree” in this case can be thought of as any object or just anything that could possibly make a sound. A tree is being used in this example but it can be really any object or thing. I think there are two ways to think about and answer this question. The first is with common sense, we all know that things are still gonna make a sound even if no one is around to hear it. It does not make the sound any less real because if something falls it makes a sounds of some sort. But if we look to the readings and take a philosophical approach then we can say that sound only exists when someone is around to perceive it, if no one is there then the sound was never perceived by anything so no one can say that it really happened or that it was really there. The sound would just float into the air and never make it to the ears or minds of anyone.
ReplyDeleteAs there is no being with a mind to see the tree falling, it would not make a sound. According to Barkeley, sound and feeling are all matters of the mind. We feel the vibrations of the tree and the green color we see are merely neurological, sensible things. They do not exist unless a being with a mind is able to perceive it. Based on this premise, the falling tree does not exist, the sound does not exist. With that said it doesn't mean that the tree isn't real, it just means that in the eyes of sensible beings, it does not exist for the time being.
ReplyDelete