If a tree falls in a wood...... that old chestnut....

Originally posted by Wolf Eyes
reply to post by -W1LL

 

I disagree … I think the world does revolve around us. It would not exist without consciousness to perceive it.

The measurement problem - (in my own words) an atom only appears in a particular place if you measure it. An atom is spread out all over the place until a conscious observer decides to look at it. The act of measuring it, creates it.

By being in the woods watching the tree.. you're creating it. If you're not there, the tree isn't there. The tree (the universe), is just energy with infinite possibilities until someone comes along and views it. We make the tree, therefore we make the sound. No consciousness = no tree = no sound.

link below to “reality does not exist”. The people in this video can explain what I’m getting at a lot better than I can. Only 10 mins and definitely worth the watch.

www.finerminds.com...

Your thinking about photons, not Atoms. The act of observing a photon changes it's state. But the rest of your explanation is fairly accurate. Everything is just an interference pattern in the matrix of the universe; we percieve those interference patterns with our senses and our brain translates those patterns. However, those intereference patterns exist regardless of whether or not someone is there to percieve them.....

reply to post by PerfectAnomoly


Spot on. My initial reaction was "Of course it does; it produces a sound wave when it falls". But the sound itself is not the wave; it is the result produced by those waves being recieved and interpreted. So if nothing is around to recieve those waves and perceive the sound, then no sound resulted from the tree's fall.

The old "if a tree falls" question is brought up in order to illustrate that common definitions must be established before any conclusions can be reached for a point of argument.

The point of "if a tree falls" is that the two sides cant reach an agreement because they have different definitions about what a sound is. One says sound is merely a kind of vibration, the other says it is one that is heard.

Whenever I talk about things like consciousness, free-will, self-awareness, etc, I always bring up the "if a tree falls" question because I don't think there is any point in arguing over something unless you know what it is you are arguing about. Whenever anyone bothers to set a concrete definition for any of these things, I find they cease to seem very mysterious things at all. The mystery was that we hadn't decided what definition we were interested in using.

If your definition of sound is that it is heard, then a tree does not make a sound when there is no one around to hear it fall. But you must have a common definition for sound in order to agree with that conclusion. The "If a tree falls" question is raised in order to draw attention to the need for a common definition.

Originally posted by Tearman
The point of "if a tree falls" is that the two sides cant reach an agreement because they have different definitions about what a sound is. One says sound is merely a kind of vibration, the other says it is one that is heard.

Precisely. Well said.

reply to post by -W1LL


Blarneystoner – thank you for the correction… I’m no physicist :-)

“one word you need to look up is perception everything you said may be true but only to you and your perception of life and this world.”
^ I agree with that…

The rest, I don’t… I didn't say anything about god and I didn't say humans were the only conscious beings in the world. The bear could have every bit of consciousness that we have… I don’t know that though, I don’t speak bear. Some people think they are better / smarter than the bear … Ok.. so you’re smarter than the bear… but that doesn’t mean humans are the smartest living creatures in the universe and the only one ones capable of consciousness.

Keep in mind, the OP did say no people, animals, ect around.. otherwise I wouldn’t give the answer I did. I’m assuming the tree doesn’t have consciousness in this scenario and it’s not some Avatar god tree =)~

So consciousness… Can you teach a bear to use the internet? No, probably not…. The bear isn’t on the same level us as… as we, are probably not on the same level as other conscious beings in this universe. He can’t learn how to come on to ATS and talk to you. That doesn’t mean he’s not conscious.

If a bear can’t use the internet because he isn’t smart enough… that also means we might not be smart enough to fully understand the universe we leave in. Which is why these questions are hard to answer. Without getting into an E.T. debate… all I’ll say is it’s a BIG universe and I really doubt we are the only conscious beings in the universe. So if bears aren’t conscious, I’m sure something else besides humans are. The world was not waiting for the first human to be bon… and I can’t prove to you that we’re not alone any more than you can prove that we are.. so let’s not get into that.

My point is that matter needs consciousness to exits. No consciousness/ no matter/ no tree. No “one” in the woods to hear it = no tree. If there is a bear there… then it makes a sound and the bear hears the sound.

re-phrase
If a tree falls in the words and no consciousness is around to is perceive it, does the tree actually exist?

am I crazy? probably .. but it makes sense to me :-)

If no one told me that a tree had fallen in the woods, then I would not be able to hear it.

Originally posted by SystemResistor
If no one told me that a tree had fallen in the woods, then I would not be able to hear it.

Sure you would.
You don't need to be told just hear something.


Does a falling tree make a sound when no-one, no animal is there to hear it? Yes it does. The vibration and all aspects of it still occur. The thing that we hear when present still happens. If your ears were somewhere else you could still feel the "Sound" that still exists. Period.

reply to post by PerfectAnomoly


i hold that sound is still sound if it isn't interpreted by human ears/brains. the vibrations of the tree falling does still effect the surrounding atoms.

does a book still have information in it if it isn't read? yes.

how arrogant are we to say sound is only a product of human interpretation.

reply to post by Stella Lotus


How do you know that something that you cannot perceive exists?

Originally posted by SystemResistor
reply to post by Stella Lotus

 

How do you know that something that you cannot perceive exists?

edit on 27-7-2011 by SystemResistor because: (no reason given)

You mean if I do not experience it. Because I have experienced it as well as other logical forms of nature..in life, and therefore I can perceive it, so can you. The question is if you are not there to experience it..the sound..the vibration.

The answer is that you live, and you have learned that things happen. In fact that leads to having a wild imagination. Hence why I drossil ATS. (I just invented the word drossil!!) Hmm Word trickery.

If a tree falls ....it will make a sound....whether anyone is around or not.

Originally posted by SystemResistor
reply to post by Stella Lotus

 

How do you know that something that you cannot perceive exists?

edit on 27-7-2011 by SystemResistor because: (no reason given)

Take a black hole as an example.... we don't "know" they exist, as we can't perceive them directly so to speak... but we know they are there by studying the behaviour of other matter particles in the immediate vicinity....

The incredible story that is playing out as we speak in the Large Hadron Collider..... they have never perceived the Higgs Boson particle.... but they are pretty sure it exists.... we will know soon...!

Just showing that we can postulate about the existence of something without actually directly perceiving it!

Aristotle would be proud.....

Originally posted by caladonea
If a tree falls ....it will make a sound....whether anyone is around or not.

Care to elaborate?

Originally posted by PerfectAnomoly

Originally posted by caladonea
If a tree falls ....it will make a sound....whether anyone is around or not.

Care to elaborate?

I really do not have much elaboration ....except to say....what I stated above is the simple truth and just plain common sense.

Originally posted by caladonea

Originally posted by PerfectAnomoly

Originally posted by caladonea
If a tree falls ....it will make a sound....whether anyone is around or not.

Care to elaborate?

I really do not have much elaboration ....except to say....what I stated above is the simple truth and just plain common sense.

Did you read the rest of the thread by any chance??

I know I haven't been a member on ATS for long... but in my short time here I have learned that we shouldn't make claims unless we are prepared to back them up with evidence!

You cannot claim that what you state is "the simple truth" without justifying this truth...?

If you would have read the rest of the thread first, you would have noticed by now, that it is far from "plain common sense".....

I believe the answer to the question to be:-

What is the definition of sound?

A loud speaker vibrates but does not make a sound.
There is movement of waves, vibrations.
The eardrum vibrates but does not make a sound.
Electrical signals travel from the eardrum to the brain.
The mind or something within you makes the sound.
It makes the sound and hears the sound.

How can we be sure that a tree really did fall in the woods, if nobody's there to perceive it ?

Knocked on a tree once, and the tree answered !
" Who's there ? "
Was kinda surprised, so just blurted-out : " Squirrel. "
Tree said : " A talking squirrel ? Skedaddle before I drop another chestnut on yer head... "

I always thought this was a very egotistical assumption to make; the Universe supposedly couldn't exist without us, the tiny ants on a tiny speck in the Cosmos that's barely visible to most of it.

Why would a tree need our hearing to create a sound? Do physics work this way - if there's no one to hear, perceive or any device to capture a sound, the Universe won't bother running the 'sound routine' of how things work?

What if someone is teleported right in the middle of it - does the previous silence suddenly engage the 'sound routine' and create half-a-sound?

Wouldn't it require way more 'processing power' (I am not talking about simulations, but I don't have terminology, either, so I am using computer terminology) to have an additional loop to constantly observe and monitor whether there's anyone perceiving an event, to create the sound? Why even let events happen at all, if there's no one to perceive them?

Can't this be tested by making things that are sensitive to sound and will change in some way, but do not possess the ability to capture or perceive the sound (for example, mechanical or electronic things)?

In any case, I think it's incredibly egotistical and selfish to think so much of yourself (as people) that you think Universe wouldn't even make sounds if you weren't there to hear them! Also, who and what qualifies as 'someone hearing' the sound? Would someone 'remote-viewing' the location qualify? How about someone in the future reading the Akashic records of this particular tree-falling moment and studying the aural fields around the area? How about an ant? A mosquito? A polar bear?

What's the point of playing a sound to a mosquito or polar bear that's never going to do anything with that information?

This kind of weird thinking (and I know the quantum scale behaves really weirdly, but that almost never carries directly to the 'real-world-scale') would raise so many implications - for example, you could eliminate disturbing sounds from an area simply by removing anyone capable of 'hearing' from the area. So if a deaf individual sees the tree fall, there won't be a sound, even if they carry some device to capture or react to sound? (That's not 'hearing' per se, now, is it?)

So you could basically have 100% silent explosions (there's such a thing as 'sound damage', isn't there? So you could eliminate this in certain situations by having 'no one there to hear it') and drilling equipment and such, just by automating things and having no one around!

Of course it doesn't work this way, and as a philosophical question, this is pretty dumb. This is not a Zen koan, by the way, although some people seem to mistake it as such. Zen koans actually aren't brain teasers or designed to make your rational mind confused so you'd reach some kind of enlightened state - as someone that has experienced 'brief Zen' (possibly 'Zatori', I don't know, it only lasted a couple of days), I can tell you they are simply 'direct descriptions of what Zen is (or the Zen experience)'.

My Zen experience was of course something impossible to put to words (which is why those koans exist), the best way I can describe it is "completely direct experience of existence, my surroundings and especially life, with slight euphoric flavor'.

After it, Zen koans really opened up in a completely different way - instead of intellectually, I was able to understand them 'directly', and realize how, instead of being some kind of brain teasers or paradoxes, they are very simple and direct descriptions of the Zen experience.

Whops, I steered off the topic a bit, sorry about that. In any case, intuitively, logically, common-sensically thinking, unless I am given a very good reason to think otherwise, I conclude that a tree always makes a sound, because it can't help it - that's just how the Universe is built. Sound is not 'optional', it always happens, regardless of whether it has an audience or not.

If someone can give a good reason why it would be 'optional' and what force would stop sound from happening based solely on the audience number reaching zero, and how it could even do that (think of how much power and energy would be required to monitor ALL SOUND in the Universe in all dimensions, and then act upon EVERY single instance where there's no audience for a ccertain sound - how much scanning of the 'vicinity and circumference the possible sound waves would reach' would be required..

If nothing else, then at least Occam's Razor dictates there is always a sound when a tree falls, unless specifically acted upon by some force to prevent it from happening.

Q.E.D.

a reply to: Shoujikina

Agreed.
Thanks for the long post, and obvious effort that you put into it.

Ok : now that we're done with the physical, materialistic side of the Universe ; shall we look beyond ?

Is ones perception : a physical, measurable thing ?

Take a deaf person : you could use all of the instruments known to science, to confirm that a sound-wave hit their ear ; but they still didn't hear it.
One can try and explain it away, with medical explications of what part of their hearing may be at fault ; but that doesn't change the situation, that they didn't hear it.
They didn't perceive it.

Sure : they may be able to physically sense a strong enough wave, but still not hear it.
Not hearing perception, but perception none the less.

If perception was the same for all : how would that explain those with perfect pitch ?
Filters ?

What of all of those visual illusions, where we can perceive multiple colors, shapes, or directions of spin ?
Is it the actual things that change : or merely our perception ?

originally posted by: Bob Sholtz
reply to post by PerfectAnomoly

 

i hold that sound is still sound if it isn't interpreted by human ears/brains. the vibrations of the tree falling does still effect the surrounding atoms.

does a book still have information in it if it isn't read? yes.

how arrogant are we to say sound is only a product of human interpretation.

This^^ There is physical vibration. These are not electrical waves. They are physical sound waves caused by physically moving matter in a repeated fashion. They are no different than punching someone repeatedly. It's just on a small scale and generally associated with air or some medium like water or wood, but in reality, it is just physically manipulating the environment repeatedly.

The leaves and other objects in the forest will vibrate if their physical structure allows it regardless of whether your eardrum is there to also be vibrated.