A tree falling with no one around to hear it...

[moonbogg]

There are some weird disorders where people can see sounds and hear lights.

By the way, the answer to the OP's question is that all the necessary physical conditions exist to create sound inside the head of a normal person in case he is around in the woods to hear the tree fall.

Yeah exactly. The thing is that people have a hard time removing themselves from the scene where the tree fell. They imagine it falling and they imagine the sound it would make. If they aren't there to hear it, then the sound doesn't happen at all. The external stuff that causes sound, and the phenomenon of actual sound in your head are two different things.

 

[IronWing]

Yeah exactly. The thing is that people have a hard time removing themselves from the scene where the tree fell. They imagine it falling and they imagine the sound it would make. If they aren't there to hear it, then the sound doesn't happen at all. The external stuff that causes sound, and the phenomenon of actual sound in your head are two different things.

Less psych class, more physics. If you hop over to wiki you'll see that wiki is careful to differentiate two meanings for the word sound: the correct physical meaning and also the idiocy advocated by that class of overindulged drunk navel gazers we call psych professors.

 

[datalink7]

I know what you are saying, but I think you are missing what I am saying. Air molecules being compressed closer together and then expanding again, have no inherent property of sound. How could it? Sound is what your brain creates when your ears are stimulated and so forth. The sound happens in your brain and nowhere else. "Sound" does not exist outside of you.
The pressure waves happen all the time, but the sound of them literally does not take place without a creature to hear them. Sound exists in the minds of creatures, not air waves.

It depends on what kind of perspective you are talking from.

Wikipedia has a good summary:

In physics, sound is a vibration that propagates as a typically audible mechanical wave of pressure and displacement, through a medium such as air or water. In physiology and psychology, sound is the reception of such waves and their perception by the brain

Sounds like you are a psychologist. Most people arguing against you are probably arguing from the physics perspective. Neither of you are wrong, necessarily. It depends on from what point of view you are arguing from. You are wrong, however, in arguing your point of view as the correct point of view. It is only correct in psychology (and perhaps philosophy).

 

[moonbogg]

Less psych class, more physics. If you hop over to wiki you'll see that wiki is careful to differentiate two meanings for the word sound: the correct physical meaning and also the idiocy advocated by that class of overindulged drunk navel gazers we call psych professors.

I'm not diving into definitions. My use of the word sound is simple here. Its what happens when your brain processes signals from external stimuli. The stimuli are always there of course. What I think is interesting is that this weirdness that happens in your brain, this thing we call sound, can only happen in your brain. Outside of brains, the world is perfectly silent. There is plenty to be heard, but no hearing happens. The nature of a huge crashing wave is a silent one in and of itself.

 

[IronWing]

I'm not diving into definitions. My use of the word sound is simple here. Its what happens when your brain processes signals from external stimuli. The stimuli are always there of course. What I think is interesting is that this weirdness that happens in your brain, this thing we call sound, can only happen in your brain. Outside of brains, the world is perfectly silent. There is plenty to be heard, but no hearing happens. The nature of a huge crashing wave is a silent one in and of itself.

Yes you are.

'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.'

- Humpty Dumpty

 

[smackababy]

That song always irked me a bit, as their city was there way before rock and roll.

The best quote about that terrible song I've heard was: "We built this city on rock and roll, and now you're tearing it down with your awful music!"

 

[Markbnj]

Ah yes, this question has perplexed stoned high school students for thousands of years now.

The answer, obviously, is "whoa, dude."

But tell me: if a computer is playing a video of a popular 90's sitcom in a closed, sterilized room from which no light can escape, is it Seinfeld?

 

[Belegost]

This is really a question of metaphysics, about the existence of objects without observers.

Personally I fall on the side of presentism and solipsism - if there is no observer of this "falling tree" then no "falling tree" exists, we may observe the state of "fallen tree" and tell a story about it having once been a "standing tree" and we might conjecture it went through the "falling tree" state, but these are merely stories about a past that does not exist as knowledge, merely hypothesis.

 

[DrPizza]

I'll play along with your dopey philosophical ideas for a few minutes.

Is it impossible to record sounds?

 

[moonbogg]

I'll play along with your dopey philosophical ideas for a few minutes.

Is it impossible to record sounds?

I am stating something obvious and you are reacting to it as if its nonsense. I knew that would happen and here is why, but first, you don't record sound. The machine records the air pressure patterns and reproduces them and then you hear it later. The machine doesn't "hear" anything, yet it recorded "sound" right? If sound exists without an observer, then the recorder should have an experience of hearing, but most would agree it doesn't because it isn't conscious like you are.
When a tree falls, it causes stuff to move, some of that stuff being air molecules. Stuff moving has no inherent sound or noise properties. How could it? Its just physical objects, however tiny they are, moving from one location in space to another. There is no sound inherent to movement.
We know there is no sound in outer space when something bangs together, obviously because there is no medium to carry any waves. But waves are only more objects moving in space, and they have no sound properties, no more than two pieces of metal in the vacuum of space banging together. Waves are matter being displaced by energy. That's a silent operation.
A sound wave hitting your ear generates a signal, and then somehow those energy patterns result in a totally unexpected, seemingly unrelated auditory experience. Your experience of sound is a complete mystery to science as of yet, even though the external stimulation of that experience has been understood for a long time and isn't being disputed.
Sound takes place in a conscious brain and only in a conscious brain. It doesn't happen in forests and it doesn't happen with trees, whether you are there to hear it or not. It only happens in you.

 

[IronWing]

Sound takes place in a conscious brain and only in a conscious brain. It doesn't happen in forests and it doesn't happen with trees, whether you are there to hear it or not. It only happens in you.

Only because you choose to use a personal definition of the word sound. I can likewise choose to define brain as an object featuring four perpendicularly intersecting PVC pipes that whistle and assert that everyone here lacks a brain. Doing so doesn't lead to any new revelations or insights.

 

[DrPizza]

Well, of course I'm responding to it as if it were a dopey philosophical argument.

"We know there is no sound in outer space when something bangs together" - What if there were a person at that location, and one of those things banging together were pressed against the person? Let's say an International Space Station astronaut is out on a space walk to repair something. He's holding a wrench and bangs it against the ISS. Does it make a sound?

Does it make you feel foolish that your dopey philosophical argument means that you can't hear sounds? Incidentally, I'm borrowing from Feynman: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8aWBcPVPMo

 

[moonbogg]

Well, of course I'm responding to it as if it were a dopey philosophical argument.

"We know there is no sound in outer space when something bangs together" - What if there were a person at that location, and one of those things banging together were pressed against the person? Let's say in International Space Station astronaut is out on a space walk to repair something. He's holding a wrench and bangs it against the ISS. Does it make a sound?

Only if someone is there to hear it. Do you see the disconnect I am getting at? There is a massive disconnect between two very different things happening. One is a physical vibration or displacement resulting in waves, and the other is an odd experiential phenomenon that happens in a brain. The experience of sound is very different from the physical situation that stimulated it. They are explanatorily isolated from each other, being very different phenomena while at the same time remaining correlative. They are so isolated from one another, that they take place in isolation from each other at all times and by necessity, yet one depends on the other and that's what causes the confusion. The sound is in your head and can't be anywhere else, ever.

 

[BoomerD]

But if no one is there to hear it...how do you know it just didn't lie down instead of falling?

After all, if no one get the "Help! I've fallen and I can't get up!" call...maybe it just got tired of standing...

 

[Dirigible]

Ah yes, this question has perplexed stoned high school students for thousands of years now.

The answer, obviously, is "whoa, dude."

But tell me: if a computer is playing a video of a popular 90's sitcom in a closed, sterilized room from which no light can escape, is it Seinfeld?

The video is both Seinfeld and not Seinfeld until observed, at which point it is Seinfeld. The not Seinfeld is at that point converted to troll threads and dark matter.

 

[Paratus]

A more important question than the OP's.

If a man says something in the forest and his wife is not there to hear it, is he still wrong?

:hmm:

 

[alzan]

But if no one is there to hear it...how do you know it just didn't lie down instead of falling?

After all, if no one get the "Help! I've fallen and I can't get up!" call...maybe it just got tired of standing...

There's LifeLink for trees?

Holy crap

 

[FeuerFrei]

If a baby cries in a forest, and no one is around to hear it, was it abandoned? :hmm:

 

[T9D]

https://chaturbate.com/female-cams/

 

[moonbogg]

Of course it makes a sound, that's why even if nobody is there it can be recorded on remote video and microphones dumb arse

You are listening to a copy of the wave patterns, which are inherently silent. Noise happens in your brain, a kind of organized interpretation of electrical static generated by variances in air pressure.

 

[IronWing]

There's LifeLink for trees?

Holy crap

They're branching into new markets.

 

[Shargrath]

The tree makes a sound, there is just nobody there to observe it. The existence of sound does not require observation...

 

[soulcougher73]

when said pressure waves are made, other creatures in the area would perceive them. ergo yes, it does make a sound.

This. Everyone knows it. It made a sound you didn't hear is all. I don't hear people talking in New York but the still make sounds.

 

[moonbogg]

The tree makes a sound, there is just nobody there to observe it. The existence of sound does not require observation...

The tree makes air waves. If that's what you mean, then yeah. I'm pretty sure air waves can't hear anything, and I'm pretty sure the tree didn't talk to them either. If you want the phenomenon of sound to happen, you need to be there because sound is something that you do, not something the tree does.

 

[IronWing]

OP, you need to understand that simply wanting everybody to accept your definition of a word isn't the same as having that happen. I, for one, will not accept your definition of sound until you agree to accept my definition of brain.