If a tree falls in the forest with no one around to lick it, does it create a taste? If a tree falls in the forest with no one around to see it, does it construct a vision?
It seems to me that a falling tree can never make a sound, even if someone IS there to hear it. Falling trees make vibrations, not sounds. Eardrums make sounds by reacting to the stimuli of vibrations.
Likewise, falling trees don’t make sight nor taste either. For the eye to see, photons bounce off of matter and into the retina, whereas the optic nerve reacts to stimuli and thereby creates a vision. For the tongue to taste, chemoreceptors (taste buds) react to chemical stimuli and thus transduce them into electrical action potentials for the brain to interpret as flavor.
So regardless of whether or not a person is around, trees can never make vision, taste or sound. Humans do these things by reacting to the various stimuli around us.
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YOU ARE PICKING NITS AD SPLITTING HAIRS DUDE. Sorry about the caps.
You have no idea outside of your limited receptors as to what is really going on in the world.
Exactly! You’ve got it! This is what I’ve been saying for a long time. A sound is only a sound if someone is there to hear it. If not, vibrations.
@Zendo
My limited senses should not limit my pursuit of trying to figure out what’s really going on. Picking nits and splitting hairs is often the only way to pay very close attention to what I can be aware of. At least we can dissect the dragon with logic and reason.
@TheCreative
I know what you mean. But consider that part of the problem is the way you and I have been trying to communicate that idea.
Think about the way you verbalized the premise (as I often have).
“A sound is only a sound if someone is there to hear it.”
Shouldn’t it be presented more like:
“A sound does not exist unless an eardrum is present to transduce a vibration into one.”
It shakes the foundation of the term “soundwave”. It’s not really a sound wave is it? Isn’t it really a vibration wave… that becomes a sound upon stimulating an eardrum.
@RealEyesRealizeRealLies Apparently you haven’t been shrooming in a long long time. I learned a long time ago that that if you concentrate just so, you will perceive that sounds (vibrations) emanating from stereo speakers flow out in living color. Solid walls ripple and undulate, allowing some os us to walk through them. Trees crashing in a forest where no one can hear them do indeed make noise. The crashing tree itself and all his neighboring trees heard the fall, and felt the floor of the forest shudder with the impact.
@Zendo
Feeling a vibration is different that hearing a sound. Your position requires vibration and sound to be the same things. I see them as different things. Many deaf people can feel a vibration and never hear anything at all.
Yes, I see what you mean. This is a question that philosophers have debated for eons…with no solution.
@Zendo
I wish they’d debate that night I walked through the wall. Never really did figure that one out.
If someone has a differing opinion on the internet, will they argue about it?
Walking through walls is one of the first steps on your way to enlightenment.
@Zendo
I’ll bet it is. Walking through them is WAY better than walking into them.
The next step is hearing people’s thoughts. That is a scary time, because almost no one admits to having thought what you know you heard when you ask them.
That doesn’t seem so strange to me. I hear your thoughts every time you reply to me. I’ve always thought that telepathy is perfectly natural. We just use symbols and mouth noises to make it happen.
But if I actually “heard” a voice in my head (straight mind you) then a trip to Dr. Finklestein might be in order. Dr. Smirnoff ain’t cuttin’ it…
Thas what I’m talkin bout. Dr. Finklestein time.
After the hearing thoughts period; events unfold before you daring you to intervene…Events which threaten other lives around you. And you must act only on a feeling, not even knowing the situation will soon become dire.
If a tree did anything in the woods by itself I don’t need to know about it.
If you put a camcorder in the forest and recorded a tree falling, it would capture the image and the sound. Not sure how you’d test the taste thing.
@Allie
It sure seems that way. But consider this…
The camera chip is only reacting to stimuli of reflecting photons. The microphone is only reacting to stimuli of air molecule vibrations. Both sets of stimuli are encoded into a human contructed medium. That codification represents information about an event. The code is then interpreted and represented by pixels on a screen and electrical pulses in a speaker.
Humans watch the presentation and give the phenomenon a name that represents a specific phenominal event. We call it “tree falling”.
But the camera did not record a tree falling. The camera only reacted to stimuli of photons and air vibration.
@RealEyesRealizeRealLies So next time I watch porn I’ll tell my friends it’s just a video of photons and air vibrations.
@Allie
It’s a bit more than that. Porn, in this particular medium, is collection of photons and air vibrations arranged in a specific manner to REPRESENT sexual activity. But it is NOT sexual activity in and of itself.
@Zendo
How so? To view it any other way seems specious to me…
spe·cious adj
1. appearing to be true but really false
2. superficially attractive but actually of no real interest or value
Encarta® World English Dictionary © 1999 Microsoft Corporation.
This is just an argument of your definition of the word “sound” and how lenient that definition is.
@shrubbery
I’m trying to be as realistic about this as I can possibly be. All I ask is for you to consider my position and then illustrate where I’m in error.
I’m not being lenient with the definition of sound… Quite the opposite actually. I see a distinct difference between sound and vibration. They are not the same things. Deaf people can feel a vibration and yet never hear a sound. To consider sound and vibration as the same things would be too lenient. It’s simply not the case at all.
Are not all vibrations sound?
@Zendo
How would a deaf person answer that question?
They would probably say that they can feel sound, even though they can’t hear it.
Perhaps, looking at your definition of specious, you should focus less on “false” and more on “of no real interest or value” if you want to know why people are using the word to describe your argument.
LOL…Now we are bringing deaf people into a discussion where trees are crashing down in a forest where there is no one to hear all the noise they are making.
Deaf people, by definition, cannot hear sounds.
@RealEyesRealizeRealLies, that’s exactly what I’m saying. Perhaps you’re defining the word too specifically but the general public is more lenient with the definition so it would just be simpler to talk about waves as sound…
@Zendo
But they can feel vibrations, so there must be a difference in the words, sound and vibration.
@MacBean @shrubbery
It makes sense to me but if I’m wrong then straighten out my thinking. I certainly don’t want to believe something that isn’t so. Show me how it isn’t so.
Friction causes matter to vibrate. It’s a simple case of cause/reaction and it is quite objectively independent of a perceiver. The vibration forms a wave upon the matter of air molecules. The vibrational wave strikes other forms of matter in the surrounding area and cause/reaction produces more friction upon their surfaces.
The difference between sound and vibration occurs at this point…
If the vibration lands upon the matter of a rock, a leaf, or a stream… then the only thing that happens is more friction causing/reacting to more vibrations… and that is all.
But if the vibration lands upon the matter of an eardrum or a microphone, something entirely different happens. The matter of an eardrum and microphone transduce the vibration into an electrical impulse. One energy has been converted into another. The electrical impulse is sent to a processor and codified into information. At this point, where sound occurs, vibration is no longer part of the equation. Sound relies upon a matter receptor which can convert vibration into electricity and process it into a codified signal. More than just an eardrum, the entire closed loop information processing system is needed to create a sound.
I could say the same for taste buds and optic nerves.
In this light, the term “sound wave” seems erroneous. It’s just a vibration until converted into electricity.
Where am I wrong?
@RealEyesRealizeRealLies: Again, going back to the words used in the definition(s) you provided, I have no idea if your thinking is “false” because I can’t force myself to read it all because it is “of no real interest or value.” You’re just being tedious.
@MacBean
I’m perplexed. If it is of no real value or interest, then why are you following this thread? And if you are correct, then why has the basis of this question been a hot topic in philosophy and now metaphysics since George Berkeley first introduced the concept of subjective idealism in the 18th century?
Perhaps it has no real interest or value to you, but it has great interest and value to many others, including myself.
Please, don’t shoot the messenger. Either address the issue directly or kindly move along.
@RealEyesRealizeRealLies Deaf people can feel the vibrations of a building crashing to the ground next to them, but they don’t feel the vibrations of spoken words.
@Zendo
Sure, there are many vibrations they can and cannot feel, just like people with good hearing. Your point?
Oh, I see….you are going to go on and on until you have proven your point….LOL….reminds me of a lemsteve thread.
@Zendo
I’m really at a loss here.
How does me asking you to clarify your point constitute accusing me of going on and on? I made my case and politely asked to be shown where it was in error. No one is even addressing it, preferring to attack and insult me instead.
What is the problem with actually sticking to the subject?
Lemsteve threatened and cursed at people. Is that comparison justified?
@RealEyesRealizeRealLies, I’m not trying to say that you’re wrong or that it isn’t so, what you are saying actually does make sense to me after just learning about waves last week in physics class, but what is the point of this argument? Does it really matter? Most people define waves as sound so unless you want to get up there and teach the whole world about the nature of waves and sound then there is not much point to this.
@RealEyesRealizeRealLies: “I’m perplexed. If it is of no real value or interest, then why are you following this thread?” Usually I move past your questions because they’re almost always specious and/or tedious. I got involved with this one because someone, annoyed by its ridiculousness, linked me to it directly.
Also, my issue is not with this topic. It’s with the way you argue. You use many words, but say very little.
@MacBean
Please, don’t shoot the messenger. Either address the issue directly or kindly move along.
@shrubbery
Thanks for actually considering the topic at hand. Nobody has to agree with me. I only ask they show me where my logic has failed.
@shrubbery asked:
What is the point of this argument?
To pursue the solution to a 200 year old question that has plagued the greatest thinkers in history. A question that remains debatable.
@shrubbery asked:
Does it really matter?
It does to me.
I believe the solution to this question will provide answers to issues of perception, subjective/objective truth relationships, epistemology and communication theory. And you are correct, it will shake the foundations of what we call sound waves and how they are different from vibrations. It will also challenge notions of other senses such as taste and sight.
If the question has not been settled for 200 years, then perhaps the question is not the issue. Perhaps the issue lies within an unseen dogma of how we define phenomenon and the words that describe them.
how about if a tree falls in the woods but there’s no one around but a deaf dude with Lexical gustatory synesthesia…. does the falling tree have a taste, and what is it?
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