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Aegīdius 27 days ago
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This will be my contribution to this month‘s ‘‘Argument‘‘ Challenge.

In this blog I will try to give a valid argument trying to answer the question:

‘‘If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?‘‘.

The answer I will give here will probably not be what you expect however, because I am going to argue that it in fact does not make a sound. Read the blog before you judge however, you might be surprised.

Just to clarify, my argument will be very different from the ones which the 18th century anglo-irish philosopher George Berkeley (1685 - 1753) gave for why it does in fact not make a sound. I am mentioning this since people always associate this question and particularly this answer with Berkeley.

My argument here will go more in the direction of people like Ludwig Wittgenstein, aswell as certain discussions in contemporary ‘‘philosophy of color‘‘.

That said, now what will my definition of ‘‘sound‘‘ be for this argument?

Well you see, I can‘t start with that, because that is pretty much the very thing in question, if I started with that I would pretty much presuppose the answer to my very question.

My argument for why the tree falling when no one is around to hear it in fact does not make a sound is thus the following.

In what follows ‘‘P‘‘ will stand for ‘‘premise‘‘ and ‘‘C‘‘ will stand for ‘‘conclusion‘‘.

Argument:

P1) If there are 2 different conceptions of ‘‘sound‘‘, then only 1 of those 2 different conceptions of ‘‘sound’‘ can actually be ‘‘sound‘‘. (p -> q)

P2) There are 2 different conceptions of ‘‘sound‘‘. (p)

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C1) Therefore, only 1 of those 2 different conceptions of ‘‘sound‘‘ can actually be ‘‘sound‘‘. (q) (from (P1)(P2))

P3) If only 1 of those 2 different conceptions of ‘‘sound‘‘ can actually be ‘‘sound‘‘, then ‘‘sound‘‘ is either a physical phenomenon or a mental phenomenon. (q -> (r v s))

————————————————————————-

C2) Therefore, ‘‘sound‘‘ is either a physical phenomenon or a mental phenomenon. (r v s) (from (C1)(P3))

P4) If ‘‘sound‘‘ is a physical phenomenon, then ‘‘sound‘‘ can not be heard by us. (r -> ~t)

P5) ‘‘Sound‘‘ can be heard by us. (t)

————————————————————————

C3) Therefore, ‘‘sound‘‘ is not a physical phenomenon. (~r) (from (P4)(P5))

————————————————————————-

C4) Therefore, ‘‘sound‘‘ is a mental phenomenon. (s) (from (C2)(C3))

P6) If ‘‘sound‘‘ is a mental phenomenon, then a tree that falls in a forest where no one is around to hear it does not make a ‘‘sound‘‘. (s -> ~w)

————————————————————————-

C5) Therefore, a tree that falls in a forest where no one is around to hear it does not make a ‘‘sound‘‘. (~w) (from (C4)(P6))

Explanation:

When we ask ourselves the question ‘‘What is

’sound‘?‘‘ then we do that because we are able to hear ‘‘sound‘‘ (at least the people who ask themselves that question). The ‘‘sound‘‘ we hear is necessarily a mental phenomenon however and not a physical phenomenon, because if it were a physical phenomenon we could not hear it. Objects can not hear, only subjects (humans, animals…) can hear, since only they have mental phenomena.

The mistake of the physicist is to confuse the question ‘‘What is ’sound‘?‘‘ with the question ‘‘How is it physically possible to hear ’sound‘?‘‘.

Pretty much no one would disagree that in the external world there exist ‘‘accustic waves‘‘ which are the ultimate reason why we hear the ‘‘sound‘‘ we do. The mistake however is to claim that the ‘‘accustic waves‘‘ themselves are the ’‘sound‘‘. They are not the ‘‘sound‘‘ itself, but only the reason we hear the ‘‘sound‘‘. If anything you could call ‘‘accustic waves‘‘ something like sound* (accustic waves), but sound* (accustic waves) is not the same as ‘‘sound‘‘. The reason we are even asking all of these questions to begin with is due to ‘‘sound‘‘, because we hear it (at least those of us who aren‘t deaf).

To confuse ‘‘sound‘‘ and sound* (accustic waves) is a conceptual confusion and a linguistic confusion.

When we ask the question ‘‘If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?‘‘ we are interested in ‘‘sound‘‘, not in sound* (accustive waves). To answer that a ‘‘sound‘‘ exists even when no one at all hears it is to go off-topic and to change the goalposts of the discussion, because that is not what we were talking about. It is a mistake that arises out of confusing ’‘sound‘‘ and sound* (accustic waves).

Some might say I am being pendantic right now or that I‘m purely talking about ‘‘semantics‘‘. I am however not talking purely about ‘‘semantics‘‘, since ‘‘sound‘‘ and sound* (accustic waves) are demonstrably not the same thing. To put it in aristotelian , sound* (accustic waves) is the ‘‘efficient cause‘‘ (causa efficiens) of ‘‘sound‘‘. Similarily to put it in kantian , sound* (accustic waves) is the very ‘‘condition of possibility‘‘ of ‘‘sound‘‘.

You could potentially go in a different direction than me on this issue and claim that the answer to the question ‘‘If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?‘‘ is a purely definitional issue, where the answer depends purely on how you define ‘‘sound‘‘. In that case you would turn the question into a sort of philosophical ‘‘pseudo-problem‘‘ however, not because the question can not be answered or is meaningless (which isn‘t the case), but because in that case it is not a genuine philosophical question at all, because you can answer it quite literally by choosing a specific definition of the term ‘‘sound‘‘ (as physical phenomenon or mental phenomenon).

This is the reason why I didn‘t define ‘‘sound‘‘ at the very beginning.

As always, I hope you liked this blog and feel free to share your opinion on it, if you want to.

#AC-This will be my contribution to this month‘s ‘‘Argument‘‘ Challenge.

In this blog I will try to give a valid argument tr
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Comments (3)

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Comments (3)

I’m wondering what you think of this objection.

Sound(A) vibrations that propagate through acoustic waves

Sound(Q) a qualitative state or the quale, what it is like to hear.

Both sound(A) and sound(Q) are the same or refer to the same thing but are represented in different ways because of a subject. You might say that both sound(A) and sound(Q) co-referential . They seem different because our sense of the are different but they refer to the same thing. Sound (A) and sound(Q) are identical but they are different ways of understanding or knowing.

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1 Reply 27 days ago

I‘m fine to say something like: ‘‘Sound (A) is the reason why we hear Sound (Q) and also why we hear it the way we do‘‘. If we leave aside something like phantom sounds which we hear but aren‘t actually there, you could say that pretty much per definition (if we leave aside phantom sounds): ‘‘There is no sound (Q) without a previous sound (A), since sound (A) is the cause and sound (Q) is the effect‘‘. Still I do actually believe that regardless of how you argue sound (A) and sound (Q) are not the same thing, at the very least on a conceptual level they are very different. This is exactly what certain philosophers mean when they say we should be clear, give definitions and reply to objections, because not doing so leads you to commit the ‘‘equivocation fallacy‘‘ (or similar things)

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1 Reply 27 days ago

First of all, I love the reasoning here! Overall it holds really well and it was fun to read ^^

However, like most reasoning, it has interesting things to poke at to see if they hold:

The most obvious one is reliance on exclusive validity for P1. Polysemy is definitely a possibility and removing it as soon as premise 1 without prior justification was fairly surprising. Then justifying the fact polysemy cannot happen by justifying that sound as a physical phenomena cannot be valid kind of made me feel like P1 was more of a later conclusion justified partially by it being true than a premise. Not necessarily bad, just unexpected! So it holds if its justification does!

The idea that unpercieved phenomena do not occur is fascinating. Not provable but not unprovable so...Justified here and true enough. Why not! However...We go back to P1's justification, or part of it:

"because if it (sound) were a physical phenomenon we could not hear it." isn't true by itself if we accept polysemy (and reject a yet to be justified P1) because it could be both physical and not. And that's more or less what I'd argue!

Sound would be is a system with physical sound as input and percieved sound as a conditional output that requires present agents capable of hearing. There is a system even without an output it just fails. Sorry for bringing in systems again-

I'd almost agree: it makes no percieved sound. The sound itself happens but FAILS if we define sound as the process through which percieved sound is generated. Aaand that is where I'm stuck.

Perhaps sound is the output we percieve. Perhaps it is the causal effect/linear system/whatever that forms the process. It doesn't change the underlying structure. What happens remains the same, the rest is language.

Something made a physical phenomenon, it triggered a system, and the system failed to give output but was still triggered.

If we define sound as the output, then your whole reasoning is exactly what I described anyway.

If sound is the process, then it happens and fails.

If sound is the input, then it is not percieved at all and you couldn't "hear sound" as you said.

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1 Reply 27 days ago
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