Posted on 04/04/2005 9:07:44 PM PDT by Ronzo
It's much more simple than that!
What we call, "Sound" is the vibration of movement against one's ear mechanism.
If a tree drops in the woods, and no one is there; the vibrations still occur.
The better question might be, "If vibrations occur in the woods, but no ears pick it up--should we consider it "sound"?
The better question might be, "If vibrations occur in the woods, but no ears pick it up--should we consider it "sound"?
The short answer is no.
The long answer is that for there to be "sound" there must be the following:
1. A person present who understands the concept of sound, and knows one when he hears it.
2. That same person must have the ability to hear.
Animals don't count, as they don't categorize information and experiences like we do.
So if there's no person present who can hear, there's no sound, just the vibrations/waves. Those vibrations don't become what we normally call "sound" until it is heard by a human being.
This bizzare little mind game has an important point: to demonstrate there really isn't anything there until an observer is present to observe it.
A more significant and difficult question is this: if a tree grows in a forrest, and no one is present to see it, does the tree exist?
While Lurking on Free Republic, every once in a while I come across a thread that talks about Ayn Rand's philosophy, which seems to be very conservative friendly. One recent thread is "Atlas Shrugged: A Model for Individualist Revolution"
In order to find out a little more about Ayn, I wandered over to the local Borders bookstore and checked out their philosophy section. My mission: to find the smallest, least expensive book I could get that seemed like a neat summary of Rand's "big ideas." After several minutes of looking, I finally found a book that met my critera: "On Ayn Rand" by Allan Gotthelf.
I was really surprised to learn that Rand absolutely HATED the Greek philosopher Plato! The book never really explains why, but I thought it rather odd. But she definitely thinks the world of Aristotle, except for some of his metaphysics.
But the most bizzare passage I found in the book was the following, which I don't even think is part of Rand's philosophical system, but that of the author's!
The "first cause" (or "cosmological") argument maintains that God is needed as the creator or sustainer of the material universe. But that is to say that existence needs consciousness to create or sustain it. It makes a consciousness--God's consciousness--metaphysically prior to existence. But existence exists. It an have no beginning, no end, no cause. It just is. And consciousness is a faculty of awareness, not of creation. The first cause argument violates both the axiom of existence and the axiom of consciousness. (pg 49)
As soon as I read that, all sorts of sirens, bells & whistles went off in my rational mind, warning me that I had just encountered a pile of philosophical poop. It seems as if the author is a committed materialist, but his arguments against God just don't make any sense! If this is the way other materialists think and reason, it's no wonder the world is in such a horrific state. Even a non-philosopher can detect the blatant contradiction in his reasoning, as there cannot be "existence" unless there is a consciousness to perceive it, whether or not it's God's consciousness can be debated, but a consciousness is required none-the-less.
So I wrote my essay in defense of consciousness, and showed how it is logically linked to existence, not preceding it nor coming after it. It seems, from a logical viewpoint, the two must go hand-in-hand, other wise you start making goofey statements like those I quote above.
However, thanks to betty boop, I found solace in an explanation of Bishop Berkeley's philosophy, which I had inadvertently borrowed from, without knowing it!
"But when Philonous [lover of the mind] continues this line of reasoning [all we know are sensations, ideas] into the subject of sounds, Hylas [materialist] balks. Sounds, the noises that we hear, Hylas is willing to admit, are only sensations that we have. But at the same time, he insists, there are sounds waves that exist in the exterior physical world, apart from us. But, Philonous points out, this means that real sound, the sound waves, are never heard. Only noises are heard. The sensible thing that we perceive is noise. The sound wave we do not hear. So once again Hylas must admit that the sensible thing, the noise exists in the mind; the "real" thing, the sound wave, is not a sensible thing and hence not relevant to their discussion. (The reader may be familiar with another version of this point, namely, "Is there any sound when a tree falls in a forest and no one is there? What Berkeley is pointing out is that if we mean by sound, experienced noise, then the answer is no, if no one hears it.)" pg 216 - Philosophy Made Simple."What Berkeley has shown, up to this point, is that if one seriously accepts the empirical theory of knowledge, all that we experience are not independently existing material objects but, rather, a series of ideas. All that we can know about these ideas is what we percieve. Hence we cannot tell from what we see if they exist apart from minds that percieve them. In fact, as he has pointed out, we cannot even conceive or imagine, in terms of our experience, what it would be like for our sensations to exist apart from being thought of. Thus, in Berkeley's famous phrase: "the existence of things consists of their being perceived," or, as he put it in Latin, "esse est percipi" (literally, "to be is to be perceived.")" pg 219 - Philosophy Made Simple.
If Allan Gotthelf's book is an accuarte reflection of Ayn Rand's thought, then I cannot help to think very little of Ayn Rand's philosophical system, even though there are some parts which I really like.
On the other hand, Bishop Berkeley is my kind of guy! Though we disagree about the existence of matter, we do have common ground in that matter does not exists independent of ultimate consciousness.
So now you know why I wrote the essay.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1365689/posts
I hope this works!
Hope to come back, soon. Thanks for a great post/essay!
Ayn Rand makes for an excellent case study in relentless subjectivity: She picks and chooses according to criteria known only to herself. She absolutely demonizes Plato as some kind of communist (makes you wonder whether she's even read him at all), but loves Aristotle -- as long as he doesn't wander into metaphysics. She detests metaphysics in principle, apparently. For her key statement "existence exists" is an attempt to expunge the metaphysical altogther.
Rand is very unlike both Plato and Aristotle, in that she was consciously developing a systematic philosophy. Which is something that neither P. or A. ever did.
As for George Berkeley's "immaterialism," given what modern physics tells us about matter/energy, it seems the good Bishop sees the world, not from the standpoint of "matter in its motions," but fundamentally as a manifestation of energy, preeminently in its form of consciousness, thought. When he suggests that we cannot even conceive or imagine, in terms of our experience, what it would be like for our sensations to exist apart from being thought of, I think he has hit upon a very interesting insight that is worth pondering.
Thank you for your excellent post!
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