If a tree falls in the forest, and there is no one to hear or see it, does it make a sound?

Answer 1

The laws of physics cease after hearing irrational questions like this.....

Answer 2

Both rationalists like Descartes and Empiricists like Locke and Berkeley would say 'No.'
For both Descartes and Locke, sound, as well as colour, taste, etc, are secondary qualities, meaning that they only exist relative to a perceiver. Read Descartes' "Meditations" and Locke's "Essay on Human Understanding."
I also suggest you read George Berkeley's Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous in which Berkeley expounds his idealism--the view that external things are mere appearances. Qualities such as temperature, colour, sound, etc, only exist insofar as they are perceived. (They are not qualities inherent in the objects in themselves, since an object-in-itself is imperceivable) Thus, if there is no perceiver, a sound, for example, does not exist.

Whereas Descartes and Locke render extension and matter primary qualities, thus asserting the existence of empirical objects outside the frame of our sensibility (and securing objective [transcendental] reality), Berkeley affirms the ideality of extension and the rest of the 'primary qualities.' Therefore, for Berkeley, not only does the sound not exist without a perceiver, but the sound does not *actually* exist at all, i.e., it does not exist as an empirical event external to a subjectivity.

But this is a further metaphysical claim which is far from controversial (see Kant's Critique of Pure Reason).

The point is that due to the problem of imperceptibility of matter, no rational philosopher employing common sense would deny that (at the very least) what Descartes and Locke termed 'secondary qualities' are mere perceptions, i.e., only exist insofar as they are perceived.

Therefore, "If a tree falls in the forest, and there is no one to hear it," is does NOT make a sound

Answer 3

If Milli Vannili fall down in the forest and there is no one around to hear them...does someone else have to make a sound?

Answer 4

Of course it does. Events happen all the time, things are always falling down when no one is around, a sound is emitted from that falling of something. Why would a sound not be made just because no one is around to hear it.

I've heard the phrase you shared here before and I find it to be a silly thought . . . yet it a thought that is shared again and again just the same.
.

Answer 5

If you hear a sound when a tree is being created, then you will also hear a sound when it falls. Be thought full

Answer 6

~You know, I've always wondered that myself and it has kept me awake at night more times than I care to admit. Every time I conduct an experiment to find out though, I am either to far away to hear anything and have no conclusive proof either way, or I get close enough to hear it then reliaze I've skewed the result. I'm now concentrating on something more complicate. I now wonder if a rockslide happens and somebody is buried under it, does it matter whether or not in made noise? My next project will be 'if the is an empty mind with no original thought out there on Yahoo Answers, should I respond to it?'

Answer 7

Sound is a pattern of energy waves. Energy waves are created whenever something moves, and everything physical makes a sound of some kind; thus a tree does create a sound when it falls, regardless of perception.

Answer 8

Yes. I can't prove it, of course. But then again, I can't prove that the sun still shines once it's gone over the horizon. Perhaps China is a joke you're all playing on me to keep me thinking the world is round.

Once you start thinking that the laws of physics are mutable like that, you open yourself up for all kinds of silliness.

Answer 9

NO. Sound is not energy waves in the air. Sound is the ear's perception of those energy waves. Without an ear within range, you merely have the energy waves, but no sound.

Answer 10

yes!

no matter what there will always be a sound!

it is like if someone where to scream

someone close by would hear it

(but if they were death then no there is no sound to them)