oh noes
all my years of zen meditations is now in the crapper
how canz science does this to me?
how canz one little fact suddenly destroy allz thats I has worked for??
I'm perturbed by the anthropocentric outlook of that particular koan. A forest is, by definition, full of "someone"s (is that correct punctuation?), just not humans. You cannot have a forest without trees, right? Trees have bugs and birds, not to mention everybody else living there. They all exist and can feel vibrations (physical, not woo), so how can there be "no one"? Zen, my last hope for "spirituality', ground under the crush of relentless logic. At least I still have Stoicism.
You can more-or-less reasonably argue that "sound" is the name we give to our mental experience f air-vibrations and not the vibrations themselves but it still always struck me as a stupid thing to treat as particularly profound.
The solution to any number of these supposedly deep riddles is:
"Languages sometimes contain words that ignore the differences between things so if you push language to far it won't be clear what you mean"
There once was a man who said, “God
Must think it exceedingly odd
If He finds that this tree
Continues to be
When there’s no one about in the Quad.”
“Dear Sir:
Your astonishment’s odd:
I am always about in the Quad
And that’s why the tree
Will continue to be,
Since observed by,
Yours faithfully,
God.”
Attrib Monsignor Ronald Knox
People get upset with me when I tell them that, without a doubt, the egg came before the chicken. It's an evolutionary no-brainer, as far as I can see.
But apparently to say so is arrogant, because someone else has decided there is no answer. Or, of course, goddidit.
"When a tree falls in the forest,
There is sound", the people chorused,
But a pressure wave is simply not identical with sound.
I'm not making the suggestion
That it's not a stupid question
But this answer is as dumb as any other that's around.
It's less "answer" than "illusion";
It's assuming its conclusion,
So it's true by definition, but the definition's wrong!
Is the stimulus sensation?
An erroneous conflation
Of the pressure and perception--leave them both where they belong!
This ignores the useful labor
Both of Fechner and of Weber
Who invented psychophysics to explore the problem right
Now their sig-detection theory
Might make researchers grow weary
But it works to study taste and touch, and sound and smell and sight!
I agree with you and say the same thing whenever someone asks that question.
I find I rarely have people disagree but I usually just say "because something that came before what we call a chicken had to lay the chicken's egg". When they throw the bible at me I usually just giggle and end the conversation.
I have had that very same discussion with so many people. When I give them the rational answer and explanation they always look at me like I am an alien of some sort. The cognitive dissonance is ringing loudly in their ears.
But here is twist on that question:
If a jet airliner is in the middle of the dessert and no one ever sees it or uses it, does it still have monetary value?
The chicken and egg question can be recovered if you say "which came first the chicken or the chicken egg", but it's still just an inane thing about the fuzzy edges of what is covered by a word.
#23. Exactly! We have an expression that doesn't pay attention to the difference because when we are making breakfast (or even raising chickens) it doesn't make any difference. These supposed paradoxes only appear if you assume words and phrases always refer to clearly defined types of thing
The comment is online here http://www.gocomics.com/nonsequitur/ and you can post responses if you sign up. Unfortunately someone said that sound waves and radio waves don't exist without a receiver. The bigger question here is, "Does something exist if there's no way for it to be detected?" Physics says physical objects and energy, the concept of detection is irrelevant.
Price tag up to $170 million with the supporters ignoring the cost to the public (about $120 million of it). All the choice perks are going to the rich and powerful who arrive in their carbon spewing jets. Entire runways are shut down so they have a place to park their planes. Meanwhile the non-wealthy Americans who worked hard to make Obama's win happen are out in the cold and hustling for scraps at the table of the BIG donors who get heated tents.
A more precise wording (and less prone to different interpretations and the arguing that follows) might be, "If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there, does it still generate compression waves in the air?"
If worded that way perhaps only the quantum philosophers (Is it real if no one observes it?) would continue to fuss.
And since the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language defines sound as-
"...vibration transmitted through a solid, liquid, or gas; particularly, sound means those vibrations composed of frequencies capable of being detected by ears."
-a listener is not required. Although #5 makes a very good point and now I have a mental image of a bunch of woodmice yelling "TIIIIIMBERRRRR!!!" at the top of their squeaky little voices.
The question isn't intended to be answered. Rather, it serves as a demonstration that it is possible to formulate a question to which the answer can't be known.
Of course we can infer the answer from previous experience, but the question itself precludes the experience necessary to confirm it the inference.
I think the question provides a useful exercise, if nothing else.
Oh dear,
I'm afraid non-sequitur misunderstood the problem that is posed by this question in two ways:
1.) The epistemological question - going back to Hume's problem of induction: Even given that we presently understand the world around us through science and our generalizations have been valid, how could we have reason to believe that the 'natural laws' we seem to find in nature hold true where we're not performing observation - and how could we have reason to believe that the future will be anything like the past? There can be no evidence for this, because that would simply mean a recursion to past observations. It's an unsolvable problem - and that's why the only reasonable stance is to assume it anyway because that assumption is necessary for pragmatic success of science and technology. And there's nothing wrong with that.
But this means that the epstemic question is fully valid and the answer is that we cannot know with absolute whether a tree that is going to fall will make a sound because we cannot know that the future will be like the past. So no, science does not enable us to know such things.
But then, everybody with even the slightest understanding of science knows that science, properly understood, is modest enough not to claim to have it right - observation is theory laden, and thus so is the data we gather. The theories we construct upon the data may work, and be corroborated, but can never be verified. That's why science doesn't claim to know - only to have a method of finding working explanations. And that claim is entirely justified.
But the epistemic question the 'falling tree' thought experminet actually asks cannot be answered by recursion to theories constructed by induction upon theory-laden observation.
and
2) There are two readings of 'making a sound' - the one that takes 'sound' to be any density-modulation travelling through physical media, for which the strip gives the right answer ('yes'), and the one that distinguished density-variations from density-variations observed by an organism through hearing - and means that by 'sound'.
In that case we will have to say that given a pragmatist stance toward the problem of induction and the fact that scientific inference to the best explanation is an accepted, regulated form of affirmation of the consequent (yes, the logical fallacy, look it up here: http://www.fallacyfiles.org/afthecon.htmlhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inference_to_the_Best_Explanation),
we still must make use of parsimony and can claim that to our best knowledge, we have to assume that were a sentient being capable of hearing present, it would make a sound, and that under this definition of sound it is meaningless to ask whether the tree produces it if noone is present, because this definition of sounds includes an observer and is thus not well-defined in absence of one.
... so the relation between metaphysics and science is not really as simple as the comic wants us to believe. Most people just don't get that metaphysics mustn't be a dirty word - because it refers simply to all the questions the arise which go beyond the object-level of the relevant empirical sciences - it does not mean that we have to invent metaphysical entities and spooky, woo-y 'forces' or whatever.
It simply means we have to recognize that in being scientific rationalists, we need good answers to such questions as:
-"What is the epistemic status of empirical science?"
-"How do we best conceptualize the domain of inquiry?"
-"What distinguishes science from pseudoscience?"
-"What are reasonable criteria for 'explanation' with respect to a phenomenon under investigation - that is: when are we justify to say we have a working explanation?"
-"What are the criteria according to which we should construct and sort through proposed explanations/hypotheses"?
-"How can we argue that established scientific theories are the most epsitemically tenable accounts of a given phenomenon?"
-"How can we argue against such positions as dualism, idealism or theism?"
-"Given that our theories are merely descriptions, intended as 'maps' of what we wish to explain, what do we have reason to believe 'exists', what is 'real' - strings, knots in spacetime, information-quantae, or perhaps better "that - whatever it is - which these descriptions attempt to describe".
...and so forth. These are all questions where there can be no empirical evidence to answer them, because these are not empirical questions. They are questions of epistemology, philosophy of science, -of religion, -of mind...
Thankfully, many brilliant people have contributed to finding answers to such questions in the most rigorous and rational way possible - and that's why we have good answers.
Without them, however, there would be no epistemic foundation for science nor good arguments for scientific rationalism.
You either know the wrong scientists or the go to the wrong sort of parties. Scientists with access to stuff like dry ice pellets make parties cool.
I also heard tell of the case of a lab worker who soaked pineapple chunks in 100% Ethanol and took them to a party, but that might be an urban legend. (I'm too scared to try in case I get it contaminated with IMS or something...)
People get upset with me when I tell them that, without a doubt, the egg came before the chicken. It's an evolutionary no-brainer, as far as I can see.
Again, this is a semantic game (assuming that by "egg" one means "chicken egg" and not just any old egg). Is a "chicken egg" an egg laid by a chicken or an egg containing a chicken?
MY American Heritage dictionary lists this for sound (right after your selection):
2.a. The sensation stimulated in the organs of hearing by such a disturbance.
in which case, a listener IS required.
I've always understood (perhaps misunderstood?) this koan to be an exercise to force the student to think about the nature of physical reality (pressure waves) vs the perception of reality. A bell's tone can be decomposed into fourier or bessel components, but is that really the same as perceiving the beauty of the sound.
A chicken and an egg are lying in bed. The chicken is smoking a cigarette and wearing a big goofy smirk, but the egg grumbles "Well we answered THAT question!"
@ mothra (#45). Yes, designated drinkers indeed. Or more precisely, that annoying, obnoxious 'friend', but not really your friend, who profusely vomits up crap in your car when you're forced to drive him home to keep him safe.
FINALLY, SOMEONE FIGURED THIS OUT! I don't know how many times I've argued along the lines of this cartoon and so far nobody GETS IT. Yes, sound waves exist independent of anyone being around to listen. Thanks PZ for posting this and thanks for Non Sequitur for finally figuring out what should be obvious.
I feel better now; maybe there is some hope for the world.
The chicken and egg thing is a non question. It relies on the assumption of 'kinds' the idea that all species were created distinct and unchangeable so they are different kinds of animals. You see this when arguing speciation with creotards, they will say well an egg containing a chicken had to be laid by a non chicken for speciation to happen. The idea of gradualism in evolution being too hard for their tiny minds.
Either that or it in essence (but don't get me started on essentialism) it devolves into asking how sexual reproduction began, we are still working on that one.
Everyone does know that the answer to all of your theories about the sound of a tree falling in the woods is a whack upside the head with a stick right?
"Well actually, there are energy waves that ..." WHACK!
I got in so much trouble with a teacher that already hated me when I answered that the sound waves were still there. And what did she mean, no one? Not one other animal life form anywhere--in a forest??? Not one bird, deer, skunk, fox, possum, raccoon, nothing? Give me a break!
What really made her mad was when the whiz-kid physics guy, piped up that I was right about sound waves still being generated. And then we boxed her in about her question not being clear enough, if the answer she wanted was "no."
We both got sent to the principal's office, for being "disruptive" in class.
Same bitch that made me go to the principal's office for not bowing my head during the weekly loudspeaker Jesus fest. My stepfather had a field day with that one.
rude, but im not reading any of the comments above. sry!
on the subject of the comic - is sound the movement of waves through a substance, or is it the conversion of those waves by the inner ear/brain into perception?
If the former, then yes. It does not make a sound. If the latter, then no. 'sound' requires an observer.
or, another way - if every organism in all of existence could not perceive sound, would 'sound' exist?
My decibel meter tells me that sound does in fact exist, even when I'm not around to hear it. So does my seismograph. If I blow on a dog whistle and there's no dog around to hear it, has the whistle malfunctioned? And so on.
#56: Maybe you will be happier thinking of it as an avian period.
Huh? What is this 'it' you speak of? I can't figure out how to think of speciation or taxonomy, the subjects of post #56, as an avian period. Remember kids, just because you can use a pronoun doesn't mean you should.
A chicken is an avian, period. A chicken egg is an avian period. The Jurassic was, depending on how you define the terms, an avian period.
That whizzing sound? That was something going right past 'ya.
"If a jet airliner is in the middle of the desert and no one ever sees it or uses it, does it still have monetary value?"
Yes, because someone had to pay for the materials and labour used to create it, and for moving it into the middle of the desert.
Now, if a jet airliner is in the middle of the desert and no one ever sees it or uses it, it doesn't have any marginal utility, which is not the same thing.
If I blow on a dog whistle and there's no dog around to hear it, has the whistle malfunctioned?
That depends. You could be one of these people who can actually hear dog whistles (ow!), in which case, I'd be more than happy to inform you whether it was working or not, no dog required. :)
Rude, but I'm not reading comment #59. There may be useful commentary in there, but perhaps it's covered in the 58 comments before...I guess I'll never know!
This seems like a case of missing the forest for the trees. The "koan" that is the subject of the cartoon is not meant to be a scientific question, but rather an ontological one. If you gave the obvious scientifically correct answer to your Zen master, he would probably hit you with a stick! The Koan is not about the nature of sound, but about the nature of "self". In Buddhism, there is no individual self or "soul" (doctrine of anatta). Each apparently individual self is a manifestation of a process of "causes and conditions" on which its existence depends (doctrine of dependent origination) and does not exist independently. Enlightenment is freedom from the delusion of self. Also, in Buddhism, there is the doctrine of "two truths", the relative and the absolute. The answer given in the cartoon is correct in the relative or ordinary realm which is the domain in which science operates, but Buddhism is concerned with understanding the absolute and freeing yourself from delusion.
I like to think of this question in a slightly different way.
When we hear this question, we start (or at least I do) by imagining the tree falling. And we think, well, sure, the tree makes a sound, because it's weird to think that the tree I'm picturing in my mind could fall silently.
But then I'm mentally placing myself in the forest. So someone (me) is 'there'. So it violates the terms of the question.
The challenge of the koan is to imagine a situation in which you yourself are not present. And that's very Zen.
Re: post #73 by: Katkinkate "Is reality a delusion?" The delusion, in the Buddhist view is to think that one is a "soul" independent from everything and everyone else. It is not reality that is a delusion, but human beings who are prone to delusion about reality. Reality exists by itself. We impose our mentally created distortions upon it. For the philosophically inclined, the key text to read, and the most rigorously rational, is Nagarjuna's Mūlamadhyamakakārikā (Fundamental Verses on the Middle Way).
Does a tree even "make" a sound? If termites ate the core of the tree enabling it fall, wouldn't the termites be "making" the sound? If a heavy gust of wind hit the tree leading it to fall, wouldn't the wind be the one "making" the sound? If the tree fell and there was no ground would there be a sound? So is it the ground "making" the sound? Is not sound waves moving through molecules in the air? So would either the air or the wave be the one "making" the sound.
Doesn't "make" imply intention and intention implies consciousness. Is the tree conscious?
The challenge of the koan is to imagine a situation in which you yourself are not present. And that's very Zen.
No, that's not it. I know because I achieved satori while reading the comments of truth machine as he eviscerated the ignorant fool who claimed that one could indeed imagine what life would be like after death. I thought of the sound of one hand clapping and, voila, enlightenment. Thanks truth machine, I miss you. (somewhat tongue in cheek)
IANAZB but, I don't think Zen treats reality as a delusion but only the sense we try to make of it. Everything we do is convention. Our language, dress, food, manners, etc.
Think of Zen as leading ultimately to atheism. Sitting and breathing and doing chores with the purpose of finding that we have only this life, and this moment, and not needing to spend this life worrying about the next one and where we would live it.
Buddhism, like the Hinduism it was derived from, treats our world as illusion, not delusion. Important difference there. Delusion is an errant belief. Illusion is a mistake in the interpretation of information. A monster in your closet is an illusion. Believing that monster in the closet eats you and poops you out, and that's why you feel like shit in the morning, is a delusion.
The epistemological question - going back to Hume's problem of induction: Even given that we presently understand the world around us through science and our generalizations have been valid, how could we have reason to believe that the 'natural laws' we seem to find in nature hold true where we're not performing observation - and how could we have reason to believe that the future will be anything like the past? There can be no evidence for this, because that would simply mean a recursion to past observations.
This is why philosophy has the reputation it does.
It rather depends on whether you define "sound" as meaning a pressure wave travelling through the air, or the effect of its impact on an eardrum or some other sensor.
It is reasonable to suppose that a falling tree will create a pressure wave, because it would be disturbing the air around it. Whether an undetected pressure wave can rightfully be called a sound is a matter of definition, not a matter of physics.
As for the chicken vs egg thing, and the resulting "chicken egg" controversy ..... British English, with its preference for inflected word-forms rather than bare stems as modifiers (e.g. girls' swimming team as opposed to girl swim team) would use the phrase "chicken's egg". This sounds more as though it means an egg that came from a chicken than an egg that is going to hatch into a chicken, since someone or something ought logically to exist already in order to "possess" anything.
It is easy to imagine a fussier language than English having different modified forms for "egg that was laid by a chicken (implying: but may yet hatch into something other than a chicken)" and "egg that will hatch into a chicken (implying: but was not necessarily laid by a chicken)". (In French: oeuf de poule and oeuf à poule, maybe) and so no such controversy would be possible.
@78-79: You either face the problem of induction or the problem of noninduction. Noninduction gives you no grounds for any decision, expectation or action whatsoever, or even to expect your own continued existence.
This seems like a case of missing the forest for the trees. The "koan" that is the subject of the cartoon is not meant to be a scientific question, but rather an ontological one. If you gave the obvious scientifically correct answer to your Zen master, he would probably hit you with a stick! The Koan is not about the nature of sound, but about the nature of "self". In Buddhism, there is no individual self or "soul" (doctrine of anatta). Each apparently individual self is a manifestation of a process of "causes and conditions" on which its existence depends (doctrine of dependent origination) and does not exist independently. Enlightenment is freedom from the delusion of self. Also, in Buddhism, there is the doctrine of "two truths", the relative and the absolute. The answer given in the cartoon is correct in the relative or ordinary realm which is the domain in which science operates, but Buddhism is concerned with understanding the absolute and freeing yourself from delusion.
I'll have to defer to Randall Munroe in responding to both that and Hume.
He is wrong because the implicit premise that the question is meaningful or useful is false.
I disagree but I also think that this cartoon has nothing to do with the epistemic question. The original "falling tree" example might just as well be set in the past, so only MPhil's second point applies.
MPhil
how could we have reason to believe that the future will be anything like the past? There can be no evidence for this, because that would simply mean a recursion to past observations. It's an unsolvable problem - and that's why the only reasonable stance is to assume it anyway because that assumption is necessary for pragmatic success of science and technology. And there's nothing wrong with that.
Have you read what David Deutsch has written on this problem and if so, what did you think? He disagrees somewhat
having just read the piece by Deutsch, it is my opinion that he still undererstimates the scope of the problem. He seems to have gotten stuck with Popper, who - brilliant as he was - was also a bit naive in his epstemology, especially concerning the postulation of objective knowledge.
I find a broadly evolutionary approach to epistemology is certainly in order, but Deutsch does not seem to recognize that the problem of induction as well as the general problems of epistemology do indeed mean that objective knowledge is impossible - and he fails to realize the consequences of the Duhem-Quine thesis as well as of the theory-ladenness of observation.
All we ever do in our rational inquiries - in constructing models to explain phenomena - is devise 'maps' in formalized languages of what we trust to be reliable information of our senses mediated by intersubjective repeatability of observation to explain intersubjectively accessible phenomena and then sort through the hypotheses we create based on theory-laden observation and application of creativity, induction, deduction and abduction.
This insight basically goes back as far as Kant - the fact that our very nature determines that our understanding works on the presuppositions that
a)there is an outside world with extension and duration (temporality and spatiality) and that
b)our senses inform us of this world in a generally reliable fashion
For this presuppositions there can be no direct evidence, because that would mean recursion to something that already does assume the above.
So the only real reasons we can have for accepting the above (as opposed to Berkleyan idealism for example) is that they enable a more parsimoneous and intersubjectively intelligable and pragmatically useful worldview.
If you ask me that's all the reason one could ever need to accept the presuppositions, but still, Deutsch mixes the levels of map and territory when he talks about evolutionary epistemology allowing for us having objective knowledge.
Perhaps Deutsch hasn't really studied the philosophy of science after Popper.
A short overview over the meta-theoretical insights about science after Popper would include such figures as
Thomas Kuhn, from whom we get the concept of "paradigm shift", but who - so we can say with hindsight - was too unrealistic concerning science in the opposite direction of Popper, denying all knowledge and realiable insight
Imre Lakatos, who managed to unite Popper's and Kuhn's insights into a theory of research-programs with unfalsifiable core hypotheses and protective belts of auxiliary hypotheses which are subejct to tests - whereby a research program can be progressive if its belt expands, that is if it explains ever more phenomena, withstands ever more different tests and eliminates explanatory anomalies.
Paul Feyerabend, who, while a proponent of a minimalist scientific worldview argued that the objectivists disregard that the problem of objectivity is not solved by a pragmatist answer - and that pragmatism means 'Whatever works to predict, explain and understand is science' - 'anything goes' so to speak
to
Sneed, Suppes, Stegmueller and Moulines - who developed the structuralist position (perhaps the most detailed and precise theory of the mathematical sciences of nature ever
devised. You can read about it here: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/physics-structuralism/ (4.1 on that site deals with Sneed's program specifically)
I agree with many things in this paper of Deutsch - especially about the general necessaity for an integrative approach to epistemology - and I think this can best be done from a partially teleofunctionalist/biosemantic theory of mentality - but we have to realize that this grants us only pragmatically useful ways of managing communication and action in relation to the world, not some metaphysical "objectivity" and "truth".
I don't deny that we can actually represent features of phenomena through direct isomorphisms (audio-files, photos etc) and through indirect descriptions - but concerning the latter, second order knowledge is impossible, because descriptions - all linguistic activity, including the natural sciences with their increasingly mathematical ideolect - are an intersubjective phenomenon... we always necessarily have a perspective, as individuals and in our collective efforts, - objectivity could only be constituted if we could demonstrate it. But demonstrating objectivity would necessitate being 'above' all idiosyncrasies, completely without POV - and that is simply impossible.
In any case, thanks for the link - it was an interesting read.
Yay physics.
But why does everyone glare at me when I give a similar answer?
Amen...atheistically speaking.
Oh, and 'More (metaphysical) pooping!'
oh noes
all my years of zen meditations is now in the crapper
how canz science does this to me?
how canz one little fact suddenly destroy allz thats I has worked for??
boo hoo for me and my weak mind
I'm perturbed by the anthropocentric outlook of that particular koan. A forest is, by definition, full of "someone"s (is that correct punctuation?), just not humans. You cannot have a forest without trees, right? Trees have bugs and birds, not to mention everybody else living there. They all exist and can feel vibrations (physical, not woo), so how can there be "no one"? Zen, my last hope for "spirituality', ground under the crush of relentless logic. At least I still have Stoicism.
You can more-or-less reasonably argue that "sound" is the name we give to our mental experience f air-vibrations and not the vibrations themselves but it still always struck me as a stupid thing to treat as particularly profound.
The solution to any number of these supposedly deep riddles is:
"Languages sometimes contain words that ignore the differences between things so if you push language to far it won't be clear what you mean"
Facts, the ultimate bullshit discussion ender. Maybe that's why some people don't like scientists.
There once was a man who said, “God
Must think it exceedingly odd
If He finds that this tree
Continues to be
When there’s no one about in the Quad.”
“Dear Sir:
Your astonishment’s odd:
I am always about in the Quad
And that’s why the tree
Will continue to be,
Since observed by,
Yours faithfully,
God.”
Attrib Monsignor Ronald Knox
“All metaphysics is meaningless” - Rudolf Carnap
People get upset with me when I tell them that, without a doubt, the egg came before the chicken. It's an evolutionary no-brainer, as far as I can see.
But apparently to say so is arrogant, because someone else has decided there is no answer. Or, of course, goddidit.
For Quidam @8:
[Kicks Ronald Knox in the head]
Thus do I refute Berkeley.
I saw this in the paper this morning and I just knew it was going to be posted here. It's just plain good.
Sorry for the repeated post. My work computer's crap.
"When a tree falls in the forest,
There is sound", the people chorused,
But a pressure wave is simply not identical with sound.
I'm not making the suggestion
That it's not a stupid question
But this answer is as dumb as any other that's around.
It's less "answer" than "illusion";
It's assuming its conclusion,
So it's true by definition, but the definition's wrong!
Is the stimulus sensation?
An erroneous conflation
Of the pressure and perception--leave them both where they belong!
This ignores the useful labor
Both of Fechner and of Weber
Who invented psychophysics to explore the problem right
Now their sig-detection theory
Might make researchers grow weary
But it works to study taste and touch, and sound and smell and sight!
Rudy @9,
for all I know Carnap was right, but surely Danae's problem is epistemological rather than metaphysical?
Roundearther,
I agree with you and say the same thing whenever someone asks that question.
I find I rarely have people disagree but I usually just say "because something that came before what we call a chicken had to lay the chicken's egg". When they throw the bible at me I usually just giggle and end the conversation.
I have had that very same discussion with so many people. When I give them the rational answer and explanation they always look at me like I am an alien of some sort. The cognitive dissonance is ringing loudly in their ears.
But here is twist on that question:
If a jet airliner is in the middle of the dessert and no one ever sees it or uses it, does it still have monetary value?
@17
Or because eggs evolved long before the first birds.
@19
very very true
i just like to keep it close to the chicken.
why does that sound dirty?
If Wiley Miller draws a comic strip, but nobody is there to read it, is it still rather tedious?
The chicken and egg question can be recovered if you say "which came first the chicken or the chicken egg", but it's still just an inane thing about the fuzzy edges of what is covered by a word.
#22: Is a "chicken egg" an egg laid by a chicken or an egg containing a chicken?
#23. Exactly! We have an expression that doesn't pay attention to the difference because when we are making breakfast (or even raising chickens) it doesn't make any difference. These supposed paradoxes only appear if you assume words and phrases always refer to clearly defined types of thing
Mrs Tilton @16,
Perhaps you need to study a little Carnap to see why he thinks all metaphysics is meaningless to understand the relation to Danae's problem.
If a man speaks in the forest
and no woman is there to hear him,
is he still wrong?
/bitterness
The comment is online here http://www.gocomics.com/nonsequitur/ and you can post responses if you sign up. Unfortunately someone said that sound waves and radio waves don't exist without a receiver. The bigger question here is, "Does something exist if there's no way for it to be detected?" Physics says physical objects and energy, the concept of detection is irrelevant.
@#26 Dave H.
Not if he's gay
Quite a party there in D.C.
Price tag up to $170 million with the supporters ignoring the cost to the public (about $120 million of it). All the choice perks are going to the rich and powerful who arrive in their carbon spewing jets. Entire runways are shut down so they have a place to park their planes. Meanwhile the non-wealthy Americans who worked hard to make Obama's win happen are out in the cold and hustling for scraps at the table of the BIG donors who get heated tents.
But why does everyone glare at me when I give a similar answer?
Because nothing is ruder than outsmartassing a smartass. At least from the smartass' point of view.
Y'all are nuts. Where's the tree? I don't see a tree. It ust not be real.
If a tree falls in a forest and hits a mime artist, does anybody really care?
A more precise wording (and less prone to different interpretations and the arguing that follows) might be, "If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there, does it still generate compression waves in the air?"
If worded that way perhaps only the quantum philosophers (Is it real if no one observes it?) would continue to fuss.
And since the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language defines sound as-
"...vibration transmitted through a solid, liquid, or gas; particularly, sound means those vibrations composed of frequencies capable of being detected by ears."
-a listener is not required. Although #5 makes a very good point and now I have a mental image of a bunch of woodmice yelling "TIIIIIMBERRRRR!!!" at the top of their squeaky little voices.
The question isn't intended to be answered. Rather, it serves as a demonstration that it is possible to formulate a question to which the answer can't be known.
Of course we can infer the answer from previous experience, but the question itself precludes the experience necessary to confirm it the inference.
I think the question provides a useful exercise, if nothing else.
It makes an alberzle but not a bargulum.
Oh dear,
I'm afraid non-sequitur misunderstood the problem that is posed by this question in two ways:
1.) The epistemological question - going back to Hume's problem of induction: Even given that we presently understand the world around us through science and our generalizations have been valid, how could we have reason to believe that the 'natural laws' we seem to find in nature hold true where we're not performing observation - and how could we have reason to believe that the future will be anything like the past? There can be no evidence for this, because that would simply mean a recursion to past observations. It's an unsolvable problem - and that's why the only reasonable stance is to assume it anyway because that assumption is necessary for pragmatic success of science and technology. And there's nothing wrong with that.
But this means that the epstemic question is fully valid and the answer is that we cannot know with absolute whether a tree that is going to fall will make a sound because we cannot know that the future will be like the past. So no, science does not enable us to know such things.
But then, everybody with even the slightest understanding of science knows that science, properly understood, is modest enough not to claim to have it right - observation is theory laden, and thus so is the data we gather. The theories we construct upon the data may work, and be corroborated, but can never be verified. That's why science doesn't claim to know - only to have a method of finding working explanations. And that claim is entirely justified.
But the epistemic question the 'falling tree' thought experminet actually asks cannot be answered by recursion to theories constructed by induction upon theory-laden observation.
and
2) There are two readings of 'making a sound' - the one that takes 'sound' to be any density-modulation travelling through physical media, for which the strip gives the right answer ('yes'), and the one that distinguished density-variations from density-variations observed by an organism through hearing - and means that by 'sound'.
In that case we will have to say that given a pragmatist stance toward the problem of induction and the fact that scientific inference to the best explanation is an accepted, regulated form of affirmation of the consequent (yes, the logical fallacy, look it up here: http://www.fallacyfiles.org/afthecon.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inference_to_the_Best_Explanation),
we still must make use of parsimony and can claim that to our best knowledge, we have to assume that were a sentient being capable of hearing present, it would make a sound, and that under this definition of sound it is meaningless to ask whether the tree produces it if noone is present, because this definition of sounds includes an observer and is thus not well-defined in absence of one.
... so the relation between metaphysics and science is not really as simple as the comic wants us to believe. Most people just don't get that metaphysics mustn't be a dirty word - because it refers simply to all the questions the arise which go beyond the object-level of the relevant empirical sciences - it does not mean that we have to invent metaphysical entities and spooky, woo-y 'forces' or whatever.
It simply means we have to recognize that in being scientific rationalists, we need good answers to such questions as:
-"What is the epistemic status of empirical science?"
-"How do we best conceptualize the domain of inquiry?"
-"What distinguishes science from pseudoscience?"
-"What are reasonable criteria for 'explanation' with respect to a phenomenon under investigation - that is: when are we justify to say we have a working explanation?"
-"What are the criteria according to which we should construct and sort through proposed explanations/hypotheses"?
-"How can we argue that established scientific theories are the most epsitemically tenable accounts of a given phenomenon?"
-"How can we argue against such positions as dualism, idealism or theism?"
-"Given that our theories are merely descriptions, intended as 'maps' of what we wish to explain, what do we have reason to believe 'exists', what is 'real' - strings, knots in spacetime, information-quantae, or perhaps better "that - whatever it is - which these descriptions attempt to describe".
...and so forth. These are all questions where there can be no empirical evidence to answer them, because these are not empirical questions. They are questions of epistemology, philosophy of science, -of religion, -of mind...
Thankfully, many brilliant people have contributed to finding answers to such questions in the most rigorous and rational way possible - and that's why we have good answers.
Without them, however, there would be no epistemic foundation for science nor good arguments for scientific rationalism.
damn, forgot to insert a space in the second link -
just delete the bracket and the colon.
It's this way at real parties, too
You either know the wrong scientists or the go to the wrong sort of parties. Scientists with access to stuff like dry ice pellets make parties cool.
I also heard tell of the case of a lab worker who soaked pineapple chunks in 100% Ethanol and took them to a party, but that might be an urban legend. (I'm too scared to try in case I get it contaminated with IMS or something...)
People get upset with me when I tell them that, without a doubt, the egg came before the chicken. It's an evolutionary no-brainer, as far as I can see.
Again, this is a semantic game (assuming that by "egg" one means "chicken egg" and not just any old egg). Is a "chicken egg" an egg laid by a chicken or an egg containing a chicken?
mayhempix:
"If a jet airliner is in the middle of the dessert and no one ever sees it or uses it, does it still have monetary value?"
Save that question for after dinner.
Science as the designated driver. Love it!
IF a troll squawks in the forest (#29), and everyone notices but none bother to answer- did the troll really squawk?
Absolutely
@42, I guess that makes theologians the designated drinkers.
Of course, ffrancis, dessert comes after dinner, but I don't understand how you could build a jet small enough to put it in the middle of the dessert.
Ponder @ 34
MY American Heritage dictionary lists this for sound (right after your selection):
in which case, a listener IS required.
I've always understood (perhaps misunderstood?) this koan to be an exercise to force the student to think about the nature of physical reality (pressure waves) vs the perception of reality. A bell's tone can be decomposed into fourier or bessel components, but is that really the same as perceiving the beauty of the sound.
A chicken and an egg are lying in bed. The chicken is smoking a cigarette and wearing a big goofy smirk, but the egg grumbles "Well we answered THAT question!"
TOH to Garrison Keillor
@ mothra (#45). Yes, designated drinkers indeed. Or more precisely, that annoying, obnoxious 'friend', but not really your friend, who profusely vomits up crap in your car when you're forced to drive him home to keep him safe.
If a tree falls in the forest and there's no one around to hear it does anyone give a fuck?
FINALLY, SOMEONE FIGURED THIS OUT! I don't know how many times I've argued along the lines of this cartoon and so far nobody GETS IT. Yes, sound waves exist independent of anyone being around to listen. Thanks PZ for posting this and thanks for Non Sequitur for finally figuring out what should be obvious.
I feel better now; maybe there is some hope for the world.
@Redearther #11
The chicken and egg thing is a non question. It relies on the assumption of 'kinds' the idea that all species were created distinct and unchangeable so they are different kinds of animals. You see this when arguing speciation with creotards, they will say well an egg containing a chicken had to be laid by a non chicken for speciation to happen. The idea of gradualism in evolution being too hard for their tiny minds.
Either that or it in essence (but don't get me started on essentialism) it devolves into asking how sexual reproduction began, we are still working on that one.
Everyone does know that the answer to all of your theories about the sound of a tree falling in the woods is a whack upside the head with a stick right?
"Well actually, there are energy waves that ..." WHACK!
"Sound, by definition ..." WHACK!
"Perception of..." WHACK!
By the way I have an answer for that other famous question.
Q: What is the sound of one hand clapping?
A: It's the same sound as the other hand clapping.
And a variant on this question:
Q: What is the sound of one butt cheek farting?
If a tree falls on that damn chicken, did the egg do it?
The idea of gradualism in evolution being too hard for their tiny minds.
But lets not take gradualism to the point where I just ate a goodly chunk of an eight-pound feathered, winged eukaryotic alga for lunch.
@21
Oh snap!
Thank you, thank you!
I got in so much trouble with a teacher that already hated me when I answered that the sound waves were still there. And what did she mean, no one? Not one other animal life form anywhere--in a forest??? Not one bird, deer, skunk, fox, possum, raccoon, nothing? Give me a break!
What really made her mad was when the whiz-kid physics guy, piped up that I was right about sound waves still being generated. And then we boxed her in about her question not being clear enough, if the answer she wanted was "no."
We both got sent to the principal's office, for being "disruptive" in class.
Same bitch that made me go to the principal's office for not bowing my head during the weekly loudspeaker Jesus fest. My stepfather had a field day with that one.
rude, but im not reading any of the comments above. sry!
on the subject of the comic - is sound the movement of waves through a substance, or is it the conversion of those waves by the inner ear/brain into perception?
If the former, then yes. It does not make a sound. If the latter, then no. 'sound' requires an observer.
or, another way - if every organism in all of existence could not perceive sound, would 'sound' exist?
If the former, then yes. It does make a sound.*
If a tree falls in the forest and there's no one around to hear it....
What forest, dude?
#56: Maybe you will be happier thinking of it as an avian period.
My decibel meter tells me that sound does in fact exist, even when I'm not around to hear it. So does my seismograph. If I blow on a dog whistle and there's no dog around to hear it, has the whistle malfunctioned? And so on.
#56: Maybe you will be happier thinking of it as an avian period.
Huh? What is this 'it' you speak of? I can't figure out how to think of speciation or taxonomy, the subjects of post #56, as an avian period. Remember kids, just because you can use a pronoun doesn't mean you should.
A chicken is an avian, period. A chicken egg is an avian period. The Jurassic was, depending on how you define the terms, an avian period.
That whizzing sound? That was something going right past 'ya.
"If a jet airliner is in the middle of the desert and no one ever sees it or uses it, does it still have monetary value?"
Yes, because someone had to pay for the materials and labour used to create it, and for moving it into the middle of the desert.
Now, if a jet airliner is in the middle of the desert and no one ever sees it or uses it, it doesn't have any marginal utility, which is not the same thing.
If I blow on a dog whistle and there's no dog around to hear it, has the whistle malfunctioned?
That depends. You could be one of these people who can actually hear dog whistles (ow!), in which case, I'd be more than happy to inform you whether it was working or not, no dog required. :)
Rude, but I'm not reading comment #59. There may be useful commentary in there, but perhaps it's covered in the 58 comments before...I guess I'll never know!
This seems like a case of missing the forest for the trees. The "koan" that is the subject of the cartoon is not meant to be a scientific question, but rather an ontological one. If you gave the obvious scientifically correct answer to your Zen master, he would probably hit you with a stick! The Koan is not about the nature of sound, but about the nature of "self". In Buddhism, there is no individual self or "soul" (doctrine of anatta). Each apparently individual self is a manifestation of a process of "causes and conditions" on which its existence depends (doctrine of dependent origination) and does not exist independently. Enlightenment is freedom from the delusion of self. Also, in Buddhism, there is the doctrine of "two truths", the relative and the absolute. The answer given in the cartoon is correct in the relative or ordinary realm which is the domain in which science operates, but Buddhism is concerned with understanding the absolute and freeing yourself from delusion.
If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there, then how do we even know the tree fell?
#64
Indeed. I didn't read it properly. Ignore me.
But EVERY reasonable definition of "sound" is solipsist at the species level, amirite?!?
VegeBrain @ #54:
There's another answer at this link:
http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=1357#comic
I like to think of this question in a slightly different way.
When we hear this question, we start (or at least I do) by imagining the tree falling. And we think, well, sure, the tree makes a sound, because it's weird to think that the tree I'm picturing in my mind could fall silently.
But then I'm mentally placing myself in the forest. So someone (me) is 'there'. So it violates the terms of the question.
The challenge of the koan is to imagine a situation in which you yourself are not present. And that's very Zen.
IANAZB.
Posted by: Gary Walsh @ 67 "... but Buddhism is concerned with understanding the absolute and freeing yourself from delusion."
The delusion of reality? Is reality a delusion, or do they just find it convenient to think so in order to justify their brand of woo?
Re: post #73 by: Katkinkate "Is reality a delusion?" The delusion, in the Buddhist view is to think that one is a "soul" independent from everything and everyone else. It is not reality that is a delusion, but human beings who are prone to delusion about reality. Reality exists by itself. We impose our mentally created distortions upon it. For the philosophically inclined, the key text to read, and the most rigorously rational, is Nagarjuna's Mūlamadhyamakakārikā (Fundamental Verses on the Middle Way).
Does a tree even "make" a sound? If termites ate the core of the tree enabling it fall, wouldn't the termites be "making" the sound? If a heavy gust of wind hit the tree leading it to fall, wouldn't the wind be the one "making" the sound? If the tree fell and there was no ground would there be a sound? So is it the ground "making" the sound? Is not sound waves moving through molecules in the air? So would either the air or the wave be the one "making" the sound.
Doesn't "make" imply intention and intention implies consciousness. Is the tree conscious?
No, that's not it. I know because I achieved satori while reading the comments of truth machine as he eviscerated the ignorant fool who claimed that one could indeed imagine what life would be like after death. I thought of the sound of one hand clapping and, voila, enlightenment. Thanks truth machine, I miss you. (somewhat tongue in cheek)
IANAZB but, I don't think Zen treats reality as a delusion but only the sense we try to make of it. Everything we do is convention. Our language, dress, food, manners, etc.
Think of Zen as leading ultimately to atheism. Sitting and breathing and doing chores with the purpose of finding that we have only this life, and this moment, and not needing to spend this life worrying about the next one and where we would live it.
Buddhism, like the Hinduism it was derived from, treats our world as illusion, not delusion. Important difference there. Delusion is an errant belief. Illusion is a mistake in the interpretation of information. A monster in your closet is an illusion. Believing that monster in the closet eats you and poops you out, and that's why you feel like shit in the morning, is a delusion.
This is why philosophy has the reputation it does.
Of course, that isn't an explanation of why Hume is wrong.
It rather depends on whether you define "sound" as meaning a pressure wave travelling through the air, or the effect of its impact on an eardrum or some other sensor.
It is reasonable to suppose that a falling tree will create a pressure wave, because it would be disturbing the air around it. Whether an undetected pressure wave can rightfully be called a sound is a matter of definition, not a matter of physics.
As for the chicken vs egg thing, and the resulting "chicken egg" controversy ..... British English, with its preference for inflected word-forms rather than bare stems as modifiers (e.g. girls' swimming team as opposed to girl swim team) would use the phrase "chicken's egg". This sounds more as though it means an egg that came from a chicken than an egg that is going to hatch into a chicken, since someone or something ought logically to exist already in order to "possess" anything.
It is easy to imagine a fussier language than English having different modified forms for "egg that was laid by a chicken (implying: but may yet hatch into something other than a chicken)" and "egg that will hatch into a chicken (implying: but was not necessarily laid by a chicken)". (In French: oeuf de poule and oeuf à poule, maybe) and so no such controversy would be possible.
@78-79: You either face the problem of induction or the problem of noninduction. Noninduction gives you no grounds for any decision, expectation or action whatsoever, or even to expect your own continued existence.
He is wrong because the implicit premise that the question is meaningful or useful is false.
I'll have to defer to Randall Munroe in responding to both that and Hume.
Azkyroth
I disagree but I also think that this cartoon has nothing to do with the epistemic question. The original "falling tree" example might just as well be set in the past, so only MPhil's second point applies.
MPhil
Have you read what David Deutsch has written on this problem and if so, what did you think? He disagrees somewhat
The rooster came first.
windy,
having just read the piece by Deutsch, it is my opinion that he still undererstimates the scope of the problem. He seems to have gotten stuck with Popper, who - brilliant as he was - was also a bit naive in his epstemology, especially concerning the postulation of objective knowledge.
I find a broadly evolutionary approach to epistemology is certainly in order, but Deutsch does not seem to recognize that the problem of induction as well as the general problems of epistemology do indeed mean that objective knowledge is impossible - and he fails to realize the consequences of the Duhem-Quine thesis as well as of the theory-ladenness of observation.
All we ever do in our rational inquiries - in constructing models to explain phenomena - is devise 'maps' in formalized languages of what we trust to be reliable information of our senses mediated by intersubjective repeatability of observation to explain intersubjectively accessible phenomena and then sort through the hypotheses we create based on theory-laden observation and application of creativity, induction, deduction and abduction.
This insight basically goes back as far as Kant - the fact that our very nature determines that our understanding works on the presuppositions that
a)there is an outside world with extension and duration (temporality and spatiality) and that
b)our senses inform us of this world in a generally reliable fashion
For this presuppositions there can be no direct evidence, because that would mean recursion to something that already does assume the above.
So the only real reasons we can have for accepting the above (as opposed to Berkleyan idealism for example) is that they enable a more parsimoneous and intersubjectively intelligable and pragmatically useful worldview.
If you ask me that's all the reason one could ever need to accept the presuppositions, but still, Deutsch mixes the levels of map and territory when he talks about evolutionary epistemology allowing for us having objective knowledge.
Perhaps Deutsch hasn't really studied the philosophy of science after Popper.
A short overview over the meta-theoretical insights about science after Popper would include such figures as
to
devised. You can read about it here: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/physics-structuralism/ (4.1 on that site deals with Sneed's program specifically)
I agree with many things in this paper of Deutsch - especially about the general necessaity for an integrative approach to epistemology - and I think this can best be done from a partially teleofunctionalist/biosemantic theory of mentality - but we have to realize that this grants us only pragmatically useful ways of managing communication and action in relation to the world, not some metaphysical "objectivity" and "truth".
I don't deny that we can actually represent features of phenomena through direct isomorphisms (audio-files, photos etc) and through indirect descriptions - but concerning the latter, second order knowledge is impossible, because descriptions - all linguistic activity, including the natural sciences with their increasingly mathematical ideolect - are an intersubjective phenomenon... we always necessarily have a perspective, as individuals and in our collective efforts, - objectivity could only be constituted if we could demonstrate it. But demonstrating objectivity would necessitate being 'above' all idiosyncrasies, completely without POV - and that is simply impossible.
In any case, thanks for the link - it was an interesting read.