A tree falls in a forest...

[Deleted]

It's called a microphone.


Here is a question for you philosopher wanna-be's: Do deaf people think in letters when they talk to themselves in their head?

using a microphone is observing the action. the question is in regard to no observation.
and we think in associative images, just try thinking about the beach.

a deaf person talking to himself would quite simply be taking to himself in images without the added voice. after all, the voice you "hear" is your memory of the words you're trying to speak, i.e when you've spoken them yourself. if you've never been exposed to spoken words how can you remember them?

[Sjenka]

Okay I sort of skimmed through this thread last night while posting in the science theory one, and I'd like to offer my contribution.

You're talking about physical objects and what they are like if not perceived. What about something like an idea? Something intangible and abstract. We cannot touch an idea or sense it in anyway, but it is something that is said to exist even if it is contingent upon our mind. Now I ask, does an idea such as love or hate have permanence even if there was no one to think it?

You can check out what I had to say about this here:
It's Not "Just a Theory"
^ start at post #222

Edit:

I see dead people.
Actually we have much more than 5 senses, 5 senses is just dumping it down and simplifying it a hell of a lot.

...balance and kinesthesia are two more. Sorry, can't watch your youtube vid atm, but I know there more then 5.

[Neichus]

...balance and kinesthesia are two more. Sorry, can't watch your youtube vid atm, but I know there more then 5.

It's just all how you break things down. Touch breaks down into proprioception, pressure, vibration, temperature, and pain; we use different sensors and different nerve tracts to carry the information. But ultimately it's more of a technical argument and doesn't really get at the core of what the discussion is about, although Sjenka brings up the fun side question about the reality of ideas. We can have 5 senses, 5 fingers on a hand, 5 toes on a foot, but can you have just 5? Math works uncannily well for describing the universe, but we're not even sure why.

In any case, I've already posted quite a bit through this thread on how I view the OP's question. Not sure if there's much sense in repeating myself.

[Sjenka]

In any case, I've already posted quite a bit through this thread on how I view the OP's question. Not sure if there's much sense in repeating myself.

Aw, come on... It's just getting good. Can something exist outside of sensorial perception? Do abstract things exist?

Though the thread will probably get locked because the first philosopher's I'd bring up would be Aristotle, which leads to Augustine, which leads to Aquinas and probably Descartes, which leads to LOCK.

[Neichus]

Aw, come on... It's just getting good. Can something exist outside of sensorial perception? Do abstract things exist?

Though the thread will probably get locked because the first philosopher's I'd bring up would be Aristotle, which leads to Augustine, which leads to Aquinas and probably Descartes, which leads to LOCK.

Okay, that gave me a chuckle.

In any case, I wasn't saying I was backing out of any discussion. I just don't want to repeat what I've written three separate times in this thread about the OP's original question; feel like I'm spamming at that point. I do however feel that both your questions come down more fundamentally to the question of what does it mean to "exist." I'm not trying to split hairs, but we have a very physical concept of what existence entails which one has to explore before the further questions can be asked.

[pateuvasiliu]

smaller question, if your special boy parts are too small to see do they exist?

I wouldn't know that,they're not

[iceberg265]

If a newb fails in the forest does anyone "lol"?

Light waves and sound waves exist even if there is no one around to perceive them.

[Sjenka]

I'm not trying to split hairs, but we have a very physical concept of what existence entails which one has to explore before the further questions can be asked.

I agree and it's hard for people to imagine things existing outside of physical reality, but to that I ask how do we know anything exists if we know that sense can be relative and/or wrong?

[Jadle]

Air is particles of nitrogen and oxygen that our bodies need to function.

Everything is something, even things that you cannot percieve with the naked eye. EVERYTHING is something.

Light for example, is what enables us to see anything at all. Light is waves bouncing off of objects, thusly showing their shapes to us. Different colors are seen depending on what light and particles surfaces reflect or absorb.

All of these things would still be what they are. We are completely inconsequential to their excistance, we merely live because of them not the other way around my friend.

Science, heck yes!

You aren't 100% correct, some Quantum Physics experiemts behave differently when observed to what they do when the result is just checked, Here is the link to the double slit experiment, but be ready to be baffled.

The simple facts are things behave differently when observed.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DfPeprQ7oGc

[Sobedesce]

You aren't 100% correct, some Quantum Physics experiemts behave differently when observed to what they do when the result is just checked, Here is the link to the double slit experiment, but be ready to be baffled.

The simple facts are things behave differently when observed.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DfPeprQ7oGc

i cannot access youtube from where i'm now but would the different behaviors when observed / not observed be related to the chaos theory ?

[Wilian]

There is no spoon.

[Jadle]

i cannot access youtube from where i'm now but would the different behaviors when observed / not observed be related to the chaos theory ?

Nope its nothing to do with chaos theory, just search for Double Slit Experiment, should be able to find something on google to read.

[Eduardo]

Not a falsifiable experiment.

Does the universe continue to exist if there are no observers? There is evidence that particles behave differently if the particle is being observed or not/ Why should the universe be any different.

The universe is not only stranger then we imagine it is stranger then we CAN imagine - Dawkins

[Deleted]

Whoah this is like.. deep, man..

And although I don't have brain capacity high enough for thinking and/or arguing about these thoughts, it's always fun to think and blow your mind once or twice ^^

[Neichus]

I agree and it's hard for people to imagine things existing outside of physical reality, but to that I ask how do we know anything exists if we know that sense can be relative and/or wrong?

The way I've approached this is two fold:

a) We don't/can't know. There is no argument, demonstration, or experiment that can get rid of the hypothetical "brain in a vat" scenario. This philosophical specter will always exist and there's not much we can do about it. However, I find it intellectually sterile. We have no reason to think it's the case, we just can't prove it's not the case; it just ends the philosophical conversation in the same way that, "Because God said so" ends theological discussions.

b) I'm very biologically inclined, and so I in turn invoke evolution as an answer to, "Is perception completely relative?" Again, assuming there is some sort of objective reality (whatever its nature) then it has very real impacts on our existence. Organisms that ignored reality tended to die. It doesn't matter if a boulder is "truly" a boulder or whether it's merely a representation of the idea of a boulder, or if it is a constructed concept that your senses present to you: not reacting to it can still result in death.

This however does not guarantee "truth" of perception, merely that there is some sort of relationship between what we perceive and Reality. Now the relationship can be utterly arbitrary. To abuse my computer analogy once again, if I look on my desktop I see a picture of a recycling bin. Now the code isn't a recycling bin. The picture could be a trash can, a rocket ship, or anything I wanted it to be. But dragging files over it still does the same thing; just because its representation is arbitrary doesn't mean what it does is (again, see said boulder).

As such I view our perception of reality as a product of evolution. It's semi-guaranteed to have a connection because if it were totally off in every respect then we wouldn't be very successful and die off. But evolution doesn't select for truth. Therefore the world we perceive is the result of a very complicated series of processes designed to process the information in a fashion that is useful. The ability to edit and forget information is paramount; what we need is to extract relevant information from the environment. It's also important to create a cohesive view, despite all the holes.

Everybody knows about their blind spot, although fewer realize just how important it is that your brain literally fills it in (people who have larger blind spots due to degeneration can actually observe the blind spot fill itself in over time). It's also pretty old hat that we only see an area the size of our thumbnail at arm's length with maximum acuity; the rest of the world is actually being observed in fuzzy monochrome with peripheral rods, but we also fill that in. What's less well known is that your brain also stops processing visual information during saccadic eye movements. Go stare in a mirror sometime; despite the fact that your eyes move approximately three times a second you will NEVER see your own eyes move no matter how hard you try. Your brain just doesn't process the information but fills it in. It also takes approximately 200 milliseconds for the brain to process visual information, meaning our experience of vision is a projection/estimation on the part of our brain since it wouldn't be very useful to always be a fifth of a second behind the rest of the world. And this is only getting started with all the weird things in vision alone.

This makes me a relativist right? I've just laid out a pretty strong case for how skewed our perception of the world is. No. It's a more nuanced view. Is our view of the world "wrong"? Well, in a lot of ways yes; our latest physics tell us that our basic perceptions of the world are nothing like how the world actually is. But like Newtonian laws, they're good enough approximations to get around even if they are simplified (in fact, that's the irony would be if you threw out all perception based on physics you've undermined your own argument). They have a connection to something; it's not all arbitrary. I should just put this in my signature because I've quoted it so many times: "Things are not as they appear, nor are they otherwise." The point of the quote is that the world is not an illusion; that implies that there's a correct way to view it, we just view it incorrectly. The reality is stranger: that Reality cannot be viewed because viewing itself is a process of construction.

The universe is not only stranger then we imagine it is stranger then we CAN imagine - Dawkins

Wrong person. That quote is from J.B.S. Haldane and is originally, "The universe is not queerer than we imagine, it is queerer than we can imagine."

[Rahzael]

In regard only to the question posed in the original post: It depends entirely on what you think of as sound. I would say no, because I consider sound to be a concept based on the perception of creatures capable of hearing. Without someone capable of hearing the waves of vibration that create sound, I don't think you could really say it was sound anymore.

There are things occurring all around us at all times which create vibrations perceivable as sound. If I very gently place my finger on my desk, I do not hear a sound. But if a very small man were standing near my finger, he might hear a large crash as though a building were collapsing. But I would not call it sound unless someone were able to hear it.

If you think of sound as the vibrations themselves that travel to your ears, then yes, I suppose it does make a sound.

Depends entirely on your definition.