On Tue, 2 May 2006, Christoph Reuss <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >Pete Vincent nitpicked:
It isn't nitpicking at all, it is a point of crucial philosophical importance, and your original comment was intended to obscure it, so it required clarification. >> >> >> Interesting. Is this something like if a tree falls in the forest >> >> and nobody is around.....does it make a sound? >> > >> >The laws of physics suggest it does. >> >> You are missing the distinction between "oscillations in the density >> of the air, propagating through space", and the subjective experience >> such oscillations apparently stimulate somehow via their interaction >> with the mechanics of our auditory sensing organs. > >A sound IS "oscillations in the density of the air......". No, it is most emphatically not. Oscillations of the air are physical events, whereas sound is a subjective experience, which has no direct footprint in the physical world at all, and what indirect associations there are with the physical world involve electrochemical activities in the brain, and again, have nothing to do with oscillations in the density of air. >You are missing the distinction between a sound and its reception by a >human ear. The sound happens with or without that reception. Perhaps this is simply a problem of language. "Sound" in english refers to the experience, not the event which stimulates it. However, there is a persistent conflation of these concepts among the public, which is specifically why items like the tree question have been developed, to underline this distinction. Thus, when considering this question, it is to be explicitly understood that the correct distinction between experience and stimulating event is to be observed. Now, you could try to invoke the popular imprecision of expressions like "sound waves", "speed of sound", etc, to make a claim that sound is the physical phenomenon, but it would be a rather facile and disengenuous avoidance of the wellknown context of the question, and wouldn't get you very far with anyone familiar with the real arguments the question raises. -Pete _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] http://fes.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
