Summary
Philosophy as science often questions topics that the average person does not consider. The purpose of this approach is to identify such categories as meaning, illusion, or reality. One of the riddles to solve the problem is, “If a tree falls in the forest and there’s no one around to hear it, does it make a sound?” It is necessary to analyze what problem this judgment reveals and also to suggest what approach John Locke would take.
Surveillance and Reality
The riddle presented is a philosophical riddle that touches upon the problems of observation and reality. The very same essence lies in the definition of the concept of “sound”. Joseph Berkeley is a representative of spiritualistic philosophy and identified the problem of the relationship between imagination and reality. In 1710, an English philosopher established the meaning of which boils down to the following: if a person says that the easiest thing is to imagine trees in a forest that no one perceives, then there is nothing difficult in this (Jones, 2021). A similar question was asked by Scientific American magazine – it was asked if a tree suddenly fell on a wild island, would a sound be heard there or not (Jones, 2021). Sound is airborne vibrations transmitted to our sense organs through the ear system. These vibrations can become sound only in the human nerve centers. Any mechanical action, such as, for example, the fall of a tree, produces only a vibration of the air. There will be no sound if there is no means of hearing. Here, the philosophical section is connected to reasoning, which studies the original nature of reality – metaphysics.
A Question of Existence
Philosophical science concerns the mystery of a tree’s existence and the sound it makes when it falls, regardless of human perception. In the event that there is no one nearby who could hear the tree, see it, smell it or touch it, what is generally possible to say about its existence? Naturally, from the point of view of science, a tree exists, and a person is a perceiving apparatus. George Berkeley developed immaterialism in the 18th century, a special metaphysical theory that answers the questions raised. Immaterialism says that if something exists, then it is perceived, but researchers today look at it differently (Jones, 2021). Some argue that matter and its properties are different from each other, while others are sure that any object is something that can be felt. So the sound is audible, so a falling tree can still be heard even if no one is around.
The Epistemological Problems of the Enigma
Another question arises: is it possible to say that the world that is not observed functions similarly to the observed world? Here it is impossible to say whether an unobservable event will occur in the same way as an observable one. According to the anthropic principle, the observer, through his existence, can influence the observable world (Jones, 2021). Most people, including scientists, believe that the observer has no influence on the appearance or absence of the sound of a tree when it falls. However, there is absolutely no evidence to support this.
It cannot be argued that the very fact that the tree changes its position from “vertical” to “horizontal” already suggests that an observer is required in order to ask a question about sound, and even a deaf person can be an observer. Based on this, the British philosopher Roy Baskar, who is considered the creator of critical realism, referring to the riddle about the sound of a tree, says that even if a person ceased to exist, the sound would continue to exist, and objects would still fall to the ground, but to confirm this no one could. One of the integral components of Baskar’s views is the existence of an unobservable reality (Jones, 2021). He says that real structures exist regardless of conventional event patterns. This is what made Baskar’s ontology popular among social scientists.
Locke’s Approach
The last question regarding our riddle is what is the difference between something that it is and how a person experiences it. The main issue is the difference between the perception of something and its actual essence. If a tree can exist outside the frame of perception, then a person is not able to know whether this tree even exists. Here people need to think about what existence is and what the difference is between reality and what is perceived by the individual. If an object is outside the perceived boundaries, reasoning from the standpoint of common sense will create waves of sound. However, these sound waves cannot be heard in any way. Mechanically, the sound will “happen”, but a person simply will not hear it. At the same time, this same mechanical sound will exist if a person is not able to perceive it.
It would be appropriate here to mention the distinction described by the British philosopher John Locke concerning an object’s primary and secondary qualities. This difference indicates what qualities objects have initially, axiomatically, and what qualities are simply attributed to them by people (Locke, 2019). For example, something blue or red (the color here should be regarded as a secondary quality) is not really blue or red, something bitter is not bitter, and a sound is not something that sounds like something (Locke, 2019). Locke’s answer is that what a person, for some reason, does not now hear exists independently. Even more – a person is able to perceive far from everything – only a grain of being, and the reality surrounding him is full of secrets and mysteries.
References
Jones, T. (2021). George Berkeley. A philosophical life. Princeton University Press.
Locke, J. (2019). An essay concerning human understanding. Strelbytskyy Multimedia Publishing.