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The short answer is "No." But by itself that is generally worthless... :^) This is actually a subtle issue because we usually don't need to separate what we are perceiving from the form in which we are perceiving it. Indeed, this is so rarely-used a distinction that most people don't even have the vocabulary for it. (And while it is a seemingly simple and lighthearted question, understanding this distinction will actually arm you with the fundamental answer to the traditional puzzles around the senses which Skeptics have deployed from Greek times to the present to sow confusion!) Take color, for example: color is the perceptual form in which we grasp certain facts about the molecular structure at the surface of an object, via their causal interaction with light (absorbing some wavelengths while reflecting others). Yes, that's an odd way to put it -- we normally just say that the ball is red. But the redness isn't really in the ball, which becomes evident if you change the lighting or change our eyes (via, say, surgery or strong stimulus), and the experience of redness changes or goes away even as the ball itself stays the same. Now, this isn't to say that color is subjective! What's really going on is that the deterministic interaction between our perceptual organs and the ball's surface in a context (of lighting, atmosphere) causes us to experience the ball as red. There is no room for feelings and desires here: the ball and it's surface's molecualr structure are what they are independent of us -- and the perceptual experience of those facts as "redness" lies in the deterministic causal relationship between perceiver and perceived. And the same applies to every sense-modality. To take another example: flavors are the perceptual form in which we experience certain facts about the molecular makeup of the stuff in our mouths. Change our taste-buds (again, say, surgically or by stimulating them strongly) and the flavors we experience can change, even while the material in our mouth stays the same. Notice the parallel with sight and color, above: taste is to flavor as sight is to color. And finally, the same of course is the case with hearing and sounds: Hearing is to sound, as taste is to flavor, as sight is to color. Sounds are the perceptual form in which we grasp certain kinds of events here on earth. The events of the leaves and branches pushing through the air as the tree topples, the event(s) of the fibers breaking near it's base, and the event of it striking the ground, all cause vibrations in the air which we perceive in the form of sounds -- the sounds we call whooshing, cracking, crashing. Like with the other senses, the events we perceive in the form of sounds of course happen whether or not anyone is perceiving them (the tree still topples, the vibrations in the air still occur). But because sound is actually a perceptual form -- the product of a relationship between perceiver and perceived -- it can't exist without a listener, any more than there could be a flavor without a taster or a color without a seer. I recommend Chapter 2 of Dr. Leonard Peikoff's book, Objectivism, and if you're really interested in the technical nitty-gritty there is Dr. David Kelley's The Evidence of the Senses which provides an in-depth treatment of all of this (and more). Definition of sound: "Sound is a mechanical wave that is an oscillation of pressure transmitted through a solid, liquid, or gas, composed of frequencies within the range of hearing and of a level sufficiently strong to be heard, or the sensation stimulated in organs of hearing by such vibrations." Are you saying that such a thing would not happen just because there is no observer? As I wrote, "Like with the other senses, the events we perceive in the form of sounds of course happen whether or not anyone is perceiving them (the tree still topples, the vibrations in the air still occur)." Just a follow-up question. From this explanation, it seems that "falling trees make no sound". A peceiver might hear sound when a tree falls, but the falling tree makes vibrations, not sound. Is this correct? I think in most cases it is perfectly clear to say that the ball is red and that the tree makes a sound; what we mean by "is red" and "makes a sound" is that we are grasping something perceptually about the entity -- and since there is a nice correlation between what we are grasping and the perceptual form in which we are grasping it, there's no need to worry about confusion. It is only when someone asks this kind of question, or when a Skeptic goes in for the kill with his puzzles, that you might want to get all careful and technical. Are you saying that it is not true that a (red) ball "is red"? If so, would you contrast this with something else, which something is? All perception involves interaction. Also, can you discuss (either here, or in my question about "fragile", or if you'd like I can start a third question) how this reconciles with Rand's discussion in ITOE entitled "The Primary-Secondary Quality Dichotomy as Fallacious"? In it Rand says "you would say the color is not in the object", and it seems to me that she disagrees with this. But maybe I'm misreading it. Or maybe I'm misreading you. Hi, anthony: No, I am saying that it is troublesome to think that color is actually in the ball. It is fine to say that the ball "is red," as I explained above -- but by "is red" we need to be clear that we are not saying that redness per se is actually in the ball. Rather, color is a perceptual form, so the redness actually refers to a relationship between our perceptual organs and something about the ball. Color is the form in which we perceive certain facts about the molecular structures at the surface of the ball. In my understanding, "primary qualities" are understood to be "in the object" (i.e., intrinsic), whereas "secondary qualities" are understood to be "in the subject" (i.e., subjective). Rand rightly rejects this as a false alternative; perceptual qualities are in the relationship of subject and object. To paraphrase Dr. Kelley: If I reported a violent car collision, you wouldn't wonder whether the violence was in this car or that one -- you understand that the violence would be an aspect of their interaction.
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Just to make sure no one is confused by the issue of "sound" as something that humans hear, versus "sound" as something that a falling tree produces, it might be helpful to restate the question as follows: If a tree fell in the forest and no one was there to hear it, would it still produce physical phenomena that humans (if present) would perceive as sound? If so, what is the best term to denote whatever it is that the falling tree produces and man has the capacity to hear? In ordinary usage, we tend to use the term "sound" to denote both the physical phenomena and our perception of them. But if we ever encounter a philosopher who plays on the difference in order to induce doubts about cognition, then we probably do need different, more precise terminology. (Something like "acoustic vibrations" perhaps.) It is also worth emphasizing that a falling tree still falls even if no one is there to see it fall. There may be another sense of this type of question: how can one know that a falling tree still makes "sound" even if no one is present to observe it? That is actually how I understood the question decades ago when I first heard it. (One can know that the tree falls because one can see it laying on the ground after it has fallen, but sound doesn't "hang around" very long for observation after the fact.) |
