|THE END OF CONCIOUSNESS |
ARTICULATED BY:
COMMENTS
CONNECT
MONDAY NIGHT
MIXTAPE
YEAR OF THE
BEARD
An old proverb asks, “If a tree falls in the forest but nobody is around to hear it, does it make a sound?” The answer comes down to interpretation and linguistic semantics.
Sound is a subjective experience, to humans and many animals it’s an eardrum or similar organ, detecting and decoding the movement of particles in wave like patterns. Using neurological hardware and software we make it into an understandable phenomenon, the mechanisms of which have evolved to aid survival of the organism.
However, even the word ‘hearing’ can have very different meanings, which can be illustrated using different organisms and even human disorders. For example, we commonly use the word ‘hearing’ to describe the process above, however bats use sonar (sound) to ‘see’. The human condition Synesthesia causes senses to be confused or misinterpreted by the subject, whereby sufferers may smell colours, hear textures, or see sounds. Although we share a common reality, our individual (or ‘model dependant’) realities are shaped by our senses and subjective understanding of our environment.
Arrogantly articulated by Ben Henbest.
We can therefore either interpret this proverbial question in terms of the subjective experience of sensing sound. Or we can narrow the meaning to the simpler question of whether it creates a sound wave, to be (or not be) sensed by an organism.
If we wish to answer the question in terms of the latter context, then yes; the falling tree will cause a sound wave of vibrating particles in a uniform pattern. But to answer with the former, although there may be a definite and measurable sound wave in our shared reality, if it is not actually sensed by a consciousness, then we cannot claim it to make a ‘sound’, only the physical process with potential to be ‘heard’ as sound.
So then, with these alternative interpretations in mind, let us ponder another question, “If there is no living thing in the universe to sense anything, even a shared reality, then does the universe cease to exist entirely?”
