If a tree falls and nobody is around to hear it does anybody hear it?

Answer 1

Well of course he is. An entire forest can fall and men will still be wrong.

Yes we would be........Damned if we tell the truth, and damned if we don't. Either way, we're up a tree.

Maybe that's why the tree fell? And the moral of that is.....if men would keep their feet planted firmly on the ground, they wouldn't have to be "up a tree".

Answer 2

Well, yes, the tree really fell. Anyone could go to it and see that it was on the ground, and calculate that the tree had fallen at some point in time.

The real question is, "If a tree fell in a forest, and there was no one there, would there be a sound?"

Of course, the answer is, "yes", because sound is made of sound waves, and from the laws of physics and common experience, we know that a falling tree would make many sound waves.

Don't let a philosopher tell you any different.

Even though this is a traditional philosophical question.

I agree with the above answer. Actually, the trick to this question is that you cannot answer it incorrectly. It is true that the tree made a sound, since a sound is, by definition, a wave produced by a vibration or rapidly expanding air, the former of which was produced by the tree's falling. It is also true that the tree did not make a sound, existentially speaking. Though the tree did fall, there was no one around to interpret the fact that a sound came from it, so it may as well not exist.

Answer 3

The answer is obvious. If a tree falls it will make a thump noise/sound whether or not someone hears it. So the answer is yes, it will make a sound.

Another Perspective

If a tree falls it will make pressure waves in the atmosphere. Pressure waves can be detected - put your fingers on a balloon in a noisy place and you can pick up the vibrations tingling your fingertips but you cannot interpret and classify them - your fingers are not experiencing sounds.

Pressure waves are a thing of physics, but sounds are a thing of philosophy. Only your ears and your brain can receive pressure waves and then interpret those as sounds.

Are all pressure waves heard by humans sounds? No, anything below 10 Hertz and over 20 kiloHertz cannot be heard. Those pressure waves exist, but are completely silent. A human can hear a limited range of pressure wave frequencies as sound. Only a human (and certain higher animals) can do this.

When the tree falls, pressure waves in the atmosphere will happen, the balloon will vibrate, but the vibrations will be meaningless without someone to interpret them. So the answer is no, it will not make a sound.

Answer 4

Technically, no