“If a tree falls in the woods, and no one is around, does it make a sound?”
further,
"If a tree falls in the woods, and no one is around, can we really say that a tree fell in the woods?
“If an attractive man is said to be tall, is he still attractive in scale model form, such as on a 15’’ TV?”
Are these legitimate philosophical questions? Or the ramblings of a childish existentialist troll?
for fun,
"If killing people is wrong, and not killing them is said to be the superior behavior, and you do not kill people, but U.S. soldiers do kill people, do you claim to be better than U.S. soldiers?
Am I a politician or an assbag philosopher? A rhetorician or a clown? Trick question. They are all the same.
Not killing is wrong, but initiating agression. Yep, I think we are much better than US troops killing innocent or not so innocent people in foreign countries that nobody asked them to be there.
This is a popular rhetorical question used to imply the question “can something exist without being perceived?” Kind of like the unspoken rule in professional wrestling: If the ref didn’t see it, it’s like it didn’t happen.
(see above)
A nonsense question…implies a characteristic is in fact an entire cause.
Again, implies a false premise. Few people would argue “killing” is inherently wrong. Notice the question doesn’t use the word “murder” or “slaughter” or “assassignate” or “genocide” or “exterminate”…I wonder why.
Nope. Sound, by definition, is something that is heard. If no one hears it, its just vibrations. However, if an animal capable of hearing is within range, then it does make a sound.
If A and B, then A and B. If a tree falls in the woods and no one is around, then a tree falls in the woods and no one is around. You are asking: If A and B, then ~A. That would be an invalid argument.
If the attributes which determine his attractiveness are not changed by being scaled down and put on TV, then yes.
So long as “better” means the same as “superior behavior,” then yes.
these questions are just logic relativistic games, childish questions, not philosophy.
No amount of observation or reasoning can prove that the world is not just an elaborate simulation (a.k.a. the Matrix), which runs only when witnessed by a human (a.k.a. a brain in a vat). So these questions are quite reasonable, even if unanswerable.
Pretty much. I was just making a joke about the way some people argue. Semantical, rheotrical situations that aren’t real questions. Just statements made to confound people who try and analyze them. they were meant to simulate babblings from people who do not argue philosophy correctly.
Thanks to people for answering.
The U.S. soldiers thing is a joke from the season finale of “workaholics”
my original thought was to ask if the chicken came before the egg, but i figured it would be too transparent.
“If a tree falls in the woods, and no one is around, does it make a sound?”
If a tree falls, does it make a sound?
If I put a recording device in the woods with no one around, and a tree falls and doesn’t make a sound, would the tree then re-fall to ensure that sound was recorded for us humans to decieve us?
When something of large mass falls from a great distance do we have enough empircal evidence to conclude that the vibrations from it’s force would make a sound? At least the leaves rustling in the wind from it’s fall surely made noise.
If a tree falls in the woods is a Zen Koan. The sound that’s being referred to is the way our ears receive and interpret soundwaves, the actual manifestation of what a tree falling sounds like.
If there was no one to intrepret the soundwaves- they are surely still there- but the physical experience of what those soundwaves actually sound like doesn’t take place until someone participates. Even if you record the sound, the sound of “boom” didn’t exist until you participated in interpreting it with your ears- its your ears and brain that decide what a tree falling sounds like. Sugar isn’t sweet until you taste it. Of course memory will remind you its sweet- but the sensation has to be experienced through tasting for sweetness to happen.
Another zen koan goes like this->The case of Juzhi’s “One finger Zen”
“Zen Master Juzhi was known for answering all questions by holding up his index finger. One day, Juzhi was gone from the temple, and someone asked his young attendant about the nature of his master’s teachings. The boy held up one finger. When Juzhi heard about this after returning to the temple, he promptly called the boy to his side and cut off his finger. The boy fled the room screaming, but Juzhi called out to him. When the boy turned out around, Juzhi held up one finger. The boy became enlightened.”
They aren’t supposed to make logical sense- the point is to be engrossed in figuring it out and the mind itself being broken and reality comes rushing in as far as I know.
Okay, the world might be an elaborate simulation. But every single sense, which experiences will generally demonstrate very rarely contradict reality, states that we are in reality. Or, alternatively, we are in the simulation that is, to all intents and purposes, reality, since that is what our senses perceive and our senses are all we have to go by in the world.
Its a bit like the “Determinism vs Free Will” issue. Either we have free will, in which case the question is moot, or our lives are predetermined as surely as ours pasts are, but then we have the ILLUSION of free will which amounts to the exact same thing. The only thing that matters is that we have to act as though we have free will, otherwise any number of atrocities can be justified under the premise of being forced to do something by destiny (though determinism also is a bit of a moral issue for religions since it ultimately makes any measure of human decision arbitrary and pointless).
Likewise, we have to assume we aren’t in an elaborate simulation, since the consequences of assuming we are in the simulation and are wrong (potentially justifying the aforementioned atrocities, again) are worse than the opposite.