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The Reason "If A Tree Falls....... " is Totally Stupid

SmokeAndMirrors said:
All the second definition is doing is giving the measurements for that subjective experience. One is merely a technical version of the other.
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No, it's a separate definition.
 
pinqy said:
That's kind of the point of the question. What does it mean to say something

exists, if it cannot be detected, observed, and has no effect on anything else?
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It means exactly what you just said: (1) X exists and (2) X has no causal relationships. There's nothing deeper to it. :shrug:

You're conflating being and causation. They are not equivalent. The former does not entail the latter. There is nothing about existing that demands an existent state of the world to have causal relationships to other existent states of the world.

pinqy said:
Existence and non-existence are the same in such a case.
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:doh Existence and non-existence are never the same. By definition. Are you hearing yourself(no pun intended)? This is - literally - incoherence.

You are voicing outright contradictions. How can you expect anyone to take your argument seriously when you make statements like this?

pinqy said:
If it doesn't matter if it is case A or case B....
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It matters as to what is the case. It matters to the answer of the question "Is A the case or B the case?" - which is what the tree-falling question is asking! If A is the case, then the answer to the question is "A is the case". If B is the case then the answer to the question is different - it's "B is the case". That is the "effect" of A being the case - that A is the case.

The tree-falling question inquiries after what is the case, as do many philosophical questions. You are asking a different question - how does the effect of A on X differ from the effect of B on X - and are trying to project the answer to the latter question onto the former.

pinqy said:
that's exactly what it means. If the presence of X means Y, and the absence of X means Z, and Y and Z are not interchangeable, then X matters in respect to Y and Z.
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You are conflating two different meanings ascribed to the same word.

On the one hand you are using "matter" to indicate causal relationship between objects. The atom on Pluto "matters" to its neighbors in the sense that atom A pushes on atom B (and vice versa). This is a descriptive statement. An is-claim.

But importance/relevance/mattering/meaningful in another sense are ethical judgements. Suffering is bad, the plight of starving children matters, etc etc. These statements are not making descriptive claims; they are normative claims. Ought claims. They do not amount to simply identifying whatever physically affects me, whatever is causually connected to me. For instance a person wouldn't describe a drop of water that splashes onto their arm to matter in this sense simply because it physically affects her. Because that is not what she means by "matter" here. Or a person might claim something to matter that doesn't affect her at all - famine in Africa, or leaving a sustainable environment behind for our descendants, etc.

You are slipping back and forth between these different meanings without realizing it and without attending to that difference.


pinqy said:
There may or may not be a gun, or a bone, or an alien body buried in my back yard. But the existence or

non-existence of these items in my back yard are equivalent.
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No! By definition they are not equivalent. What you're attempting to say is that "the effect A has on you" is equivalent to "the effect B has on you". It does not follow that A is equivalent to B. Because "A" =/= "the effect A has on you" :doh
 
SmokeAndMirrors said:
All the second definition is doing is giving the measurements for that subjective experience. One is merely a technical version of the other.
Click to expand...

No. The mental interpretation of nerve impulses by the brain is a completely separate and different process from the physical vibrations reaching the ear. One process can occur without the other. A deaf person experiences no mental interpretation, and I sometimes "hear" a ringing in my ears when no vibrations are present. Certainly no vibration occurs in the brain.

The two very different definitions and common usage of the word sound have been obvious from the beginning of this thread. What the hell are we arguing about?
 
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