First, please define 'objective'. But I will continue, anyway, for the sake of time.
Even if a person were present, the tree would not make a sound, either. The movement of the tree causes the surrounding air to move. Only when this movement is perceived (by a creature capable of doing so) does a sound arise. Sound is a mental experience. But for the sake of your point, it could be maintained that the tree does cause air vibrations.Wanderer101 wrote:Argument A (objective reality) is true the tree falls and makes a sound.
Nevertheless, if I wave my hand, thus moving the air surrounding my hand, do you hear a sound? Why not? The movements just aren't strong enough to reach the ear.
This makes no sense. How can there be an unmade sound by virtue of not being heard? I suggest you consider the difference between 'sound' and 'vibration'.Wanderer101 wrote:Argument B (the tree falls and makes a sound that no one hears therefore there is no sound) subjective reality.
Define 'absolute truth'. Mustn't truth necessarily exist in relation to something else, and thus be relative (not absolute)? If truth were absolute (not contingent upon perception), we would all be omniscient, yet we are not. The fact that knowledge has contingencies precludes truth from not being contingent upon contact - and if the perception of truth depends upon contact, it is not objective.Wanderer101 wrote:Argument C. Neither argument is true, neither case is true therefore reality is something else. That something else no matter how strange is ultimately the one single absolute truth.
The only objective truth is that phenomena lack objectivity, and even phenomena's lacking of objectivity itself lacks objectivity.
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Objectivity
I suppose by 'objective' we mean 'not contingent upon perceptual/cognitive processes'. As physics and QM have shown (as far as my understanding leads me to believe), what we are able to know depends on what we know and perception may be capable of 'collapsing' indeterminate possibility.
If the tree which we presume to have fallen had already been observed by any being capable of doing so, then the tree has already been 'collapsed' into phenomenal existence; therefore, the tree can fall and do its things and not matter a damn bit: We still wouldn't hear it doing so.
Now, I would like to invoke 'conceptual designation'. What does it mean to call something a 'tree', a 'vibration' of air, or a 'sound'?
Tree
It is obvious to see that the tree lacks any intrinsic reality by means of being a composite structure: It is made of parts. The fact that the tree is made of things other than itself - sunlight, water, and soil - shows that there never was any tree to begin with. If you were still to maintain that there is, in fact, a tree, how do you maintain, exactly, that it came into existence? What need does an objective phenomena have for coming into existence if its basis of existence is a mere conceptual abstraction?
In short, any composition lacks any unitary, essential identity by nature of being a compound of phenomena other than its 'self'. The tree can not depend on itself to come into existence before it has come into existence. Self-production or -dependence is not only never observed nor does it make any rational sense. Therefore, the existence of the 'tree' is contingent upon our saying so.
Contact and Sound
So how is it that a tree is capable of producing a vibration? I must invoke an investigation now into the nature of 'contact' and cause and effect.
It seems to be the case that the tree hits the ground and causes a series of events that lead to our perception of a concurrent sound. But for the fall to be the cause of the produced sound, they can neither be concurrent nor non-concurrent. If the tree falls at the same time as the sound is perceived, they can not be maintained as cause and effect, respectively. If they, on the other hand, are non-concurrent, then they can also not be maintained as being cause and effect. If there are a series of causally related events between the fall and the sound, then the analysis of contact still applies, ad infinitum: A series of contactless interaction does not result in actual contact.
There is no logical premise for a falling tree producing a perceived sound except for the non-analytic acceptance of the mere appearance of the event, which must necessarily be not objective by virtue of being an appearance (which is perceptual).
Vibration
The vibration of air molecules is not a discrete reality in-and-of itself. After all, aren't air molecules always in constant motion? And what is motion without reference to a fixed point of reference? There is no such thing, therefore, as an objective, non-relative state of motion. Why does the movement of the air molecules have any particular significance just because a tree has fallen if not due to the superimposition of the perceiving consciousness capable of doing so?
It is the conceptual mind which conceives of discrete realities where there are, in fact, none. Perception is only possible because phenomena are not discrete realities: They lack self-objectivity.
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It is upon the basis of the above investigations that a so-called objective view of the entire process can not be maintained. If all of the required components - tree, vibration, sound, and mind - were to exist irrespective of each other (i.e., objectively), neither would happen, at all.
All components of the process we are investigating here are necessarily contingent upon conceptual designation, which must necessarily depend upon a perceiving consciousness. Objectivity is also illogical.