Good_Egg wrote: ↑March 9th, 2024, 4:42 am
It is a wise man who knows how much of what he perceives is really there, and how much is an artefact of the act of perceiving.
That's one of those cases where there are two ways to be wrong. We can be foolish by attributing too much or too little of what is perceived to the object itself.
The notion that a tree that falls in the forest doesn't really do so unless someone is there to see and hear it fall is nonsense. A philosophy that has fallen trees popping into existence when someone stumbles across them leads nowhere.
Such a tree may become of interest to or relevance to you at the point where you stumble over it (either literally or figuratively). But that's a different thing.
It's a self-absorbed philosophy that deems something to exist only when it is relevant to me...
I don't think that the argument is about existence per se. The argument doesn't intend to make a case about what exists, rather that what exists might have a dependency
outside the scope of existence, in this case being the observer.
Therefore the 'fallen tree' argument might be more interesting than it might appear, and the answer doesn't resolve around trees actually falling or not, but rather about more fundamental questions about the potential for a tree to 'have fallen' (into existence) in the first place.
I cited an argument by Terrapin Station a few posts back who claimed that there are just 2 options to explain the universe:
1) the universe either magically sprung into existence
2) the universe magically always existed
He reasoned the following:
Terrapin Station wrote: ↑April 28th, 2021, 5:01 pmFor any given initial existent, either it "spontaneously appeared" or it always existed. Those are the only two options, and they're both counterintuitive. Nevertheless, there's no other choice.
Logical options. Either we're exhausting the logical possibilities or we're not. Again, if you can think of a third option, that's great, but you'd need to present what the third option would be.
The mentioned options are all based on the assumption that the concept 'begin' (existence) is applicable to the universe on a fundamental level and that causality is required to explain the origin of the Universe.
At question would be how a philosophical 'option' (magically always existed or magically have sprung into existence) is possible in the first place. It is then seen that for any option to be possible an aspect is required that is
not of a nature that allows a choice.
That would be what transcending the subjective/objective dichotomy is about, in my opinion.
The question whether a tree has fallen when there were people around or not, is the same question whether the facts of science are valid
without philosophy.
Some more perspectives of TP to illustrate the importance of the fallen tree argument when it concerns an explanation for the fundamental nature of reality.
Terrapin Station wrote: ↑March 28th, 2020, 2:50 pmFacts in no way depend on any declarations or naming. Truth propositions do NOT obtain whether people exist or not.
Terrapin Station wrote: ↑May 4th, 2021, 6:16 pm
First, why would "what causes reality to exist" be necessary for knowing whether there is reality? (Keeping in mind that by "reality" here we're referring to the objective world.)