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The question is, if a tree falls in the woods and there's no one to hear it, does it make a sound? That is a difficult question to answer, for what exactly is a sound? It seems to me that when a tree falls, the reason makes a sound is that it causes vibrations in the air that are picked up by our ears: that's how sounds work. But if there is no one to hear it, surely the vibrations are nothing more than vibrations, maybe not even that. In order for there to be a sound, we must sense sounds - indeed in order for there to be vibrations you could argue that we must sense vibrations too. Rapidly we are getting into deep philosophical waters.

The suggestion here is that we are trapped by our senses. If a tree falls and there's no one to hear it, if we accept that this means there is no sound, then this seems to suggest that there is nothing when we are not experiencing it. But perhaps we have gone too far by saying this (George Berkeley would disagree - he argued that things only exist when we sense them). It seems more plausible, or at least, more in line with our beliefs about the world (these may well be unfounded) to say that what the tree example actually shows is that the world around us may be completely different to what our perceptions of it are - we are trapped, a "veil of perception" pulled over our brain. It would certainly be naive to say that seeing is believing, for what evidence do we have? None but the information our senses provide. Indeed, the form of philosophy that argues that what you see is what you get is known as "Naive Realism".

How can we therefore be even sure that a tree did fall down, even if we did experience it? Perhaps it is all an illusion, and sadly there seems to be no way of proving or disproving this.

Perhaps the best, perhaps the only, defence available to us now is that as alarming as this revelation is, it makes no practical sense, true or not. If a tree is falling towards you, you're going to sidestep it pretty quick. As David Hume said: "The great subverter of Pyrrhonism [scepticism] is action and employment, and the occupations of common life."

He was certainly right in saying that the fact that we rely so heavily on our senses for our very survival means that scepticism can never be more than briefly entertained about the world's existence, or lack thereof. For if we try to live the life of the philosophical sceptic, in the most extreme case denying that we can know anything, then we will find life impossible. Unfortunately, this does not refute the sceptic, it merely shows that his argument is a somewhat hollow one. In the line of philosophy however, this is often the best we can do.

Learn more about this author, Algernon Moncrieff.
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