If A Tree Falls, Does It Make a Sound?--the Primacy of Existence

If A Tree Falls In the Forest, Does it Make a Sound--or a Noise?

The Primacy of Existence

We have all heard the question "If a tree falls in a forest and no one is there to hear it, does it still make a sound or a noise?" We have heard it ten, hundreds, or thousands or more times.

What does that question have to do with the description of Metaphysical Naturalism (MN) as "A belief concerning the supernatural, sacred, or divine, and the practices and institutions associated with such belief"? [See this blog dated 09.05.2008] MN, concerned with defining such things, and with the denial of what is non-existent, and with replacing belief in the supernatural or the lack thereof with a certainty about the natural cosmology of the universe and existence itself, has an interest in addressing "The Tree in the Forest."

Every answer I have ever read misses the essential point, which is not about "sound or sound waves being heard or not heard," nor about whether sound is different from noise. Those are the excuses of metaphysicians who will not, or cannot, face the real question, or who have no idea that another question more real exists.

The question is: Does existence exist independently of consciousness? When seen in this context, it does not matter if "sound" or "noise" is used as the definition of what happens when the tree falls; it matters whether you think things happen whether or not a consciousness is there to perceive that it happens.

The belief that reality requires a consciousness is gaining in prevalence. It has been a staple of some eastern philosophies for thousands of years. Some western philosophers have advanced the idea. Many young students facing philosophy for the first time have serious existential questions about their own existence. That makes a shameful indictment of how far our "intellectual" standards have plunged since Renaissance scholars brought Jefferson and America's other Founders to an understanding of men's unalienable individual sovereignty.

Those modern men and women who doubt their own existence have fallen backward in time 500 years, and can have no conception about their unalienable sovereignty, except what they are lucky enough to glean from between the lines of their teachers words, teachers who tell them their "rights" include all those things which must be provided by other men when they themselves fail to provide it--like health care.

(Deregulation of the health-care industry and extended patent lengths on pharmacuticals would considerably alter the high cost of care and drugs. But that is better left for another blog or two or three.)

To believe that consciousness gives reality to reality, e.g., that "perception is reality," is fallacious logic called the Primacy of Consciousness. (The Primacy of Perception is also a fallacy. ["...perception [as] the causal product of atomic sensations," again e.g., "perception is reality." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maurice_Merleau-Ponty ]

The Primacy of Existence states that existence exists. http://www.aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/primacyofexistence.html
http://www.geocities.com/katholon/poe.htm et al.

Existence exists. Period. There can be no requirement for the conscious perception of a "thing" to make that "thing" real. In this case the thing is whether or not a noise or a sound is generated.

If we grant that it is generated, because we agree the tree exists and that it fell, and that in the falling certain effects are the result of the falling--one of those effects being the generation of noise or sound--then it does not matter which definition you choose. Some choose "sound," some choose "noise." We can agree that in the context of the Primacy of Existence, which word we use does not matter.

But those who believe the fallacy that a consciousness must be conscious of the cause-and-effect agree it does not require consciousness to make the sound or noise waves reality when the tree falls--unless they are hard core in their belief that the tree would not even fall if no one was there to see it fall. That would require the explanation that the tree does not exist to fall unless consciousness perceives the tree and the forest to give them their reality.

If one chooses to call it "noise," then "sound" is what requires perception. If one chooses "sound" as the effect of a falling tree, then "noise" requires perception. If one chooses to comprehend that noises and sounds and falling trees are going to happen even after Man is dead and gone, then he also comprehends that existence, not consciousness, is primary.

That is where the end result of the Primacy of Consciousness demonstrates its illogic. I have seen questions that ask such things as, "When I die, will existence cease to exist?" If the answer was yes, then logic would require consciousness to give empirical reality to all that exists, and that it would exist only within one's own consciousness, within ones own moment of perception, except where more than one consciousness is also conscious of the same tree and the same forest at the same time--and from precisely the same perspective.

A "positive belief concerning the supernatural" would be required for such a demonstration of solidarity on the part of more than one consciousness. The evidentialist argument http://www.iep.utm.edu/e/evidenti.htm is that if four people are standing on the corners of an intersection and an accident happens, each of the four people will have differing details on the accident, since each perception took place from a different perspective. This argument holds that if each of the accounts is factual, then four different sets of facts exist.

This might be compared to the four accounts of the angels at the tomb of Jesus when the angels told "the two Marys" about his "resurection."

"Matthew says that the angel that was sitting upon the stone on the
outside of the sepulchre told the two Marys that Christ was risen, and
that the women went away quickly. Mark says that the women, upon
seeing the stone rolled away, and wondering at it, went into the
sepulchre, and that it was the angel that was sitting within on the
right side, that told them so. Luke says it was the two angels that
were standing up; and John says it was Jesus Christ himself that
told it to Mary Magdalene, and that she did not go into the sepulchre,
but only stooped down and looked in.

"Now, if the writer of those four books had gone into a court of
justice to prove an alibi (for it is of the nature of an alibi that is
here attempted to be proved, namely, the absence of a dead body by
supernatural means), and had they given their evidence in the same
contradictory manner as it is here given, they would have been in
danger of having their ears cropped for perjury, and would have justly
deserved it. Yet this is the evidence..." [Thomas Paine; "The Age of Reason"]

"Yet this is the evidence" for the account of whether or not a tree makes a sound or a noise in the forest, that different people can have different perspectives of the same event, and if they did not themselves have any perception of the event, the sound or noise could not have happened because a sound or a noise is a perception.

The fallacy can be described this way:

If sound is perception of an event, and
If a falling tree makes a sound,
Then the sound of the falling tree is in the perception of the event, and only in the perception of the event.

This is a belief in the supernatural, when naturalism is defined as existents including actions for which there is "no supernatural cause and government, but [which are] self-existent, self-explanatory, self-operating, and self-directing..." http://www.ditext.com/runes/index.html .

In other words, Metaphysical Naturalism is the certainty that existence is self-sufficient and requires no help from man (or god) to make it work. That such "certainty" is contextual with Man's knowledge of the logic of his physics makes it a belief. Certainty does not require infallibility and infallibility cannot be had in logic; infallibility makes beliefs even out of certainties where certainties are substantiated by logic. Nor does fallibility make certainty any less certain.

Beliefs are defined as religions by many authorities, and this Assemblage will not take umbrage by that definition, when it advances the wall of separation between church and state. As it is the committed purpose of this Assemblage and its Academy to help maintain this wall of separation, and as it is not contradictory to claim any belief as part of one religion or another, nor to claim that religion is a system of beliefs, it is the belief of this Assemblage of Metaphysical Naturalists that the production of noise or of sound by an empirical existent, under normal and natural conditions, is self-evidentiary, a certainty, and a primary axiom of existence.

The Free Assemblage of Metaphysical Naturalists is the sm (service mark) of the Academy of Metaphysical Naturalism tm, which is the educational arm of the Assemblage.
This publication © 2008 by Curtis Edward Clark and Naturalist Academy Publishing ®

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And What Irony To Find This Blog

After Writing About "Existence"

"Before the scientific community came to a consensus on the Big Bang theory following the discovery of the cosmic radiation echo predicted by Big Bang theorists, many scientists believed in the Steady State theory. In short, they believed that the universe had no definite beginning and that hydrogen atoms were randomly popping into existence somewhere in the universe, supplying the material for all the physical phenomena like stars and planets. Atheists were generally rooting for this theory, understanding that a definite beginning for the physical universe implies its contingency- that it has a cause which is outside itself. As it turned out, the Big Bang has been confirmed in great measure by scientific findings...

"How the atheists managed to adopt the Big Bang theory as evidence for their position confounds me. If there is any interesting history behind this, I’d be curious to know it.

"To elaborate further on why this is a philosophical defeat for atheism: The contemporary atheist philosopher Kai Nielsen is frequently quoted by Christian apologists as saying about causation: “Suppose you suddenly hear a loud bang and you ask me, ‘What made that bang?’ and I reply ‘Nothing, it just happened.’ You would not accept that - in fact you would find my reply quite unintelligible.” Nielsen is quite right on this account. Bangs must have causes because they are finite, contingent events that have a definite beginning." W. E. Messamore [blog @] http://www.slaying-dragons.com/

A Reply

My reply is taken partially from the top article, and partially from If A Tree Falls In the Forest--the Primacy of Existence and The Loss of Secularism in Naturalism, Part 2: Unjustified True Beliefs:

"If one thing exists in existence, it becomes the proof of the existence of existence," I wrote, above.

This refutes Messamore on his contention that "hydrogen atoms were randomly popping into existence." The theory of "ex nihilo" has long since been abandoned by Christian theologians; things in existence do not just spontaneously appear. If hydrogen atoms actually were randomly popping into existence, they were caused by something else already in existence. What that is may remain unknown for a long time, if in fact "popping hydrogen atoms" turns out to be a justified theory sometime in the future.

Saying that it was God who caused the popping of hydrogen atoms begs two questions: 1) for what purpose God would cause such a thing, or admitting that no human could ever know that answer; and 2) how can this discussion continue between us if God is the automatic answer to everything?

While I suppose it is true as Messamore says, that "a definite beginning for the physical universe implies its contingency," this in no way implies that metaphysical naturalists believe in the contingency theory, nor that atheists were "rooting" for that theory. I don't remember rooting for it. I don't remember reading that any of my atheist contemporaries or those who came before us rooted for it. But I could be wrong. Maybe some did.

But 'Existence exists' rules out contingency. It is also equally true that 'Existents exist,' and neither statement can be true without the other also being true. The conclusion of the extreme end result of this logic is that existence is not a product--not of a contingency, nor of anything else; and that nothing can be antecedent to existence, because it would require "nothingness" to be the default condition of the universe.Of course every theist is going to defend "nothingness" as the default position, because without doing so there can have been no "creation."

Contingency cannot be a fallback position for creation. "'God' as traditionally defined is a systematic contradiction of every valid metaphysical principle. The point is wider than just the Judeo- Christian concept of God. No argument will get you from this world to a supernatural world. No reason will lead you to a world contradicting this one. No method of inference will enable you to leap from existence to a 'super-existence.'" Leonard Peikoff; "The Philosophy of Objectivism."

Because "nothingness" can not be antecedent to existence, there is "nothing apart from it—and no alternative to it." [Peikoff] If nothingness was antecedent, then "nothingness" is reified, i.e., it becomes an existent. "Nothingness" as an "existent" is contradictory of the terms. "Nothingness" as an antecedent existent necessarily denotes "nothingness" as "something that exists." But just the opposite is true: nothingness is the absence of existence.

To argue that "somethingness" is the absence of "nothingness" reifies absence and makes it an existent. Contradictions do not exist; therefore, reified "nothingness" cannot exist.

The Big Bang was not the beginning of existence, nor by extension of any existents in existence. This means quite simply that the material that exploded in the Bang existed prior to the known universe. But the known materials of the universe are existents, which implies existence, which implies that "nothingness" can not have been the state of existence prior to any creation and that creation cannot have occurred because "nothingness" would then be a reified existent.

When people ask me what caused the Big Bang, I never say, "Nothing." Of course something caused an event. What causes a meteor to slam into the earth? What causes solar flares? The same thing that caused the Bang--which in the most simplistic of terms can only be called the Laws of Existence. But existence did not come about because of an event. It is not a product. It is the primal existential state of all that was, is, or can be. Existence cannot be the primal existential state of "nothingness" because "nothingness" exists only as a conceptual place holder within consciousness that denotes an existential state than cannot exist.

The Law of Identity says "'Everything is what it is and not another thing', or (where 'P' is any proposition) 'If P then P'." Existence, being what it is and not another thing, cannot be not-P, where not-P is "not-existence."

The Law of Non-Contradiction says "No proposition can be both true and not true; or that nothing can be--without qualification--the case and not the case at the same time; or that nothing can--without qualification--both have and lack a given property at the same time." http://www.philosophyprofessor.com/philosophies/three-laws-of-thought.php So the proposition that "nothingness" is at the same time "somethingness" contradicts this Law.

Why would anyone ever say "nothing" caused the Big Bang? Why would anyone ever say hydrogen atoms just popped into existence from non-existence? They came from somewhere, not from no where; but that "somewhere" was a place in existence, not an "ex nihilo no-place" from which they supernaturally came into Being.

Why would anyone say that existents were created--which creation thus at the same time created existence itself--when the material to use in any creation would have to come from "nothingness?"

Existence is not a "product." Only something supernatural could cause "somethingness" from "nothingness," existence from non-existence; and because this argument relies on something supernatural, metaphysical naturalists must necessarily work from the epistemic principle that "existence exists." CEC

Many thanks to "sntjohnny" http://sntjohnny.com/front/ for turning me on to another Christian apologist. I love debating you guys!